Typos: Who Cares?

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by hobnail

I must be lucky, I can only remember one occurrence and it was in a library book and a previous reader caught it where it was the name of the wrong character so they drew a line through the incorrect name and wrote next to it the correct name. I was kind of glad they fixed it but I still feel that library books shouldn't be defaced, although I've managed to stop being outraged over pages that have been dog-eared.

My favorite memory of library book defacement was one where a character was using a lot of swear words and someone had gone through and marked them out with a black felt tip marker.

Eh, I take that back about only one; I remember starting a book and thinking that they really should have had a good proof reader / editor. But the book was also boring and uninteresting so it was quickly dropped on the return-to-library pile.

Exactly. I've almost never found a typo in my favorite authors's books. But as DiapDealer says, the standards I expressed above are too strict. This I trust him enough to adopt that stance.

[rkomar]

It can be hard for writers to correct their own typos. Unless you can distance yourself from the work, you often "read" what you meant to say rather than what you actually said. It helps to set the work aside and forget what you meant to say before proofing it.

Editors don't have that problem.

[DiapDealer]

If you're reading printed library books and not seeing any typos, that's a dead giveaway that the occasional typo isn't quite as disruptive as many seem to think they are. Because they're in there. In all of them.

Even if you DO notice them while reading, you probably won't remember them when thinking back on the book if they were infrequent enough. Especially if it's a book you enjoyed.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

Have you ever written a book? Have ever proof-read a novel-length book? Those little mistakes can be easy to miss. Words that are spelled right, but are the wrong word so the spell-catcher misses them. Missing words. It is hard to catch them all over 100,000 words.

Yes, I've copy-edited and proofread books. Yes, little mistakes can be easy to miss, which is why publishers hire people to be copy editors and proofreaders. Yes, spell-check misses wrong words that are spelled correctly, which is why publishers hire people to be copy editors and proofreaders.

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

I've noticed a lot of reputable news sites contain more and more typos. This surprises me. How can we expect poor writers to correct typos when established news outlets don't bother anymore?

The trade-off for the immediacy with which a news article is posted is more typos. A book should be held to a much higher standard.

[theducks]

Besides true typos (spelling IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE BOOK. I like reading the various regional versions of English), I do find that homophones tend to be most jarring.

Then there are the technical detail errors . Space opera that uses Ground based references IN SPACE . Spark plugs on Diesel engines...

And is there a good reason to reinvent shipboard terminology that has been used forever (wooden sailing ships to the current spacecraft)?

Last on my list is inconsistent formatting (visible: a code mess is just poor practice)

[rcentros]

Too many typos get on my nerves and pull me out of the book. I can understand them when reading an old (public domain) book that's been OCR'd and made available as an eBook. (I've done this on a couple books, and it's a lot of work.) I have more toleration for typos when reading a self-published or small-press eBook — though it seems like someone could have proofread them (sometimes they're really bad). What really bothers me is a lot of typos when I'm reading an A-List author who's book is published by one of the Big Five. These books make the publishers a lot of money. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to produce a polished "product." But it's breaking down everywhere. I remember when newspapers used to post corrections for insignificant typos in past issues. And it wasn't like newspapers weren't up against deadlines in the old days (when printed newspapers were actually relevant).

[DiapDealer]

For the record, I hate them when I notice them. I'm just not willing to hold today's authors/publishers/editors to a standard yesteryear's never met. Novel-length books without typos have always been unicorns.

[Bookstooge]

I don't have a hard and fast rule for typo's but by the end of the book if I'm still thinking about them, they get mentioned in the review. It has been quite a while though since that has happened. Either indies have gotten better or I'm reading less indies...

[DNSB]

I tend to notice typos and too many of them make it hard for me to enjoy a book. That's when I get out the digital blue pencil. Most of my annotations are either typos or homophones which I correct. since unlike some members of this forum, I tend to re-read books.

One recent example was a book in which the author managed to misuse rein, reign and rain as part of a massive collection of misused homophones. At one point, I was wondering if the book had been dictated into a speech to text program. The humourous part ( to me ) was when I commented on the misuse of homophones on the author's website, I was informed that there was no homophobia in any of her books.

[JSWolf]

The worst typos are names be it a character, place, or whatever. The thing is, I do read SF/Fantasy and there are a lot of names that are not in the English language and typos for names are wrong and should never happen.

Given that we have a spellchecker in Sigil and Calibre, it's unforgivable for even a single typo. But what is abominable is when the eBook has errors the pBook doesn't have.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Given that we have a spellchecker in Sigil and Calibre, it's unforgivable for even a single typo.

Spellcheckers don't catch things like then when than is called for. You should consider looking for something that does.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Spellcheckers don't catch things like then when than is called for. You should consider looking for something that does.

There should be a list of words like then/than. They can be searched for to make sure they are correct.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The humourous part ( to me ) was when I commented on the misuse of homophones on the author's website, I was informed that there was no homophobia in any of her books.

And we all know that heterophones lead to heterophobia.

[Uncle Robin]

FAR more annoying to me than typos (of which I make many) are the prissy petty pedantic prescriptivists who insist on conflating orthography with grammar. Using "their" for "they're" or "its" for "it's" (or vice versa) is still just a typo. It says nothing at all about the writer's grasp of English grammar. All it does is illustrate that English orthography is a nightmare. So unless the typo has unintentionally amusing consequences, or is one of real, grossly indecent offensiveness (e.g. spelling "espresso" with an "x"!), I ignore them. If I buy a book and find it contains a lot of typos, I might be mildly disappointed but it would take a non-stop stream of them to really irk me.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

I will say I don't read a lot of self-pubbed stuff, but I see criticisms for all types of books, and I see the texts myself. I think it's just a snob thing. People love to give themselves airs. They probably just buy the book and put it on the shelf, then say "Oh, I couldn't read it. The typos!"

Anyway, maybe you feel differently.

I do feel differently because typos can have significance. For example, in a book I recently read from Oxford University press, I couldn't figure out what the author was trying to equate because of a typo. Ultimately, I did figure it out, but it caused me to stop and focus on a lesser point.

Having a lot of typos in a book can be a signal of a poorly researched book. From my perspective, if neither the author nor the publisher care enough about the book to minimize the typos, then the book is likely not worth reading. In addition, it causes me to wonder about the author's subject matter credibility.

Years ago I edited a book that was focused on a narrow economic point and was touted as presenting a new and novel theory that would revolutionize economic thinking. The author had a good reputation among his fellow economists, so the book was highly anticipated.

I was hired as an editor not a fact checker and the contract specifically stated that the author was solely responsible for verification of the correct spelling of names and identification of economic theories. I did query some names and theories with which I had some familiarity, but I did not fact check.

The process was this: author wrote the manuscript and sent it to me for editing. I edited the manuscript and returned the manuscript to the author so he could address my queries and could review and accept or reject any editorial changes I had made. By contract, the author was solely responsible for the final manuscript as submitted for publication because the author had final approval/disapproval of all proposed changes.

When the highly anticipated book was published, it received scathing reviews from the author's colleagues. Why? Because the author misspelled colleague names, assigned economic theory names to the wrong theories, and misattributed historical economic events. As it turned out, many of these errors were "typos" in the sense that the author dropped a letter or added a letter or simply otherwise misspelled something -- but these were all errors that the author could have and should have caught and corrected; they were subject matter specific and beyond what would be expected from any editor who also wasn't a subject matter expert.

Typos can be annoying and misleading and be the bane of an author.