# E-Books are Full of Errors! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 26, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082 "2012-02-26T21:41:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/1 "2012-02-26T21:41:36Z")
Pepper Mill just decided to drag us Luddites in the CalMeacham household kicking and screaming into the 21st Century (Her words, mostly) – she bought a Nook. The first book we bought was – well – mine. I knew it was available, because I could bring it up on the nooks at our local Barnes and Noble (and i did, every chance I got, leaving it there in the hopes of promoting sales). So i was perusing my _magnum opus_ when I noticed that it had spelling errors in it. **Sirius** was rendered **Sinus** , which will come as a surprise to people encountering the name of this star for the first time. I started looking closely at the text, and found numerous spelling errors – some of them pretty impressive. I hasten to point out that none of the errors i found were in the printed editions. They seem to be the result of putting the work into e-book format. I wondered how widespread this phenomenon was, since I hadn’t heard about it before. Evidently it’s fairly common: [http://www.amazon.com/Spelling-errors-in-Kindle-ebooks/forum/Fx8K5S3V834TCX/Tx1KP4WTT41001B/1?\_encoding=UTF8&asin=B001P81618](http://www.amazon.com/Spelling-errors-in-Kindle-ebooks/forum/Fx8K5S3V834TCX/Tx1KP4WTT41001B/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B001P81618) [http://www.amazon.com/kindle-missing-words-and-misspellings/forum/Fx1AB9PYUFUHA2E/Tx160O7UKD6GBA0/1?\_encoding=UTF8&asin=0812971183](http://www.amazon.com/kindle-missing-words-and-misspellings/forum/Fx1AB9PYUFUHA2E/Tx160O7UKD6GBA0/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=0812971183) [http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php?topic=93298.0](http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php?topic=93298.0) > **["https://www.teleread.com/ebooks/kindle-books-riddled-with-typographical-and-for...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teleread.com%2Febooks%2Fkindle-books-riddled-with-typographical-and-formatting-errors-says-bloomberg-columnist%2F%22&btnI)** > [@](#): > > it all depends on the specific book. Some books are clean; no spelling errors and formatting perfect. Others are a mess. My pet peeve is books that won’t sort properly because of screwed up metadata- the info that the Kindle uses for sorting. > > … > > … > > … > > I’m reading “Game of Thrones” right now, and have noticed quite a lot of spelling errors, but I don’t think they’re truly because of lazy editing. There is one character who’s name is “Halder” and the Kindle book consistently mistypes his name as “Haider”. Also a region called “Dorne” which is consistently mistyped as “Dome”. If you look, I think the source of the error is some sort of text recognition software that is misinterpreting what it sees. The “l” in Halder is misread as “i”, and the “rn” in Dorne is misread as “m”. I think they must just scan the books, and have some software try to read the scan, rather than type the books in by hand. > … > … > … > > I think with older books that were not originally submitted in digital format the books have to be scanned and an optical character recognition program turns the scan into text. Unfortunately those programs aren’t perfect and the results really should be proofed very carefully by a human, a very time consuming process. For the Kindle books I’ve read I would say that very little effort has been made to find OCR errors. > In my opinion, if Amazon is going to release these books as they are they should provide a special “Error Submittal” page so their readers can help correct the errors they find. > … > … > … > > I too have experienced misspellings, and unintelligible wording in several books I downloaded from Kindle. When confronted, a Kindle support representative said, "Kindle is not responsible for the information provided and it is the publisher that is responsible. > … > … > … All of the above are about Kindle, but it seems Nook has the same issues. My book’s on Kindkle, as well, and in two e-book formats used by libraries. I haven’t checked any of those, but maybe I should. Has anyone else heard about this? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/2 "2012-02-26T22:00:41Z")
I agree that Sirius and Sinus, Halder and Haider, Dorne and Dome all look like scanning errors. I guessing some books get scanned and sold without anyone going through and proof-reading the text. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/3 "2012-02-26T22:32:22Z")
One of the first books I purchased to read on the Kindle app was a volume of Connie Willis short stories. The profusion of scanning errors is outrageous. In particular, the letter combination “rn” is constantly rendered as “m,” so “turn” becomes “tum” and “burn” becomes “bum”–the latter error being rather pervasive in a story that takes place during the firebombing of London! Open quote marks are frequently rendered as “Cc.” It’s a mess. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/4 "2012-02-26T22:38:19Z")
So what are you going to do **CalMeacham**? I hope contact the publisher and get it fixed? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/5 "2012-02-26T22:38:40Z")
As noted, this is usually a scanning problem, and is something we have to live with until enough unpaid interns are on the job proof-reading every book published in e-format that was written before 1990. Metadata is easily fixable with several different programs. I use Mobi2mobi personally. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/6 "2012-02-26T22:42:30Z")
A book I just read had some random spaces within words. The only problem with that is my poor brain can take a while. “She went to the cupboard to get out some ban dages.” When you’re reading a fantasy novel, it’s not necessarily immediately obvious that it’s a random space and not some made up word or phrase! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/7 "2012-02-26T22:57:33Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > So what are you going to do **CalMeacham**? I hope contact the publisher and get it fixed? I’m not sure yet. According to those pages I’ve cited, Amazon has a mechanism for correcting its Kindle problems – but some readers couldn’t access the relevant pages. I don’t even know yet what Kindle says. I’ll probably contact my publisher first, and also see wht B&N says about errors on the Nook editions. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2012, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/8 "2012-02-26T23:09:18Z")
Goodness knows actual \*print \*publishers–even the big ones–do not “edit” anymore. They spell-check, and sometimes they have freelancers or an intern do an “edit,” which leaves numerous spelling, grammatical, punctuation and factual errors scattered through even best-sellers. Which is why I pay an editor out of my own pocket to go over my books with a microscope before it even goes to my publisher. In the old days, publishing houses had “house editors,” lifers, who took pride in “\*their \*authors.” No more. I assume cramming it into e-format even further fucks things up, and no one except the author (and the poor reader) gives a damn. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/9 "2012-02-27T01:09:24Z")
I have never bought an e-book. However, I have several hundred ebooks on my iPad (all of them of books I already own in hard copy), and I do notice frequent spelling errors, spacing problems, and odd pagination. Until today, I assumed the spelling errors were caused by OCR errors when the book was scanned, and others to sloppy processing by the booklegger. I am distressed to hear that commercial ebooks are no better. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/10 "2012-02-27T01:14:51Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > A book I just read had some random spaces within words. The only problem with that is my poor brain can take a while. “She went to the cupboard to get out some ban dages.” When you’re reading a fantasy novel, it’s not necessarily immediately obvious that it’s a random space and not some made up word or phrase! Yep. The first ebooks I bought were some of Barbara Hambly’s, and I don’t always know if she’s referring to something I’ve never come across or if this is just yet another typo, especially if it could really go either way. There have always been typos in books. But it seems to get worse and worse. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/11 "2012-02-27T01:24:08Z")
I have just experienced exactly this problem. Purchased _The Great Gatsby_ from Amazon two or three days ago to read on my Android via the Kindle app. It’s like a bad OCR job. Random capitalization, spacing and some punctuation errors too. Very disappointing. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/12 "2012-02-27T01:25:15Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Pepper Mill just decided to drag us Luddites in the CalMeacham household kicking and screaming into the 21st Century (Her words, mostly) – she bought a Nook. > The first book we bought was – well – mine. I knew it was available, because I could bring it up on the nooks at our local Barnes and Noble (and i did, every chance I got, leaving it there in the hopes of promoting sales). > So i was perusing my _magnum opus_ when I noticed that it had spelling errors in it. **Sirius** was rendered **Sinus** , which will come as a surprise to people encountering the name of this star for the first time. I started looking closely at the text, and found numerous spelling errors – some of them pretty impressive. I hasten to point out that none of the errors i found were in the printed editions. They seem to be the result of putting the work into e-book format. > I wondered how widespread this phenomenon was, since I hadn’t heard about it before. Evidently it’s fairly common: > > [http://www.amazon.com/Spelling-errors-in-Kindle-ebooks/forum/Fx8K5S3V834TCX/Tx1KP4WTT41001B/1?\_encoding=UTF8&asin=B001P81618](http://www.amazon.com/Spelling-errors-in-Kindle-ebooks/forum/Fx8K5S3V834TCX/Tx1KP4WTT41001B/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B001P81618) > > [http://www.amazon.com/kindle-missing-words-and-misspellings/forum/Fx1AB9PYUFUHA2E/Tx160O7UKD6GBA0/1?\_encoding=UTF8&asin=0812971183](http://www.amazon.com/kindle-missing-words-and-misspellings/forum/Fx1AB9PYUFUHA2E/Tx160O7UKD6GBA0/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=0812971183) > > [http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php?topic=93298.0](http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php?topic=93298.0) > > ["https://www.teleread.com/ebooks/kindle-books-riddled-with-typographical-and-formatting-errors-says-bloomberg-columnist/" - Google Search](http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/kindle-books-riddled-with-typographical-and-formatting-errors-says-bloomberg-columnist/) > > All of the above are about Kindle, but it seems Nook has the same issues. My book’s on Kindkle, as well, and in two e-book formats used by libraries. I haven’t checked any of those, but maybe I should. > > Has anyone else heard about this? Most books I’ve read on my ereader are fine, but one of them was clearly very badly scanned - I had to figure out what some words were by imagining the shape of the words, and figuring out what words might have similar shapes. It was still jarring to read that one character wrapped his ‘anus’ around another character - what was meant was “arms” of course (that was the most annoying error, but having a typo in a chapter title was also bad). I wrote a note to the author, who of course has no control over the situation (but she did appreciate knowing about it). ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/13 "2012-02-27T01:27:11Z")
My guess is that the publishers have made a rational if irritating decision that they are best off just scanning, using OCR and then publishing. They can crowdsource the corrections later. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/14 "2012-02-27T01:32:41Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > My guess is that the publishers have made a rational if irritating decision that they are best off just scanning, using OCR and then publishing. They can crowdsource the corrections later. I don’t think the general public, and that seems to include publishers, know the difference between original data in a text file and a scanned copy. While OCR is much improved now, I was constantly bombarded with “but can’t you just scan it?” years ago when OCRing was in its infancy. The concept of a graphics vs. text file still isn’t a well-known technical difference. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/15 "2012-02-27T01:39:55Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > My guess is that the publishers have made a rational if irritating decision that they are best off just scanning, using OCR and then publishing. They can crowdsource the corrections later. It would be nice if they actually had a clear and easily-used method for accepting corrections from the masses, because that would quickly get a lot of books fixed. But so far, I haven’t found one. I’ve been limited to e-mailing lists of corrections to authors, and only the authors who self-publish have been able to get things fixed. Maybe there’s a market here for a good third-party editing site here… ---
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/16 "2012-02-27T02:08:38Z")
I’ve bought a number of books from the Baen Ebooks site and they are _far_ worse than the average books I get from, say, Kobo. I’ve found sections that were so meaningless that I checked a print edition and found multiple lines missing in the middle of paragraphs. In general, I think, new release ebooks are typically reasonably good because they’re prepared from the same electronic source as the print version. But re-releases of older books and generally done from scans and the quality is VERY variable. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/17 "2012-02-27T02:37:39Z")
You’d think e-readers themselves should have some way for you to mark a spelling or markup error, include your suggested correction (if applicable), instantly send it back to the e-publisher via your digital connection, and once approved instantly correct all editions as soon as you log on, or whatever it is you do with e-readers. A friend of mine is a fiction author and has almost all her books in e-book format, across multiple versions, and encounters errors all the time, and she sends all her manuscripts in as PDFs, I think. I shudder to think what it must be like for non-English alphabet editions. ---
**Author:** ![Helena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c68b51/32.png) [@Helena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helena)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/18 "2012-02-27T02:39:44Z")
I saw one recently where “smiling through his tears” became “smiling through his teats.” Which is good for a laugh but did rather take me out of the story. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/19 "2012-02-27T02:50:17Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > Goodness knows actual \*print \*publishers–even the big ones–do not “edit” anymore. They spell-check, and sometimes they have freelancers or an intern do an “edit,” which leaves numerous spelling, grammatical, punctuation and factual errors scattered through even best-sellers. Which is why I pay an editor out of my own pocket to go over my books with a microscope before it even goes to my publisher. Agreed. Copy editing in general has gone to hell in a handcart–if it happens at all–and seems to be getting worse.. Both print and ebook editions of things that I’ve read in the past year or so have been riddled with errors, which pains me to my persnickety soul. The best-proofed books I’ve read lately have been novels by P.C. Hodgell…who enlists fan volunteers to help proofread them. ---
**Author:** ![urban1a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47c2d/32.png) [@urban1a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urban1a)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2012, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082/20 "2012-02-27T02:55:05Z")
But I don’t understand the reason they would have to scan a print copy. All, or most books are available in electronic format anyway. That’s the way they are submitted to the publisher isn’t it? Even Jessica Fletcher gave up her old manual typewriter for a computer. Bob [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/e-books-are-full-of-errors/614082.md?page=2)