I just finished reading Harlan Coben’s “Just One Look” and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Mystery-Suspense genre but I’m annoyed with the typos I found. Actually, I didn’t notice any in the first half of the book which makes me wonder if the editor went on vacation and left it to be finished by someone with lesser skills. A character’s name was substituted by another in one paragraph, a letter left off a word or two or the word just plain missing, and one word that looked something like this–gjhlso.
But the most egregious error came near the end of the book. A character who is supposed to be a seasoned, hard-nosed lawyer spoke of the “statue of limitations.” :smack: Come on! I can forgive a typo or two in a book but sheesh! Someone needs to go back to editing school. Or learn not to rely on their computer program overly much to catch them. Or both!
Someone please toss in an obligatory cuss word or two for me, as that isn’t really my cup o’ tea, there’s a good Doper now.
I don’t see how “statue” for “statute” represents a truly grievous error, and it’s not even as bad as the others you describe. As typos go, I can see that one sliding by easily.
Sometimes stubborn authors stet all our hard work and ignore our good suggestions intended to keep them from looking like morons. And sometimes proofreaders and compositors fall asleep at the switch. And sadly, some publishers are doing away with as much of the editorial process as they can, or shoving it off on the author, which is almost never a good idea.
And . . . sometimes readers gloat over the three errors they find, unaware of the hundreds of things we DID fix.
Is that supposed to make us feel better? Granted, I’ve edited a book and gotten good reviews for it, but seriously, the editor edits, the proofreader proofreads, the audience expects a book that doesn’t sound like some deliquant wrote it.
Two I’ve read lately:
[ul][li]One character “explains” to another that “ppb” means “parts per million”. Ummm…[/li][li]A character can tell who called and didn’t leave a message while she was out because she has “call waiting”.[/li][/ul]
However, they don’t bug me nearly as bad as flow/plot issues. I actually read a mystery recently where the same crucial information about a suspect was told to the astonished investigators by a police officer over breakfast, and then two chapters later by the same police officer over lunch. And I wondered why they had been acting like they had no clue what was going on after the first time. :rolleyes:
In all honesty, how does something like that get out? I wanted my money back. I wasn’t “gloating” either. I felt it ruined my experience of the story.
As Tikki said in the OP, a few errors are forgiveable: however, I, too, have come across novels by ‘name’ authors that contained so many typos they became distracting. How is that forgiveable? And why should it be? Am I supposed to just be grateful that things weren’t worse?
I love Laurell Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, but the last 2-3 books I read in that series contained so many errors that I seriously wondered if I’d be able to keep reading her. Likewise, the last book in Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series contained actual continuity errors (like LilyoftheValley mentions) – not across the series, but within the same story – as if two or three people took turns writing the paragraphs but no one person edited the entire manuscript before it went to the printer.
When the mistakes are big or frequent enough that they distract from the story, something is definitely wrong…and it’s definitely frustrating. :mad:
If the character was not an attorney, I could forgive “statue” but knowing that the profession is gained only by long, hard years of schooling, it just doesn’t fit in. It jolts the reader out of the story, as it were.
It’s also like having a character named Bryan suddenly being called Brian. It would stand out, no?
By the way, thanks for helping me out.
Excellent points, Scarlett. I didn’t mean to disparage all editors and proofreaders out there. I’m sure your jobs are harder than most of us will ever know. I bet you have some funny stories about some typos too.
I don’t feel I was gloating. The reason the errors in this book stood out so much is because it reminded me of the early '80’s when publishers seemed to have discovered editing programs and dumped the humans in favor of them. A prime example was the book treatment of “Total Recall,” written by famed SF author, Piers Anthony. Fortunately, “Just One Look” wasn’t as bad as that.
Having read some of Coben’s other books, I think he would have appreciated having the typos corrected.
I agree that having the author do his own proofing is a bad idea. I have enough problems trying to keep typos out my posts here and I admit I’m not always successful. Though I try, writers tend to be a little blind to some of their own mistakes. That’s why editors and proofreaders are needed in larger endevours.
By the way, I had to look up the word “stet.” If Scarlett, a professional in her field, had misspelled it, I certainly would have been confused. Much like someone who is trying to find out what a “statue of limitations” means.
stet ( P ) Pronunciation Key (stt)
v. stet·ted, stet·ting, stets
v. intr.
To direct that a letter, word, or other matter marked for omission or correction is to be retained. Used in the imperative.
v. tr.
To nullify (a correction or deletion) in printed matter.
Book publishers don’t have editors anymore—they have acquisitions editors, and Spell Check. If you’re lucky, they’ll bring in some harried freelancer to “edit” your manuscript, but it does not get cross-checked at each stage like years ago.
I have at least six friends go over my galleys with a magnifying glass.
I did not call anyone an idiot. I am just saying that there is more to the editing process than meets the eye of the final reader.
When I wrote “Sometimes readers gloat . . . ,” I was thinking more of the people I meet who, when they find out what I do, tell me that they think they could be a copyeditor because they found a typo in a printed book or in the newspaper. Or worse, say “Can’t they just use spell check?” :rolleyes: Oh, yes, thank you for dismissing and belittling my career and the thousands of things I do (besides correcting spelling) to get a book ready for print.
I’ve copyedited or proofread a few hundred books – mostly college-level textbooks, but some fiction and trade books – on a range of subjects, some of which were quite over my head. And as Tikki guessed, I’ve got lots of combat stories. The math author who apparently got his sense of comma usage on Mars, and did not want any of them changed, even though they made his writing completely incoherent. (Armed with a sheaf of examples, I finally won that battle.) The education author who wanted all instances of gender-neutral language in alphabetical order – “he or she,” but “her or his” and “her or him” – but neglected to mention it until I had edited about half the chapters. (The production editor and I managed to straighten him out on that one too.) The historical romance author who wrote about “General Custard” (yes, late of Little Bighorn), had him fighting at Wounded Knee, and generally muddled up the entire history of that period. (She accepted my fixes of “Custard” and the Wounded Knee thing, but stood firm on the other historical messes. Any readers familiar with the truth would have been rolling on the floor.) The copyeditor who was too busy writing humorous commentary to the author in the margins to do her job correctly, and made mine as proofreader that much harder.
And except for a few projects, I have never seen the results of my work until it’s in print. A careless or ignorant proofreader might introduce an error or forty, and a harried project manager might not notice. Sometimes the typesetter is a slob, and when you’re proofing a chapter in 9-point type that turns out to have 900 errors in 20 pages, it’s entirely believable that something like “statue of limitations” might slip past you. I am a stickler for writing clear queries that explain why a sentence might need revision, but some editors just make changes, write “OK?” and the author writes “NO, stet” without realizing that maybe she hasn’t said what she thought she did.
Authors quite often have handwriting that rivals that of doctors, and for some of them, their favorite word is “stet,” especially when they just can’t take reading one more query and they just want to be done with the whole process. I’ve also heard that some Big Famous Authors (I don’t know any names, just in general) simply Do Not Get Copyedited; Their Word Is Final. In those cases the responsibility for content would fall squarely and solely on the author’s shoulders.(And some authors are absolute dolls. I have one author who has admitted in interviews that he has trouble with plotting, and after copyediting his last two books, don’t I know it! But he always asks for me and thanks me profusely in the acknowledgments.) A colleague of mine invented the mantra, “It’s not my book. It’s not my book . . . ,” meaning that when an author has you pulling out your last hair, you must remember that it’s his name on the cover, and if he insists on some ridiculous thing, despite your best efforts to convince him that it will make him look bad, he gets it . . . and you sigh, have some chocolate, and go on to the next ms.
Then there’s the dreaded Deadline Slip: “We’re shipping this to you two weeks late, but we still need it back by the original deadline.” Or, “We don’t want to pay you for the edit that this manuscript really needs, or we’re in too big a hurry, so just give it a quick once-through for typos [instead of the usual multiple substantive passes].”
And it never fails. I’ll have slaved over a manuscript that was a horrid mess, getting everything just right, and I get the printed copy, open it up, and – big glaring error. Maybe something I missed, maybe an error introduced down the line. We strive for perfection, but in a twist of doublethink we accept that it is almost impossible to achieve.
I’m not saying that “statue of limitations” or “ppb” for “parts per million” or “call waiting” are okey-dokey – just that Shit Happens, you know? I find them too: “a grizzly murder” on the book jacket of a Big Author. I am currently working on a project that entails a close analysis of another Big Author’s complete (fiction) works, and not only are the original books a plotting nightmare, but (understatement alert) the author of the book about the Big Author didn’t do such a hot job either. I guaran-Goddamn-tee you that this book will have errors. But there will be about 0.0001 as many as before a dozen people worked on it for several months to whip it into shape.
PS: Eve, I’m sorry that you haven’t had a good experience with copyediting. Unfortunately it often takes only one bad experience to make an author gun-shy about the whole process, and many more good ones to restore their faith.
It almost sounds like your pissed off at the character for making the mistake, because, damnit, he’s a lawyer, and he should know better!
I mean, it’s not like the lawyer wrote down “statue of limitations!” It was a typo by the author (or someone in the publishing process.) I assume it was a typo, anyway. I’ve never heard anyone actually call it a statue of limitations.
BTW, I had to reread the phrase in the OP three times to figure out what was wrong with it. My brain kept inserting the phantom ‘t’. For grammar and readability, I’m an okay copyreader, but I suck at spelling because I keep reading what’s supposed to be there.
I think the point might be that it’s unfortunate that the random error appears in a place where it makes character who’s supposed to be better than that make a really stupid error. Some typos you just ignore, but that one gives you a momentary “Typo? Or in-character mistake?” moment of uncertainty.
And how…
I remember somewhere in the first few books she wrecks her car, totals it actually, yet is somehow driving a car the next day. There’s no explaination and it jolts you out of the book.
There were some books a friend loaned me that are published in Austrailia. Fun books, but with the errors and (at times) laughable plot, I’d never think about buying them.
A few errors I can understand. Editors aren’t perfect (I have too difficult a time with spelling to call someone else out on it) and it sounds like companies are getting rid of the editors they do have (spell-check can’t check continuity or that the word is correctly used - editors are important!)
You know - after reading the 5th HP book, I wonder if JK Rowling is on that list of authors whose works don’t get edited…
Aw heck, I didn’t mean to sound like I was correcting you: I didn’t see your message until I previewed my post, and I’d already written that sentence. I didn’t want to come across like I was the first person to notice/mention plot issues, so I threw in the parenthetical reference to you.
Really? I don’t remember noticing a problem with any of the HP books. {shrug}
I’m a writer and editor, myself, so I am certainly willing to forgive the occasional typo or error that slips through – and I don’t have any quarrel with style or preference differences, even if I find them distracting. But on the flip side I also understand how important it is to proofread and edit things, and I have little patience with novels that read like college term papers.
In the book Exit Wounds (by I-don’t-know-who), it’s 126 degrees F in the sun, in Arizona. The author has a character, who’s just discovered a body, bent over the hood of his car, recovering from the shock.
It somehow escapes her that this would be followed by someone needing to pry his sizzling face off of it with a spatula.
Reminds me of when I read The Stand, and it had 50 pages between page 650 and 700. Then, at page 700, they repeated the same 50 pages as before, with the page number going right back to 650.
I’ve never noticed any spelling mistakes, etc (though I often don’t, I’m unobservant like that) - but there’s some issues I’d have had her tidy up if I’d been an editor. A word or two to explain that the goblet of fire becomes a portkey when it lights up, or harry getting Sirius’s mirror in the post instead of ‘forgetting’ it when he so urgently needs to contact him, would calm a lot of people. Admittedly, the books get scrutinised super-heavily plot-wise, because they’re so popular, but given that, you’d think they’d be able to afford another editor giving it a look through for that sort of thing; I’d do it for free
That was likely a bindery error, in which somebody fed the same 48-page signature twice. (Bet there were one or two blank, unnumbered pages involved, no?)
