Interface by Neal Stephenson. It has spelling errors, missing words, wrong words. About a couple of dozen mistakes that I’ve noticed, I have seen errors in other books but maybe one in the whole book this one has tons. Did the publishers miss out a proof reading stage or something?
Anyone in publishing out there who can say what went wrong here?
BTW I’m still 100 pages from the end so no spoilers please.
'Cuz it’s 50 thousand pages long and the guy who was supposed to proof the galleys was driven to drink?
–Cliffy
I’ve wondered about this too. I rarely get through a book without seeing at least one mistake, but I’ve seen at least five in the book I’m currently reading (First Lensman by E.E. Smith) and I’m only slightly more than halfway through.
methinks they’re outsourcing the work to someplace where English may not be the primary language.
Amazon tell me it won’t be released until may 31st, do you perhaps have an advance reading copy or uncorrected proof? Can I borrow it from you when you are done reading it? 
Nope, it’s a library book. And it is a couple of years old.
Sorry, it’s a library book. I suppose you could join my library and borrow it when I return it. Considering the travel that would entail maybe you should just wait for May and save the air fair?
Almost, being a Neal Stephenson book it’s ~650 pages.
I started noticing more mistakes in books about the time word processing really came into its own. Specifically, more mistakes of the type that would go through if you were using a spellchecking program, rather than good, old-fashioned proofreading.
I can cope, grudgingly, with typos and grammatical mistakes in books. What tips me over the edge, though, is when other borrowers ‘thoughtfully’ make corrections in library books. :mad:
Reasons why you see typos and grammatical errors in books:
(1) Because yes, some publishers are cutting their editorial departments drastically and doing things like letting authors proof their own galleys. Or outsourcing to India. (Notable example: Springer-Verlag, big medical publisher. Medical journals and texts being copyedited by non-native speakers for $2.50/hour. I advise you not to get sick.)
(2) Because of obstinate authors with pet writing quirks, whose favorite word is “STET” and who think that their every comma is prophesy straight from the heavens. No matter what kind of garbled nonsense is on the page. And if they make enough noise, the publisher lets them have their way.
(3) Because out of the 10,000 things that needed correction in the book, a half-dozen goofs got through. They stand out to you because the rest of the text is so clean. It’s tricky to catch every last error when there’s a sea of them. We editorial types have to employ a bit of doublethink: We strive for perfection, while subconsciously accepting that we probably won’t attain it.
I could have posted this over in the “Idiotic things that people assume about your job thread,” but I’ve yammered enough over there, so I’ll say it here: You found some typos in a book, or in the newspaper, so you think you could be a copyeditor? Here’s a 1,200-page raw manuscript. Make it perfect, I dare you. You have six weeks. :eek:
No one cares that a post griping about spelling errors has one too?
Maybe somebody donated a used advance copy of the book?
I’ve heard there are very few editors around any more; that authors are lucky if they get to work with an editor, never mind a good one.
Being someone whose work has been edited, yes, it stings a bit when you’re told to cut words, or where you’ve floundered into a cliché or dozen, and that some wondrously crafted portions don’t make sense to the reader. And that’s aside from the typo’s and the homonym slip-ups!
But having an opportunity to have one’s work edited by someone who knows what they’re doing is a good thing.
And editing oneself is a dangerous and (in my opinion) dumb thing. (Anne Rice, I’m looking at you.) I can look at something over and over, print it out, red-ink it, and correct it more than once, and hand it over to my husband. He’ll immediately spot a missing word, a misspelled word… You name it. Fresh eyes are needed.
I’ve only had one bad experience where a short story was changed into something treacly, saccharine, and entirely not-me by an editor.
Reading a novel in bed last night, I noticed two errors before I’d finished the second chapter. Ack! It’s jarring.
I bought a book from a used bookstore. In the story (which was written in the past tense) a character had to describe something that had happened in his childhood also employing the past tense. So you’d get tense forms such as:
"I was babysitting my brother. He had the chicken pox. I’d had the chicken pox years ealrier to it was okay.
Or without the contraction: “I had had the chicken pox years earlier…”
So several chapters were like this – “had had”. And the original owner of the book had ‘thoughtfully’ crossed out one of the "had"s each time it occured. It was correct as it was, Bozo! Distracting as hell! :mad:
That’s the paperback edition that’s “Not yet published”.
Yes, there have been a lot of cutbacks in the editorial process. I think there is a general perception that computers reduce the need for proper human editing. That is obviously not true, especially as I am a copy editor and I don’t want to be ousted by robots.
I’m pretty sure that the OP is referring to Interface, written by Stephen Bury. It has been out for a while; my copy is at least 5 years old. It is probably fairly common knowledge that Stehpen Bury is the pen name used by Stephenson when he writes with his uncle (whose name elludes me). Interface is an old book, written (if I recall) before Snow Crash made Stephenson, well, Stephenson. Is it possible that since he was a relatively smaller author that not quite as much editting muscle was put into the book as would have been for, say, Cryptonomicon?