Typos in published novels?

I have no idea, but I find mistakes all the time too, and it really irks me. Even my 8 yo son finds them in his books. Of course, he's quite proud of himself whenever he spots one.

Ah, well, mistakes are insidious little blighters. I just read a Harlequin with several typos and a continuity error but I don't really hold it agianst them. These things slip through.

KatyaFleur said:

I just finished reading a brief novel--about 240 pages--and when I finished, I realized I had counted no fewer than 6 typographical errors. Mind you, this wasn't a self-published book, but was put out more than a decade ago by a Harper Collins imprint, and is still appearing on bookstore shelves, mistakes and all.

It got me wondering how often books manage to get printed with errors in them. After they pass through so many hands, how can errors still appear in the final version? And who bears the final responsibility for letting mistakes get through?

Katya

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Humans are fallible and that's who creates and edits the manuscripts and galleys. Errors slip by all the time and while having the work perused by more than one pair of eyes may help, it sometimes makes things worse. I can tell you weird things sometimes happen when galleys are being produced and several people are making edits that must be incorporated into the final product. I had a typo appear in the shelf version of one of my books that was not in any of the galleys or proofs.

Weird things happen during the printing phase sometimes, too. I've heard of a couple incidents where whole chunks of a book were missing or parts of a completely different ms were inserted somewhere in the middle of a book.

Mistakes happen. They are inevitable. Perfection is often sought but rarely achieved. As to who is "responsible," I'd say everyone who is involved at any point in the process.

Beth

I find them all the time. I just move on to the next sentence. Oh well.

Happens all the time. If someone catches 'em they get fixed in the next printing or when the book goes to paperback.

I must be the only evil spirit on this board, but..... I'm actually glad that there are some typos in published works. It just shows that no one is perfect. I'm always looking for them, and when I find them in my fav authors' work, I just shrug, they're only Human, after all.

Copy editors are just humans. They might not be able to catch all those little things, especially if you consider how little time they have and the kind of deadlines they're on. I'd say 6 typos in a 240-page novel is acceptable.

cwfgal said:

Humans are fallible and that's who creates and edits the manuscripts and galleys. Errors slip by all the time and while having the work perused by more than one pair of eyes may help, it sometimes makes things worse. I can tell you weird things sometimes happen when galleys are being produced and several people are making edits that must be incorporated into the final product. I had a typo appear in the shelf version of one of my books that was not in any of the galleys or proofs.

Weird things happen during the printing phase sometimes, too. I've heard of a couple incidents where whole chunks of a book were missing or parts of a completely different ms were inserted somewhere in the middle of a book.

Mistakes happen. They are inevitable. Perfection is often sought but rarely achieved. As to who is "responsible," I'd say everyone who is involved at any point in the process.

Beth

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I had a copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little Town on the Prairie" It was the third book in the series. It was missing five chapters and repeated another chapter.

maestrowork said:

Copy editors are just humans....I'd say 6 typos in a 240-page novel is acceptable.

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Six in 240 pages will bother me. Of course, one bothers me. The proofreader and author are supposed to pick up whatever the copy editor missed in the manuscript, as well as errors introduced in typesetting.

I see editing mistakes in books, too, not just typos.

reph said:

Six in 240 pages will bother me. Of course, one bothers me. The proofreader and author are supposed to pick up whatever the copy editor missed in the manuscript, as well as errors introduced in typesetting.

I see editing mistakes in books, too, not just typos.

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That's the ideal world. It's unreasonable to ask the author to pick up any errors because by then, the author has already read that thing 100 million times. He or she is not going to see anything. It's BEYOND their capability to see typos at that point. If the proofreader can't catch anything at this point, it goes to print. I myself have found two typos after the darn thing went to print.

I am not saying typos are good. I am just saying that we're just humans. To ask for perfection EVERYTIME is simply not possible, no matter how well you pay everyone. And trust me, some of these proofreaders get paid zilch.

And someone is going to hate me for saying this: if a reader is SO meticulous to find faults and count typos (and keep scores) when reading a book, the reader might as well stop reading, because the reader has taken the joy out of reading.

maestrowork said:

And someone is going to hate me for saying this: if a reader is SO meticulous to find faults and count typos (and keep scores) when reading a book, the reader might as well stop reading, because the reader has taken the joy out of reading.

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You don't understand. I don't search for typos when I read. They jump out at me. There'd be more joy in reading if they didn't stick their little heads up and say "Here I am!"

I'm all for higher pay for proofreaders and enough time to do a thorough job.

maestrowork said:

And someone is going to hate me for saying this: if a reader is SO meticulous to find faults and count typos (and keep scores) when reading a book, the reader might as well stop reading, because the reader has taken the joy out of reading.

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You don't understand; it's not a matter of looking for them--it's that we can't not see them. I think in some cases, Reph, for instance, she's been designed by Nature/Genetics/the hand of the deity, to be an editor. She's always been able to spell, for instance, and a typo will leap out of a block of text and do the metaphorical equivalent of shouting "Look at ME!"

In my case, I notice them because I'm not designed to read copy; anything that strays from the standard makes reading even harder for me. There's a point at which me-as-reader-happily-enjoying-text-and-plot is changed, like flipping a switch, into me-dyslexic-reader-trying-to-decode-text-with-so-many-errors I can't decode it easily, and can't enjoy the book.

I'm not looking for errors; they leap out and attack me.

I "see" typos immediately, as well. I certainly understand that copyeditors are human and expect missing a word or two in a manuscript...but frankly, I don't believe that some publishing houses even have copyeditors any more. The books with errors seem to have the same kinds of errors that I find in MS Word spellchecked-only documents: usually the words that are there, are correct. Tranposed letters is one thing, but completely wrong words (there for their, baited for bated) are just annoying. These pass a spellcheck, but not even a cursory read.

In some books, it's obviously an editing error (a recent book used slacked for slaked every single time).

Medievalist said:

You don't understand...

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I do understand (I see typos, too, just not the ms. I've been writing/rewriting/editing 100 million times ). As a writer, things like POV violation also jump at me immediately. However, when I read for pleasure, I tend to tune that out. My point is that we have to decide whether to let these nits attack us, or whether we're going to let them go and enjoy the book for what it is instead of letting the little things mar the enjoyment.

I am old enough to remember what new books were like, say, in the 1960s. In general, they were well-edited.

Now they are crappy. For one thing, people doing the editing frequently do not know the difference between *there* and *their*, *its* and *it's*, and so on.

Oh, I enjoy the books despite the little annoyances of typos or word errors. It's not that I really let it dampen my enthusiasm for the story. I am just seeing more and more of them in recently published books (in my experience) and wonder if this is a failure of the publisher or editor or writer that doesn't catch these simple errors.

I can't see spelling or word errors in my own stuff, either -- I've seen it too many times and my brain just automatically replaces the wrong words when I read it. I know how easy it is to miss them. It's just something that I file away mentally as "oh, hm. that's wrong, isn't it?" and move on.

It does impress upon me the importance of making sure that my manuscript is perfect before sending it, since I think that there are fewer people actually checking it once it leaves my hands. If it ever leaves my hands and someone publishes it, of course!

If it's repeated mistakes like "there" instead of "their" or "your" instead of "you're," then I say it's BOTH the writer's and the editor's fault -- they should learn the frigging difference. However, if it's an occasional typo such as a missing letter or "teh" instead of "the," the proofreader didn't do his job thoroughly. Typos like "teh" or, worse, homonyms like "flair" and "flare" are hard to catch if you have lived with that ms. for months. But the proofreader should be able to easily pick those out. The problem is, a lot of times, they don't have enough time (and paid enough) to do their job thoroughly, and typos like those slip through the crack.

maestrowork said:

I do understand....

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For the third time (count 'em: one from Medievalist, two from me), no, you don't. I can't tune out typos or misspellings. They show up like a grape-juice stain on a white shirt.

Then I certainly have an ability that you don't have.

(and yes, I really do understand)

When I was a new university graduate, back in 1974 (I know, I'm dating myself,) I was offered a job as a junior copy editor with a major magazine publisher. I declined the job, which I've always regretted. I could have been chief editor by now. The reason I declined the job is related to this discussion. You couldn't miss more than two errors in total or you would be fired, and I had the sinking feeling that I would not be able to avoid missing more than 2 errors. It shows how times have changed, I guess.

janetbellinger said:

When I was a new university graduate, back in 1974 (I know, I'm dating myself,)

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I hope you took yourself some nice flowers, or a box of chocolates.

Seriously, I live in the camp with reph and Mediaevalist. I can't ignore the mistakes and sometimes it ruins novels for me. Can't help it. All I can hope is that, overall, the story is worth the journey.

If I ever found 6 editing errors in 240 pages of my own published manuals, I'd probably blow a fuse.

I'm in the 'can't ignore' pile. In fact, I was reading an enormously popular, award-winning novel recently, and the consistent use of en dashes that should have been em dashes almost made me stop reading. Honestly. How absurd is that?

I plodded through, though, because the book was huge and successful and critically acclaimed, and eventually the author stopped using dashes of any flavor, or stopped using them enough that I could merely wince and continue reading.

It's the consistent errors that get to me, not the one-offs. In fact, in an old printing (maybe the first) of one of the Anne McCaffrey dragon books, there was a typo that I grew very fond of over the course of many readings over many years. It got to the point where a few chapters before the typo (which was 'dagon' for 'dragon'), I'd start to giggle because I knew it was coming. It was an old friend -- or an old 'fiend', perhaps.

I remember reading a YA book a while back, maybe 10-15 years ago. Can't remember the name of it, but I will always remember that Chapters 7 and 8 were mistitled and switched.

Now THAT'S a typo.