How did the editor miss this? Finding content errors in well-known books.

I was reading Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning. In a scene where a man and woman are caught inflagrante during a fire at a hotel, the woman is rushing to put on a t-shirt, and three paragraphs down everybody sees her wrapped in only a towel.

It kinda made me feel better about the missed edits in The Toast Bitches. But, only a bit...

I don't think spelling and grammar errors contribute to this discussion...I mean, there are (though rare) spelling errors in Harry Potter. I remember the word "site" instead of "sight," in the last book, and yes, J.K. Rowling meant the second "sight," you could tell from the context. However, again, I think these such errors are insignificant in the larger scope of things.

Another error I have noticed (other than the ones I mentioned in my previous post), was a character calling one character by a different character's name. In a Marilyn Kaye book, a girl says "Travis," when she is speaking to Jake, and Travis is nowhere in the vicinity. And she means to be talking to Jake...it's not one of those relationship things where a girl calls a boy by a different name...it was an error.

jfreedan said:

You know, when you write ....



....to "prove" that editors don't make corrections to a manuscript, you're arguing against yourself.

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Um, no I'm not. And since Medievalist and Namatu have already made terrific points on the rest of your post, let me simply clarify.

I said:

They mark it up and make corrections, and then send those corrections back to the author to IMPLEMENT.

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The majority of work is done now in digital files. Some houses do all edits digitally, which means they send the editors edit suggestions in Word, using Track Changes. Other houses, like mine, still do them on a physical, printed copy, in blue or green pencils.

Whether it's in Word or on paper, the editor's job is the same. She marks it up, makes suggested corrections, asks questions for clarification, maybe even says, "hey, I don't think Chapter 18 works, what do you think about cutting it?" and then expands on her reasons in the edit letter.

NONE of that means the editor is making final changes. She's saying this is what she'd like to see changed. She has sent along an edit letter, anywhere from four to twenty pages long, clarifying her thoughts and in-text edit suggestions. Listening and making those changes is the author's damned job.

You seem to think that the editor wields some amazing power of alteration over a manuscript, and that if they want something fixed, then by golly they'll just fix it no matter what the author thinks. Good editors just don't work like that. Besides, if editors suddenly had the power to change at whim, without author approval, authors would be crying foul.

jfreedan said:

You know, when you write ....



....to "prove" that editors don't make corrections to a manuscript, you're arguing against yourself.

It does not matter who has to actually change the manuscript.

The editor's job is to edit. By the very definition of the word, their job is to find errors. Their responsibility isn't shifted just because they told someone else to fix the errors they found.

When errors still make it into the manuscript that means they made a mistake. It's really that simple.

Now, I didn't say it was solely the editors fault. I said it was not solely the authors fault and that editors share part of the blame.

Besides, with the small fortune it takes to publish, market and distribute a book, I rather doubt editors are letting authors have the final decision on whether a book rife with errors goes into the market.

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But it is solely the writer's fault. By the very definition of the word "writer", your job is to get things right. You are supposed to make certain their are no errors in your manuscript. You can argue it forever, but just because someone is an editor in no way means that person is responsible for making your manuscript error free.

And errors are not a decision anyone makes. Errors are mistakes. And writers do, always, get the last chance to correct mistakes.

This doesn't even make sense: Besides, with the small fortune it takes to publish, market and distribute a book, I rather doubt editors are letting authors have the final decision on whether a book rife with errors goes into the market.

If a book is rife with errors, it's ONLY because the writer didn't find and correct those errors when he made the last proofread of the manuscript.

Editors don't "let" writers do anything. Writers do what they do because it's their job to do it. No editors wants a book to be published with errors, and they do their best to catch tehm all. But it's never a matter of an editor "letting" a writer make a decision about errors. Making that decision is always the writer's responsibility, the writer's job, and he always gets the chance to do that job after the editor has finsihed his work.

Your giving editors far more power and responsibility than they actually have, and giving writers far less responsibility than they actually have.

Manectric said:

Another error I have noticed (other than the ones I mentioned in my previous post), was a character calling one character by a different character's name. In a Marilyn Kaye book, a girl says "Travis," when she is speaking to Jake, and Travis is nowhere in the vicinity. And she means to be talking to Jake...it's not one of those relationship things where a girl calls a boy by a different name...it was an error.

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That is what is called a 'continuity error' in film. Calling a character by the wrong name, the t-shirt/towel thing Chumplet mentioned above. Green eyes on page 43, blue eyes on page 44. I find those frequently. And in books by major and mid-list authors. Don't know why they seem to be happening more, but I just breeze past and keep reading.

What gets me are factual errors. Putting the Superstition Mountains west of Phoenix. Things that could be looked up through Google in two minutes. To me that is just lazy. For some reason I have an enormous collection of miscellaneous and useless knowledge wandering around in my brain, and those factual errors tend to jump out at me just as much as the spelling/homonym errors.

MM

He-Man, Editor: I have the power!

Medievalist said:

This is absolutely not an editors job--and you've just managed to piss off a lot of editors all at once.

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No, I've (apparently) only managed to upset a few people such as yourself.

It's not even hard to find online sources where authors, agents and editors talk about how the editors proof-read their manuscripts, pointed out errors and also suggested significant plot changes. If I remember correctly, Stephen King's book On Writing has a chapter devoted to how a newspaper editor taught him how to edit by editing his articles.

It is universally agreed that editors point out errors and yet you're actually trying to say an editors job isn't to find them? We are defensive, aren't we? To the point we're claiming although employed to find errors it's not the job to find errors?

You can throw out as many excuses as you like for why an editor didn't catch something; a book that goes to print from a large company has been read by dozens of people and if simple errors make it into the final product, the fault lies with the one who wrote it (the authors) and those who are employed to catch the errors the author didn't notice (the editors).

I'm also fairly certain that, unless publishers are no longer operating as a business, there is a clause in a publishing contract which stipulates the publisher reserves the right to make changes to the manuscript to ensure it is "fit for publication"; or something along those lines.

You know what the most tragic thing is? If there are editors running around thinking their job has nothing to do with quality control, that may very well be a contributing factor to why many books never earn back their advances. When I see threads like this that talk about the errors in books, as a reader I'm a lot less likely to look at other books printed by that publisher. A book does not just represent the author; it also represents the publisher. This is even more true for small presses; I've been looking at a lot of them lately and I check out what find of reviews their books have received. I won't even submit to the ones where the reviews have pointed out a bunch of errors.

Jamesaritchie said:

But it is solely the writer's fault. By the very definition of the word "writer", your job is to get things right.

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The definition of the word "write" has nothing to do with being "right". They are different words.

When you try to prove a logical argument is false, you have to actually use logic.

The biggest problem you have with my post is something my post doesn't even say. Somehow you interpreted my post as, "authors have no blame" into "editors take all the blame". My post actually said, "Editors and authors share blame".


The publishing of a book is a collaborative effort. I am not the one dumping the blame for a collaborative effort onto one individual. That is what your posts are doing.

jfreedan - I can't decide if you're just not reading our posts, or if you've simply made up your mind and refuse to understand what we're saying. I don't know your experience, but I do know my experience, and I know the experience of James, Medievalist, and Namatu, who've all said basically the same thing I have.

None of us have said editors don't edit. None of us have said it's not their job to find errors. What are ARE saying is that, in the end, the person whose responsibility it is to make--physically make, in the digital file (or hard copy, if you still do hard copy copyedits)--the changes is the writer.

No one's dumping blame on anyone. Someone asked a question, we're trying to answer it. Our collective experience is obviously contrary to yours.

MaryMumsy said:

Green eyes on page 43, blue eyes on page 44. I find those frequently. And in books by major and mid-list authors.

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If it's good enough for Madame Bovary, it's good enough for any novel.

I'm ok with errors and inconsistencies just as long as the book isn't riddled with them.

RevisionIsTheKey said:

I just read the discussion of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and someone brought up the dog bringing back the dead girl's elbow. The poster wondered how a dog could bring back an elbow because it's really just a location, a space where two bones meet.

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If someone told me a dog found a young woman's elbow, I would assume -- automatically - that he'd found a broken end of the radius, ulna, or humerus. Outside of a classroom, I'll happily point to the olecranon process and say, "This, friend, is the elbow."

Since the story is from the perspective of a young girl, I assume her vocabulary prevented her from knowing the exact piece of her body that'd been recovered, and that good taste prevented her from giving a vivid image.

Also, if you'll recall, her killer hacked her into pieces--he didn't scrape the meat from her bones. It's quite possible that the dog was carrying the joint, with meat on it, and that the killer had hacked through her arm at some place other than the joint.

I really don't see this as an error.

I remember reading Mrs deWinter a few years ago, Susan Hill's sequel to Rebecca.
In this story, the deWinter couple had spent several years in Europe, where Mrs deWinter learnt to drive. They returned to England for the first time, and she drove a car for the first time in England.

On this first drive, for some reason she became spooked and began speeding around the countryside, tearing down narrow lanes and around corners.
I immedately thought, no way! When you first drive in England after Europe, or vice versa, you crawl like a snail, getting used to using the "wrong" side of the road.

The only one I can think off are on the first editions of Good Omens someone says Famine has seven letters, Pterri said it was a mistake.

RevisionIsTheKey said:

It made me think of something I noticed in Jodi Picault's Nineteen Minutes. At one point, someone goes to the neighbor's house to borrow gasoline. The neighbor is a retired fireman. Where does he keep his gasoline? In the basement, of course. Doesn't that go against Fire Safety 101?

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I'm reading Nineteen Minutes, and my copy says that the neighbor is a retired cop, not a retired firemen. However, there is an error I noticed in the book. A criminal in the year 1995 gets busted because he left his cell phone at the store he robbed...and called his number. I don't know how it's possible for a random guy in New Hampshire in 1995 to have owned a cell phone. In 2007, yes. Not in 1995. Did cell phones exist? Yes, but you had to be rich to own one, and the book said nothing about the guy stealing this cell phone.

Maybe I can help from a few different perspectives.

First off, as a writer: right now, I'm going through print galleys for one of my books. It's an early book--okay, my first book--and what I'm finding is making me cringe. Now, I can't go back and do a full-scale edit of the manuscript; that's not my job. My job is to go after the formatter/proofer and mark any additional problems I'm finding. Some of these are as miniscule as an extra space after a period. Some are straight up typos. Most were things I should have caught originally but didn't. But see--here's the thing: 340 pages of manuscript manages to look a hell of a lot alike while you're going through it for boo-boos.

(that and I really want to rewrite this darn book but know I can't.)

Second, as an editor: any editorial marks I make on a manuscript--save for egregious technical/grammatical/spelling errors--are suggestions. I can make all the complaints I want to about a plot point, but the writer isn't obligated to follow those. I encourage my writers to defend a particular sticking point to me if they think my suggestion won't work--and usually, in the process, they find a way to make that section better either from streamlining it (90% of the time) or expanding it (the other 10%) for clarity. The idea that editors crack a figurative whip and command a writer to change a scene or else is just a fallacy.

And finally--as a rare book dealer. I have copies of extremely well-known books that are more valuable because of the proofing errors. We use those errors to identify specific printings of older books, and in newer books those identifications can make the difference between regular market value and increased rarity. For example, I have a UK 1st edition printing of JK Rowling's The Goblet of Fire where the binder left an entire twenty page section out of the middle of the book. The number of books where that mistake happened is extremely small--less than 150--so small it doesn't even qualify as a printing run. So where is that book now? In airtight rare book storage, nestled in a box with other such misfits, increasing its potential value in my inventory closet.

So there you have it. Hope that helps. Now excuse me--I have to go back to proofing this galley so I can cringe over my adverbial fetishes once more.

Regarding The Lovely Bones, I had no problem with the elbow part. The narrator's a young girl who likely didn't know what part of the bone(s) it was, and I figured the dog had just brought back...well, the elbow. Or the section of arm we typically call the elbow.

Regarding editing. I've copy edited for magazines and, more recently, a web marketing firm. The web marketing firm in particular is a LOT of copy that tends to bottleneck with the editors (20 writers/six editors). We're not going to catch everything. We just aren't. We can get the spelling errors, spacing errors and most of the sentences that don't contribute to product description and/or spiral off into nothingness - but we're not going to catch it all.

I typically edit 12-15 product pages a day. They run to about 1100 words, max. I'm trying to imagine editing a stranger's 100,000-word novel that might be full of made-up words, twisting plotlines and dialects...

And then have more than one novel sitting on my desk, deadlines looming...staff cuts meaning everyone's got more on their plate...

It's a nightmare. I chuckle at the occasional typo and extra space I come across in reading, but with some of these giant fantasy doorstoppers, I'm surprised more doesn't get through. Perfection's not attainable. Editors are not going to catch everything, and neither are writers for that matter.

Manectric said:

I don't know how it's possible for a random guy in New Hampshire in 1995 to have owned a cell phone. In 2007, yes. Not in 1995. Did cell phones exist? Yes, but you had to be rich to own one, and the book said nothing about the guy stealing this cell phone.

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I had one. I remember upgrading to a starTAC ( you know, the ones everyone thought were super cool cos they looked like Star Trek communicators) when they came out in 1996

Mind I never used it - it was for work when I was on call and the signal was hopeless in my flat

I can't believe no one has mentioned Robinson Crusoe's pockets yet. Google, people, google. If Daniel Defoe can make a huge continuity error like that, we can all feel a little less sheepish about our own. Doesn't mean we should try to eliminate them, though.

Yes, cell phones existed in 1995. Relatively few people had them, but not only millionaires/spies/etc. They were larger than now, but they were around and about from early in the '90s so far as I know.

Manectric said:

I'm reading Nineteen Minutes, and my copy says that the neighbor is a retired cop, not a retired firemen. However, there is an error I noticed in the book. A criminal in the year 1995 gets busted because he left his cell phone at the store he robbed...and called his number. I don't know how it's possible for a random guy in New Hampshire in 1995 to have owned a cell phone. In 2007, yes. Not in 1995. Did cell phones exist? Yes, but you had to be rich to own one, and the book said nothing about the guy stealing this cell phone.

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You didn't have to be rich, or anywhere close to it, to own a cell phone in '95. I think my wife's cost somewhere around five hundred dollars. Not cheap, but no more than some cell phones cost today. Coverage areas were few and far between, but they still worked pretty well.

Various criminal types were also early adopters of the cell phone. They didn't steal the phones, but I suspect they did steal the mony to buy the phones. At any rate, cell phones were as big a blessing for criminals as for any of us. More so, probably, because they were infinitely harder to tap or locate.