What's the biggest editorial mistake you've seen?

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cameron_chapman

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The worst one I've seen lately was in The Dark Tower series, where for one line the protagonist is called Ronald instead of Roland. Can't think of any others off the top of my head.

I'm always more forgiving of issues in a first edition hardcover book, but by the time it hits mass market paperback, it should be damn near perfect.
 

ladyleeona

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I read a book by an NYT bestselling author a few days ago, and a MC's description changed magically halfway through. But near the end of the book the description was back to the initial one. I haven't decided if the change back makes it worse or better.

Curly hair or straight hair, dammit.... It's not that difficult to pick one. Or to toss in some hot rollers or a straightener.
 

celeber

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I have actually read several NYT bestsellers with description, name, backstory, and item inconsistencies. My favorite was when on of the author's recognized the error and with some creative writing corrected it in a later book in the series.
 

Kewii

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When I was young, I read one of those Sweet Valley High/College/Twins books that I'm guessing must have been rushed through printing. I remember finding a lot of typos, but the biggest one was the misspelling of 'Chapter'.
 

LilliCray

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I swear I catch every freaking typo, every missed comma/period, every pronoun-antecedent error in every book I read, and it always jars me a bit. I almost wish I didn't notice them, but I'm hoping it means I'll be better able to avoid those mistakes in my own writing, or at least catch them in the edit.

Although, in the series I'm currently reading, I noticed two instances where the author swapped Character A's name for Character B. Both times, the same wrong name for the same character. Can't remember if they happened in the same book, but both really threw me for a full minute each while I stared at the book and tried to figure out if I was seeing things or that mistake was really in there.

I notice lots of other consistency errors, but I can't remember--

Oh! Another series I read mainly for guilty pleasure features a set of twins. In one of the books, the female twin is thinking about how she and her brother have always been able to do that twin sense-y thing that people think is so cool. In a different book, she specifically thought the exact opposite--that that stuff never happened between her and her twin.

I mean, between books, it's harder to catch that kind of consistency error, but dang! Contradiction much?

I love this thread. :D
 

Christine N.

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Those continuity errors irk the crap out of me. I once was copy editing a piece (freelance) for someone whose book was going to reprint, and the original had been scanned in OCR, so I had to find all the mistakes the software made.

At one point, the MC had forgotten her cell phone at home on the nightstand. The author made a point of saying it. Then five pages later, she was making a phone call with it. I pointed this out so hopefully the author could fix it.

I am meticulous with such things BECAUSE they drive me so crazy. Typos I can live with (a few, anyway).
 

Jersey Chick

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In one of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, one of the secondary characters has the backstory of being a former NY Giants cheerleader.

The Giants don't have cheerleaders. They haven't in my lifetime and the character in question was supposed to be in her early 30s in the book (which would have put her in my age bracket at the time.)

It wouldn't have taken much to find out, but either Evanovich (or her editor) just assumed that football team = cheerleaders.

It didn't ruin the book, but it's the first thing I recall whenever one of these threads pops up. :D
 

NiaR

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I was reading a book with a character who took his shirt off because it was hot outside that night. Then a couple of seconds later he slipped his cigarette into the front pocket of his shirt--that he was somehow wearing again.

I looked back over it like whaa??
You definitely do not want your reader to focus on that when they could be reading on, haha.
 

Becky Black

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One thing about being a writer - especially once you've got a lot of editing experience under your belt - you never just "read" anything again, you proof read everything!
 

MissMacchiato

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haha, I have to work on this one, one character is called Selena, but my beta caught the few times I've written Serena by accident. She also told me a scene in which I'd written how too much alcohol had fried the MC's Neutrons, not her NEURONS.

Thank god she's good like that, just one extra letter and I'd have looked like a complete fool!
 

JMC2009

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I was reading a book that was describing a nice dinner scene on board a cruise ship. Unfortunately, the music must have been terrible because "the violinist was strolling around, his bow tucked firmly under his chin."
 

Manuel Royal

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Ok. This might not exactly be the place to complain about this. But I just recently picked up Dracula, My Love by Syrie James. As you can imagine, it's a fan-fiction kind of thing, where we focus on Mina's point-of-view during the classic Dracula story.
Don't we already have Mina's point of view? Stoker's novel is epistolary, including Mina's diary. Is the idea that she only pretended not to like him in her regular diary, but she also kept a super-secret diary where she drew hearts and wrote "Mrs. Mina Dracula" over and over?

Misspellings are one thing, but continuity errors are really annoying; especially when they create an impossible contradiction within the world of the story. Let me just say this:
He didn't get out of the cockadoody car!
 

Carolanne Patton

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I just finished The Harlequin by Laurell K. Hamilton and one of the antagonists started out named "Mercia" and about three quarters of the way through her name was suddenly "Columbine". WTF?
 

Hip-Hop-a-potamus

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I bought a book on the Titanic years ago in an antique store. It was a nonfiction book on the sinking (not Walter Lord, though).

I couldn't believe that such a well known date as April 14, 1912 had somehow been co-opted to 1913. Now, a typo I could understand if it only happened once. But it was repeated several times!! Did this person even go NEAR a reference source??!!
 

Becky Black

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I bought a book on the Titanic years ago in an antique store. It was a nonfiction book on the sinking (not Walter Lord, though).

I couldn't believe that such a well known date as April 14, 1912 had somehow been co-opted to 1913. Now, a typo I could understand if it only happened once. But it was repeated several times!! Did this person even go NEAR a reference source??!!

Now that's just...wow. If that had been a new book I'd have demanded my money back from the publisher for that!

I find mistakes of that sort much more damaging to a book in non fiction than in fiction. In fiction they are just annoying, but I might still be able to enjoy the book anyway. A non fiction book, whole different thing. I start thinking "if you got that wrong, what else are you talking out of your hat about?"

Happened to me with a book about writing. A couple of the examples he cited had some kind of error - he referred to Daisy in The Great Gatsby as Dolly. He misattributed a quote from the Sherlock Holmes canon, putting it in Hound of the Baskervilles when it's actually in one of the short stories. And that made me think well if those ones are wrong and I happen to know that, are there other wrong ones that I don't happen to know? And I just lost faith in the writer and stopped reading the book.
 

Said The Sun

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Don't we already have Mina's point of view? Stoker's novel is epistolary, including Mina's diary. Is the idea that she only pretended not to like him in her regular diary, but she also kept a super-secret diary where she drew hearts and wrote "Mrs. Mina Dracula" over and over?

Misspellings are one thing, but continuity errors are really annoying; especially when they create an impossible contradiction within the world of the story. Let me just say this:

Exactly. It's quite disgusting. I finished it (thank God) and threw that crap in the pile of books to one day sell on ebay or plainly give away. I just skimmed through the rest of it (still finding countless typos).
I guess it all came down to portraying Dracula as a softy, Mina as a little tramp, and Jonathan a pathetic loser. Even Van Helsing was clearly retarded in this book. Don't read it. But if you really want to, I'll give you mine. :D
 

Manuel Royal

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Exactly. It's quite disgusting. I finished it (thank God) and threw that crap in the pile of books to one day sell on ebay or plainly give away. I just skimmed through the rest of it (still finding countless typos).
I guess it all came down to portraying Dracula as a softy, Mina as a little tramp, and Jonathan a pathetic loser. Even Van Helsing was clearly retarded in this book. Don't read it. But if you really want to, I'll give you mine. :D
Thanks, I'll pass!

For an alternate view of Dracula, I recommend Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape, The Holmes-Dracula File, and A Friend of the Family. The second one is not only a pastiche of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, it brings in one of the heroes of Dracula as a villain. Entertaining stuff.
 

spike

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In a John Jakes novel, one of the bicentennial series (although I think that series was renamed in later years, but I read them in the 70's and that's what they were called) a character threw a pregnant relative down the stairs, causing her to go into labor. He then went into the night and was assumed dead for many years.

Later, as an adult, the baby born that night had vague recollections of the man. I guess she was an in utero-psychic. Pissed me off, because, damn, don't they remember what was written before?
 

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In one book by Erle Stanley Gardner, one character was named Silvia.
Almost every time she was mentioned, they spelt it "Slivia". And that happened about ten times.
 

The Lonely One

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I may be a freak but the errors don't usually bother me. IMO they're like birthmarks, and fun to find (easter eggs!).

But that's--clearly--just me :)
 

Bekah

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I love one in a Stephen King story, where someone watched the hour hand of a clock move from one to ten, or something like that. They were supposed to be waiting for either ten or forty-five minutes, not ten hours.
 

AnneMarble

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Misspelling the title. On the spine. :tongue

edit: This is a joke, since I doubt the poor editor was at fault for this. :tongue
I used to have a copy of Algis Budry's Rogue Planet where the spine called it Rouge Planet. It made me think of a science class question where the textbook asked "What is the makeup of this planet?" (*rimshot*)

Edited to Add:
Speaking of editorial errors :eek: I got the title wrong, too. It's Rogue Moon, not Rogue Planet.

In the 1980s, I bought a paperback serial killer novel called Dr. O. The author's name on the cover did not match the author's name on the title page. I was annoyed at the book but also by the publisher for taking so little care with them. The author (since revealed as Robert W. Walker :)) explained in response to my (rather impassioned) review that the publisher was in turmoil at the time. Now he made me want to read the book again.

I was reading Graham Masterton's message board, and he explained that his name was spelled as Graham Masterson on some copies of his books. The publisher was supposed to pulp them, but instead, they sent them to other countries, probably thinking he would never see them. ;)
 
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BlackBriar

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I have actually read several NYT bestsellers with description, name, backstory, and item inconsistencies. My favorite was when on of the author's recognized the error and with some creative writing corrected it in a later book in the series.

I love it when new characters are created that way. Wheel of Time had a couple of situations like that.
 

AnneMarble

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When I was young, I read one of those Sweet Valley High/College/Twins books that I'm guessing must have been rushed through printing. I remember finding a lot of typos, but the biggest one was the misspelling of 'Chapter'.
Oh. My. God.
:roll:
 
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