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

I just read a book where an ephinay came for one character from another character saying 'we'. I read back, and back a little more.... She never said 'we', it was all 'I'. Not a big deal I know but enough to be a bit irritating.

And I've read a few books where the author thinks that Scotland and Wales are all 'england' but I can't think of specific examples. That's also irritating.

Nothing as good as your examples are coming to mind though

Just last night I was reading and came across the word 'bemusement' where I'm pretty sure (from context) the author meant amusement. Took me out of the novel for a awhile.

I wouldn't necessarily call those content errors so much as logic errors. Maybe the fireman is careless, as evidenced by his keeping gasoline in his basement. Maybe the author insisted it not be changed. Or the author, copy editor, proofreader, etc., missed it. It's not one person's responsibility. It's many people's.

Just saying.

There was a looooong thread on this topic a month or two back.

Yes, errors exist. Why? Because authors, agents, editors, copy editors, and typesetters are human beings. Mistakes slip in. Any number of people are responsible for not catching them. I catch logic/continuity errors in films all the time.

Hell, there's a logic error in my own new release (no, I'm not saying what it is). Do you know how many sets of eyes were on that manuscript, multiple times, before it hit shelves, my own included? It happens.

Also an "elbow" could mean to bones connected bu cartilege and sinew at the elbow with the long bones broken off. It seems fine to me.

It would have been much more dramatic, though, for the dog to drag home a femur.

Gray's Anatomy does call the ulna (one of the long forearm bones) the "elbow" bone. Meh. I'd still vote for the femur. That's a bone a dog could be proud of!

Here's a nice look at the elbow, for those whose curiosity is now stirred:

http://www.joint-pain-expert.net/elbow-anatomy.html

God, you've got to love the Internet. Lots less excuse nowadays for factual errors. Why, when I was young, you had to walk five miles to the library, uphill, in a snowstorm, both ways.

I'm paranoid about logical inconsistencies. They can sneak in so easily. That's why I produce so many timelines and maps!

RevisionIsTheKey said:

I'm paranoid about logical inconsistencies. They can sneak in so easily. That's why I produce so many timelines and maps!

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Wow, Revision and I think exactly alike!

In one of my books, I had a character remotely access the MC's computer and "move the mouse." I don't know how many times I read that before it dawned on me what I was saying. (I meant "move the mouse cursor. He'd have to be telekinetic to move the mouse). And I was a computer programmer for ten years!

It can be easy to miss things like that if you read with your mind on the intent of the scene rather than the actual words.

Hvaing been diagnosed and treated for a broken elbow by a doctor, I have no problem with the dog bringing back the elbow.

A better question for me is How Does the Writer Make Such Mistakes?

The writer writes the book, the writer gets the last pass at the book before it's published, and the writer's name goes on the cover. Editors do what they can, but it's up to the writer to make sure the book goes to press error free.

I assumed the dog brought back a chunk of Susie Salmon that was wrist-through-upper arm. Flesh still there, if somewhat decomposed, etc. "Elbow" might be the easiest way to describe this.

I'm much more concerned with the all-around awful editing I see in Pauline Gedge's books. Good lord. Every one I've read has been peppered with punctuation, spelling, and usage errors. And the paragraph breaks don't make any sense. It's hard to enjoy her good stories with the bad editing getting in the way. I'm hoping the re-release of Child of the Morning will be re-edited.

It happens. You'd be surprised at what can slip through many sets of well-trained eyes when a manuscript is 400+ pages long. Heck, there are mistakes in 100-word posts right here...

Perfection is unobtainable. It's a great goal, but nothing will ever be perfect. It's much easier to identify some errors when it's too late to fix them. (Usually because all eyes have had some time to distance themselves from the text.) Familiarity can breed blindness.

And, of course, there are some people that delight in pointing errors out to you. I had a person I hadn't heard from in YEARS leave a voice mail on my home phone pointing out a punctuation error deep inside my book. Thanks fer checkin' in, pal.

I do copy-editing of a newsletter, and I can't tell you how many times I go over everything--and still miss dumb stuff. There are some many moving parts that it's just not possible to catch them all. We have no less than five people going over this, and then we get an email from one of the readers pointing out something all of us missed.

Bottom line: Content errors, including continuity, are the author's responsibility.

This is so much the case that in some technical publishing/academic publishing contracts there's a clause that specifically alerts the author to their personal responsibility.

Speaking of which--I once made an error in a scholarly article--it was one of those really basic things. I left out "not" in a sentence. But I knew "not" should be there, so I saw it every time I read the article. The other colleagues who read it, and the university press anonymous scholars who vetted the article apparently saw the missing "not" that very much needed to be there as well.

It was out and published for oh, two years or so, before I discovered my screw up. I found my error because someone else plagiarized my article--and kept my screw up.

Is there a word that means something like, I dunno, inverted schadenfreude?

Long ago I read an article by Larry Niven, he mentioned that a first printing of "Ringworld" might be valuable because me mistakenly describes the Earth turning the wrong way (ISTR this was about "the game" in which SF readers look for scientific errors in published SF stories).

I recall "Somebody's Gotta Say It", a memoir-and-opinion type book by talkshow host Neal Boortz - there's a sentence that says the opposite of what the surrounding text implies, and having heard him on the radio, I knew it was the opposite of how he really felt. There was apparantly a missing "not" somewhere in that sentence. I didn't mark the page, and rereading through the book later I couldn't find that sentence...

So yeah, most commercially books have a (very) few errors, and I probably don't catch half of them all when I'm reading a book for enjoyment/information. But it is surprising and sometimes jarring when I stumble across something like that.

... "Pick-Up," by Charles Willeford. Chapter in it titled "Shock Treatment." And there's no shock treatment in it, or anything related. Scene must of been cut, but the title of the chpt retained.

What I don't understand is how books get printed with errors that would've been caught by a computerized spell checker. I see this amazingly often. Don't they put them through a spell checker before sending them to the printer??

Chasing the Horizon said:

What I don't understand is how books get printed with errors that would've been caught by a computerized spell checker. I see this amazingly often. Don't they put them through a spell checker before sending them to the printer??

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I don't. Usually because there are so many other words in the manuscript that MS Word would identify as misspelled. It's time consuming (never enough time) and eye-blurring and you're likely to inadvertently hit "skip" when you should "correct." Editing and proofing should catch most of those errors. When I spot one (or some, or many) in books, it makes me cringe, but then I also remind myself that if these errors made it through, there must have been exponentially more in the original manuscript. Errors usually don't exist because someone(s) were sloppy.

Chasing the Horizon said:

What I don't understand is how books get printed with errors that would've been caught by a computerized spell checker. I see this amazingly often. Don't they put them through a spell checker before sending them to the printer??

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I'd say the great majority of errors I see in books and newspapers are there precisely because someone did rely on a spell checker. Spell checkers are handy little tools, but relying on them is guaranteed to let errors slip in.

Editors do their best, but no writer should ever blame an editor for missing a mistake the writer made. Grammar error, punctuation error, continuity error, plot error, or a silly "error" like I once made in a novel, which was giving every female character red hair, all fall back on the writer, not the editors.

Jamesaritchie said:

I'd say the great majority of errors I see in books and newspapers are there precisely because someone did rely on a spell checker. Spell checkers are handy little tools, but relying on them is guaranteed to let errors slip in.

Editors do their best, but no writer should ever blame an editor for missing a mistake the writer made. Grammar error, punctuation error, continuity error, plot error, or a silly "error" like I once made in a novel, which was giving every female character red hair, all fall back on the writer, not the editors.

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Now wait a second, maybe the author's manuscript was correct and the editor changed it? You have no idea what the manuscript looked like before it got to the editor.

I also think it's presumptuous to assume it's solely the writers fault, especially when it is the editor's job is to catch all the mistakes and correct them. Maybe the writer did make a mistake but so did the editor. They don't get a "it's the authors fault" cop out when they are paid to make sure those mistakes aren't there.

One thing I do know is that sometimes people believe a word is spelled wrong when it is not. On more than one occasion someone has pointed out a word to me that they think is misspelled and it is actually the variant (British or American) spelling of the word.