A small rant: Lists of published typos
Apr. 20th, 2009 02:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaI've been reading a lot, lately; I've been reading a lot, lately, of novels from small publishers and anthologies. Many of these books are truly amazing, but my patience is swiftly running out for the dreaded typo. It's not that mainstream large-publishing-house novels don't have typos, but I suspect they're more common in these smaller works—and I suspect, too, that I'm just getting better at noticing them.
Because they are everywhere. So ubiquitous, in fact, that I've begun to name them. Soon, I'll begin marking up books to correct them.
The misplaced quotation mark: On the wrong side of a period, or else missing entirely. I finished a short story a few minutes ago that had three missing quotation marks in the space of six paragraphs. This is probably the single error that I see most often, and I know how easily it can occur, but I can't forgive it—it screws up the flow of the story too damn much.
I do not think it means what you think it means: It's a word all right, but not quite the one you were looking for. A poem from a few days ago read "strange" where it meant "strangle" and, trust me, it was a bit—strange.
It's vs. Its: Honestly it frightens me how often I see this one. It appeared in one story that had been published twice before, and republished in the volume I was reading—how along the line was this error missed, or else who added it? I've yet to see any their/there/they're or to/too/two errors, thank goodness, but it's/its bugs me an awful lot—not because I don't make it, but because when proofing I'm very careful to correct it.
The formatting error: Stray punctuation, stray spaces, accidental keystrokes which must not have come up on the spell check but can still confuse the reader. I'm likely to forgive this sort, because they must be easy to make and they occur quite rarely.
The missing word: An accidental click or delete which isn't visible to a spell checker but can make a sentence nigh incomprehensible. This is the one that I saw corrected in a library book, with the reader marking a possible "they?" in the middle of the nonsensical sentence.
ETA: The missing line: Another accidentally click or delete which removed or rearranged not just a single word but a whole bunch of them, making a good chunk of text nigh incomprehensible. Unlike their siblings above, these I can't forgive—they are such huge errors that they can destroy a paragraph.
Ah, but the books are worth the typos anyhow. The anthology I'm neck-deep in right now is incredible, and opening up a whole new world of authors. On that note, I really must catch up on reviews sometime soon.
Because they are everywhere. So ubiquitous, in fact, that I've begun to name them. Soon, I'll begin marking up books to correct them.
The misplaced quotation mark: On the wrong side of a period, or else missing entirely. I finished a short story a few minutes ago that had three missing quotation marks in the space of six paragraphs. This is probably the single error that I see most often, and I know how easily it can occur, but I can't forgive it—it screws up the flow of the story too damn much.
I do not think it means what you think it means: It's a word all right, but not quite the one you were looking for. A poem from a few days ago read "strange" where it meant "strangle" and, trust me, it was a bit—strange.
It's vs. Its: Honestly it frightens me how often I see this one. It appeared in one story that had been published twice before, and republished in the volume I was reading—how along the line was this error missed, or else who added it? I've yet to see any their/there/they're or to/too/two errors, thank goodness, but it's/its bugs me an awful lot—not because I don't make it, but because when proofing I'm very careful to correct it.
The formatting error: Stray punctuation, stray spaces, accidental keystrokes which must not have come up on the spell check but can still confuse the reader. I'm likely to forgive this sort, because they must be easy to make and they occur quite rarely.
The missing word: An accidental click or delete which isn't visible to a spell checker but can make a sentence nigh incomprehensible. This is the one that I saw corrected in a library book, with the reader marking a possible "they?" in the middle of the nonsensical sentence.
ETA: The missing line: Another accidentally click or delete which removed or rearranged not just a single word but a whole bunch of them, making a good chunk of text nigh incomprehensible. Unlike their siblings above, these I can't forgive—they are such huge errors that they can destroy a paragraph.
Ah, but the books are worth the typos anyhow. The anthology I'm neck-deep in right now is incredible, and opening up a whole new world of authors. On that note, I really must catch up on reviews sometime soon.
