Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related The scourge of typos and misspellings

Don't know if this should be mentioned here or elsewhere. The New York Times today has a fascinating article by Virginia Heffernan about what's happened in publishing apropos editing and spell-checking. Sorry I don't know how to do those link thingys. Looking it up is worth the effort.

Jude

Here you go:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/the-price-of-typos/
(In it's simplest form, simply pasted the entire address into the text box)

On an unrelated note, I suddenly got teh urge to hug my BRs

From the article:
Hmm... sounds like a certain reporter we might know... Whose initials are LL...

And PS, typos drive me crazy.
I once sent typos in to a publisher from an ebook I was reading, appalled by the lack of editing. *sigh* So true... they didn't care for my list of errors or short rant on the sad state of publishing... In hindsight, though, I realized that it's quite possible that books (especially reprints and/or ebooks) are more than likely edited by a computer and not a person these days... also part of the problem, as the article pointed out.

Anyway, I try to always check my spelling before posting anything. And though things aren't always perfect, I do expect well-educated people to try to spell correctly and check for errors, even on online forums. When I was working on my Masters in Education online, it would drive me nuts to see how many 'future teachers' had horrible spelling and grammar sense... maybe at 30 I'm already a fuddy-duddy grammarian.

I have a number of friends who are authors published with major houses, indie houses and everywhere in between.

I can assure you that they are edited by humans . Doesn't mean stuff doesn't get missed or that there's the occasional bad egg in there or whatever [one friend had several words run together more than once]. It does happen. But they aren't edited by computers. At least not new stuff. Transferring old stuff to new formats [like ebooks] could well be different. Even new books in ebooks don't always translate well [read a Kindle book a couple weeks ago with weird chapter and line breaks occasionally - from a major publisher].

But yes, does make you want to hug your BRs and/or critique partners, doesn't it ?

Carol

I'm quite certain that typos breed.

I once decided to print out a fanfic; I think it was beta'd, and I'm sure it went through a GE. Since I had to reformat it for my printer anyway, I passed through it myself, finding some typos that had gotten through the system. So after an estimated 3 passes through editors, you know what? It *still* had typos.

Worst of all are the homophones; your brain doesn't even register they're there at first.

I once saw a demonstration regarding 100% inspection for quality control. Read the following out loud--it has to be out loud, so no cheating:

Paris
in the
the spring.

Now, if you caught the error you're the special 30% or so of us. The rest of us just blew by it.

If you missed it, don't feel bad--A friend showed this to me and I got it wrong after I
watched him write it! (If you still haven't found it then copy each word down on a single line.)

The point being that varying format is very helpful for us to catch mistakes. If you used the computer to write it then print it out. Read printed stuff out loud. Let it rest for a couple of days and come back to it or read the paragraphs starting at the end and work backwards.

I caught the mistake the second time I read it, this time reading it at a slower pace.

But, it's nice to know that my computer is not the only place that typos seem to breed. (Even though I usually read my work several times over to try and catch as many errors as possible.)

I know of one published SF author who has the routine of putting the final draft aside for a week or so, buying a large bag of throat lozenges, and reading it out loud. Says that he catches things hearing it that he doesn't reading it.

Very interesting article!

It makes me sad to know that today's writers and publishers don't pay as much attention to spelling as they should, though.

Even worse than a writer who can't spell, though: a writer who's overall sloppy. I mean, you can tell the difference between an honest misspelling and someone who just spews out words without caring at the slightest how they appear on the paper.
I want to say that even they can have great ideas and end up writing something great, but... I'm having trouble. I'm of the conviction that if you can't be organized enough to write a structured (even though misspelled) text, you can't organize your ideas either. I'd expect the piece to be full of plot holes, jumping from one scene to another etc..

You can shoot me now.