Someone needs to proof read the proof readers! Lol

Don't know why I never noticed this before, but I came across this interesting sentence in a book I've read several times but never caught the mistake until this time. This is from CAT UNDER FIRE by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. The waiter brought their napkins and silverware,and the condiments, and a complimentary bowl of french FRIEND onions , and took their order. I don't know if I'd want French Friend Onions.

I find errors all the time in everything! Textbooks, novels, you name it.

Yup, me too... it amazes me that even major authors with world-class pubishers end up with errors in their books all the time. And automatic spellchecking has made it worse than ever!

I also find many errors in books that I read: From spelling to grammar!

I've even found errors in The LOTR novels despite them having been published and republished.

From what I understand each republish is supposed to fix errors as they are found. I don't know if that is true or not. I do know that Mr. Tolkien has stated in his prefaces that that is the case with his novels.

The worse case that I found was with one of Vince Flynn's novels. OMG! I couldn't believe how many spelling errors there were in that novel: Literally dozens! It was atrocious! I'd be ashamed to have something like that published!

Errors in print have gotten worse since the advent of word processors simply because spell check and even grammar check cannot 'read' for context but only word for word. The following is a rather elderly poem from the early days of personal computers when they came in two varieties: Mac and PC-DOS and windows were something to be looked at

A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell Checkers...

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew

Originally Posted by cococat

I find errors all the time in everything! Textbooks, novels, you name it.

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Same here! I found a couple errors in the last few books I've read. I need to be getting paid the big bucks to edit

I think it's largely the way that the business end of publishing is handled. Everything is on a tight deadline and the author ends up rushing to finish writing and then the editor has to rush trough it and get the final version to the printers so that it can be released on time. You see the same sort of thing in software. 15-20 years ago, if you bought a computer game, you took it out of the game and played it and it usually ran just fine with few if any bugs. Now, game developers release games that are absolutely riddled with bugs in order to get them out the door quickly, knowing that they can release a patch later.

As for the word processing software, I still think it's a huge improvement over the old typewriter method. I couldn't imagine the pain of writing a dissertation on a manual typewriter. For me, replacing a word with a homophone is extremely rare. Maybe if I right clicked on the words with the red underline and picked the first option blindly, but that's not what I do. The spell check is a useful tool, but like anything else it can be used improperly.

I just read a novel and found 5 mistakes. I don't know if I should tell the author or not (my husband knows her) since the book is already published!

Originally Posted by cococat

I find errors all the time in everything! Textbooks, novels, you name it.

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Me too, I find it so strange to find errors in published materials. I should become an editor

I work for a communications area in an IT department. I have to say, with so many people looking at the same document, mistakes happen. Either, during final edit, or by the printer (yes, sometimes it happens at the printer).

The group I work in is small, but we each take time to proof read and peer review each other. I once misspelled a word, on a Web page, because I entered it right into the content management system, and that was that. I was able to fix it almost immediately, but our head honcho saw it and I was on his list for months afterwards.

So, just because people are professional, just because it's their job, doesn't mean they don't make mistakes. Have you never made one on YOUR job? EVER?

Just think about it from their perspective.

Originally Posted by CATTYBIRD

Don't know why I never noticed this before, but I came across this interesting sentence in a book I've read several times but never caught the mistake until this time. This is from CAT UNDER FIRE by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. The waiter brought their napkins and silverware,and the condiments, and a complimentary bowl of french FRIEND onions , and took their order. I don't know if I'd want French Friend Onions.

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I come across all sorts of errors in books! But, let's face it. Rousseau Murphy doesn't conjugate verbs in her titles!

That's one of my big pet peeves. Newspapers are big offenders as well.