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Have you ever spotted glaring editorial mistakes in published novels? I have an innate ability to spot these kinds of things and it makes me crazy. I just finished a book in which a minor character's last name changed halfway through the book, and in one chapter a major character is referred to by the wrong first name (the incorrect name being that of someone who had died by that point in the story).
I wonder how this stuff makes it past the editors. I get that the author can easily make mistakes as the story is revised, but a professional editor should not be missing such obvious errors.
I have found a few of those name switching errors and it drives me nuts. Aunt Sue???? Or wait - I think that is supposed to be Aunt Kate. I notice it immediately which is why it seems so odd that it sneaks past an editor.
I recently read Ann Patchett's newest book and found a spelling error (practioner instead of practitioner). I would have thought that spellcheck would have picked that up.
While I don't happen to have very recently published novels to compare to, I have found some publishers particular authors make use of are worse than others. Typos, other editorial glitches, even layout and typesetting problems seem to show up predictably. Never see them in publications of others. I used to wonder if speed played into it...a big publisher always in a hurry to churn out new profitable products would be more likely to miss such mistakes, but the example I'm thinking of is most likely a relatively small more "personal" firm. You'd think they would take more care, but OTOH they may not have the most sophisticated technology or editorial resources available to snag them.
Yes, there is a lot more of this because editors have been replaced by spellcheck. If spellcheck doesn't catch the error, it tends to get by.
I saw something once that made light of over-reliance on spell check. It was basically an entire paragraph full of words that could be spelled multiple ways, but using the wrong spelling for each. So, it looked ridiculous and yet spell check would not have noticed a thing.
Depending on the book, if it is more self-published or small publisher then there is likely a dictate to text software that could be used where homonyms and possessives/plurals can be heard interchangeable—so those mistakes often slip through.
I have read quite a few EMP/dystopian novels lately and those types of errors are rampant, especially the contractions/plurals/
I don’t think the authors really use an editor—maybe just software program that doesn’t catch those mistakes…I just feel sorry that they don’t understand basic grammar but they do so many books that they don’t really spend the time to give a through edit—plus their readers aren’t making a big issue of the mistakes and will continue to read the novels — maybe they don’t even know they ARE mistakes…
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I can't believe all the mistakes I see in books now. I didn't EVER used to see errors in published books, until about 10 years ago. It seems we rely a lot now on spellcheck, and these aren't words that are spelled wrong. I've seen things happen out of sequence (where a character discusses a situation before the event occurs in the book). I've seen characters switched for a sentence. I've seen a character go from first person to 3rd person viewpoint in a paragraph.
I can't believe all the mistakes I see in books now. I didn't EVER used to see errors in published books, until about 10 years ago. It seems we rely a lot now on spellcheck, and these aren't words that are spelled wrong. I've seen things happen out of sequence (where a character discusses a situation before the event occurs in the book). I've seen characters switched for a sentence. I've seen a character go from first person to 3rd person viewpoint in a paragraph.
One of the most glaring errors I remember was a novel where the main character felt he was in danger, and instructed his secretary to get out of town and go somewhere safe. Well before the situation was resolved, the secretary was back at the office like nothing happened.
More recently, I came across an error where the author tried to back-pedal his way out of it. The short version -- a guy connected to organized crime was killed, and then 2-3 books later was alive and well. In a subsequent book, this was amended so that it was the *son* of the dead guy, who conveniently had the same name. (Mob Guy, Jr.) I don't think anybody bought it.
I have seen many errors recently in news articles.
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