Does anyone else get borderline enraged when reading a book and finding typos and grammatical errors? Grrrrrr?
Does anyone else get borderline enraged when reading a book and finding typos and grammatical errors? Grrrrrr?
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no there are so many words in books with 500-900 pages I can’t expect every single book to be perfectly edited
Standards have really dropped over the last 20 years in publishing.
@Samantha I’d say more in society in general
I do find it annoying; however, I’ve become truly enraged when a page (or more) was either repeated or omitted. Once I received a book in which the second half was missing.
Yes. I bitch about this all the time , only happens in newer books
Yes me!!! No excuses. That’s what editors are for!! Hate it!!
I say the same thing!
You can bet Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis never let a book go out like that!
No….books have lots of words…as advisor to the school newspaper when I was teaching, I can say no matter how hard we tried, sometimes we missed mistakes.
I am amazed that the errors are so few and far between.
Glass half full, glass half empty, lol.
I actually enjoy seeing them. Shows the editors and proof readers are human too, we all make mistakes. I treat it as a game. Also some authors such as Stephen King purposely leave a mistake in some books.
Yes and things which don’t fit in with the in which the story is set
I always think to myself “there must be a way to get paid for pointing this stuff out, huh?”
If it’s just a couple in the whole book then I’m like meh. But if it consistently happens then I get angry.
Or, as in the case of Star Wars: Lords of the Sith, where a character gets killed and in the next scene he is alive again and doesn’t die until almost the end of the book…. like how did that happen? Did nobody notice in editing that the guy died?!
Not enraged. Someone disappointed in the editing but what bothers me more is overall terrible writing.
You mean ‘somewhat’ surely? ?
Paul ‘Wiggy’ Wigmore Oh my…thank you…?
Was going to blame my dog for distracting me but my bad.
Sorry couldn’t help it ??
@Paul Don’t be sorry. I thank you. My mistakes are why I don’t get ‘enraged’ when others make them. I need an editor…you’re hired.
WOOP WOOP ??
Yes. I used to work in publishing in the 90s/early 2000s – books had such a rigorous editing and proofreading process that errors were rare.
I wondered about that. It does seem more prevalent in newer books.
Yes there is no excuse! It is not ok to not edit! Im finding it in my e books i mostly read real books tho?
Not really. It doesn’t take my enjoyment of reading away.
Not enraged exactly. More like I just made an amazing discovery! Boy, am I smart. Lol
Borderline??? ???
I qualified as a proof reader and copy editor and it drives me nuts. Also American books that assume the UK was using or had the same stuff as them in the past. Or just plain stupidity – I read a Regency romance a while back where a child had yogurt for breakfast. That didn’t hit the UK commercially until mid 1960’s. Grrrrrrrrr
That’s mad re yoghurt!
What about when they call the character by a different name?
NO way! Which????
I don’t remember but it’s happened a few times
Always. I’m not a writer but I’m a good reader. I lovelove words…I don’t like speed bumps in my book 😉 that’s what I call it when I have to reread a sentence, speed bumps.
I have found wrong names as well as misspelling and bad grammar.
I think its funny to see errors and typos in a published book! Lol
Language mechanics errors easily caught by proper spell check and grammar check settings in Microsoft Word are my kryptonite. My epitaph will read as follows. “I am silently correctly your grammar.” (Please excuse the split infinitive.)
Hey, it happens.
My children had a teacher in 4th grade that made this into a game at school. Every time they found a mistake and showed it to him, they got a piece of candy. To this day my kids still get excited to find one and run to show me!
Yes! I’ve read some where pages were duplicated and sentences were started, but left unfinished. Very poor editing there!
My irritation with book editing is more that the editor let entire sections of bad writing slide. For example, in the audiobook I’m listening to there is a 5 minute in-depth science lecture on the attributes of geology. Thought I had stumbled into a high school science lecture. Had absolutely nothing to do with plot in a book advertised as a thriller. What editor would let that slide? Not the first time I have encountered oddities such as this. By the way, this book is so NOT a thriller.
Every. Single. Time. And I tell them as much in my review. It’s an arrogance on the part of an author if s/he thinks it’s not important. I won’t read another book by an author who has a dreadfully edited book. One of my ‘favourites’…for want of a better word…was a funeral reef. For god’s sake.
Yes!!!!
I always want to highlight them and send the book to the editor… I’ve never been cocky enough ?
Yes!
YES! (Former EFL teacher here)
No.
Yes – spelling mistakes really annoy me. Especially the incorrect spelling of the word stationery/stationary.
It drives me insane!
Definitely YES!
Only if it’s majorly obvious, like using the wrong character’s name, or a completely wrong word reef/wreath as someone mentioned earlier.
It annoys me that it was not edited properly.
Especially if it’s my own book. Considering I paid quite a bit for a professional editor to assist me with it. I had to send my publisher a very angry correspondence to get my book revised and corrected on my last project. Much anger.
Yes!
If there’s more than a few I get really annoyed.
I was reading an ARC and their was problems with “f” “l” and “i” drove me batty
If it’s an Arc I can get over it but it just blows my mind that when a book has made it all the way to the store and is being promoted heavily and yet the editor couldn’t even do their job
Agreed, @Carolyn
I read that one. I got used to it pretty quickly.
My husband does!! ????
Drives me nuts!
Right!! Natasha Preston’s books were so bad ?♀️
Completely and utterly!
Absolutely
I wish there was a way similar to quoting on Kindle to highlight and then “report as spelling error” ?
Yes! I’ve often thought that!
I agree that sounds offensive. What happened to proofreaders ????????
They call that perfectionism … I’m sure there is a book for it !! Lol ?
Major IRK! Also magazine articles with columns that don’t line up ?
Yes, I do!
Don’t even get me started…lol. That’s probably my #1 pet peeve!!
Especially as I’m such a slow reader. Otherwise I would offer my services as a proof reader.
It draws the eye like a magnet.
Yes! I always wish I could be a proofreader. Can’t believe the things that slip by.
Me too, Kit
Saw this on TV the other weekend…. I was fuming. I almost called CBS to inform them. I ended up having to leave the room. I could not watch the program any further once I saw this misspelling of the word “odyssey.”
Oh yeah!
Absolutely!
Yes!
Doesn’t bother me at all 🙂
I just read through this post, it seems it bothers us women more than the men. I just want a quality product like I used to get.
Women ?
@Angelique, you beat me to it, LOL!
@Liz Maureen, we know it’s a typo – so I’m sorry, but in this particular thread I HAD to!!!! ???
I had to correct it!
@Febinger tooootally understand and empathize ??❤️
@Febinger I get it. ?
Lol!
OMG yes… but it rarely happens in a book published by a quality company
Absolutely
Drives me mad !!!
Definitely drives me nuts. And I’m a copy editor so it hits a deep nerve lol.
Same here… I edit and transcribe medical documents, so I won’t tolerate anything less than perfect.
@Carol idk about yours, but are content sees 4 or 5 different sets of eyes before it’s published. So I always cringe thinking about did that many people miss it?!
I’ve been called a “grammar nazi” more than once, LOL.
Yes! One book I read she wrote that “he had distain for her”. Urgh. I used a pen and made the word into disdain.
I read a book where the author wrote “He took her for granite.” Not kidding
yup no excuse for that
Yes. The least you can expect is for a book to be grammatically correct. Absolutely agree.
Oh yessssss I’m on the lookout all the time
One up side of Audible
Yes – no excuse for poor editing
all the time.
Yes Yes Yes!!
Thank you!!
It happens more frequently on Kindle. It’s super weird while reading a paper book. I’ll have to read the sentence a few times to comprehend that there’s actually a mistake.
Yes. I was quite startled when reading “The Handmaid’s Tale” to discover “continued on” (Ugh!) no less than three times. I can forgive the author, but her editor should have picked that up . . .
Of course, W.B. Yeats, to the end of his life, never learned to spell . . .
Its super annoying!
YES!!!
Yupp. Just found one in drums of autumn by Diana Gabaldon. So dissappointed in her. Used “an” when she should have used “a”
It might not be the author’s error.
Maybe not. But someone should have caught it before it got mass produced lol
As a teacher, absolutely!!
Quite common on the kindle.
Enjoy this slight error in the paper today…
Yep!!
Oh god yea!
Reading one of Urina Shapiro’s wonderful novels recently I really thought the editor should have been sacked. Page after page with missing linking words and drastically misspelled key words……….hey ho, I let it go ?
Yep…. 50 Shades Of Grey…. who edited that????
Sounds awful
Oh yes !!!
Oh! Do I ever!!
I have a copy of an American novel by Sherwood Anderson that my parents got me . When my college professor saw it he was excited. Turns out the book has value as it was a print run in which a couple of typographical errors were not caught and they were released before the corrections were made. So unless there are a billion errors I always wonder if it has value for having errors corrected out of subsequent releases… ?
I just enrolled in college classes online and the instructor wrote this thing for us to read and I found a couple errors. I’m just starting week one and I’ve already lost all faith in the teaching staffs’ credibility. ??
Listening to an audio book kills me when the same word is used over and over. In Twilight Eclipse, the word murmur was overused. On one page, it was used 7 times….that’s overkill. I write stories and refuse to use that word now.