Last Week’s Discussion:
Typos

I think we’ve all been there. We’ve all read a book (or written one 😉 ) that had a typo or two in them. I mean, we’re all human. It’s understandable, but sometimes… it just really irks me! Sometimes it’s unignorable and I can’t help but be frustrated because now my imagination has fractured and all because of a single word! But can the same be said for the discussioners?

Katie said:

“It doesn’t RUIN a book for me, but it REALLY bothers me. I typically completely immerse myself in a book, and typos jar me right out of that.”

Tanja said:

“I find them irritating, especially when it’s a typo that any spellchecker should have and would have picked up. If the mistake is grammatical, that’s more understandable, but not necessarily less disruptive. But every time I think I have read and re-read something over and over without finding an error, the next time I am sure to detect one.”

Cathy said:

“Definitely in the annoying camp. I find typos just jump out at me. Guess I missed my vocation as a proofreader…”

Lucinda said:

“Oh, I hate it. Really, really hate it. […] one badly worded sentence, the use of the wrong word, poor punctuation, bad grammar or generally anything that plainly wouldn’t happen makes me so irrationally angry that I immediately want to find the author on Twitter to make them aware of their crimes to publishing.”

Meigan said:

“I hate them. HATE them, moreso in traditionally published books. Even worse is grammatical errors and incorrect word usage. […] I’m not asking for perfection, I’m asking for quality. One or two typos, I’m ok with. Books riddled with them, that I paid for, are not quality. “

Deanna said:

“As an editor, I like to believe that there are zero errors in the books I edit, however, they happen. In the company I work for, I look over a manuscript at least 6 times. […] However, we are human, and even we use a program, like I do, typos and error still happen. “

Mattias said:

“I’m a bit like you I think that it really bugs me when I see a typo. What’s worse is when you see a typo in your own stuff […] THAT makes me want to pound my head against the wall.”

Jessica said:

“As an author, of course I want my books to be as close to perfect as possible, however when we’re talking 100,000 odd words, that’s a 100,000 to 1 odds of perfection! Imagine if we expected those same odds of every goods and service in the world […]”

J.W. said:

“Honestly, I’m no eagle eye. I probably blow by most typos. When I do catch the odd one, my brain goes, “Ha ha! Mistake. Life is fun!” And then I’m moving on.”

Adam said:

“It’s like you said, anything that breaks the flow, that jerks me out of my wonderful adventure, is going to find me a little perturbed. But as a reader what can you do? As writers I think we’re often driven to perfect our work, to give “them” no excuse to reject it out of hand, but the reality is no one and nothing is perfect, and in spite of the typos, it’s still a good story.”

Trent said:

“[…] every book ever published has mistakes and typos. I have never read something where an author is happy with the first published edition. I have also read blogs of traditionally published authors who later went the self published route and said finding mistakes in the book was one of the joys about self-publishing – they could just go in and fix it instead of waiting months, years or never for the publisher to fix them.”

Check out this week’s discussion on Thursday at 10am EST:
Notating… in Books!