Bad Editing

[StevenClark]

Has a book ever been ruined for you because of bad editing? Typos? Errors? And just plain stupidity? You want to enjoy it but you just cant. Anyone feel me?

[PeterL]

I've read books that weren't ready for printing, and sometimes that errors were truly gross; but I ampatient, so I pldded through

[Scheherazade]

Anyone feel me?I ain't feelin' nobody!

[keilj]

Has a book ever been ruined for you because of bad editing? Typos? Errors? And just plain stupidity? You want to enjoy it but you just cant. Anyone feel me?

Yes. I just started a book like this last night. It is Free Air by Sinclair Lewis. It has, by far, the worst editing errors I have ever seen, and probably will ever see. It probably has 5-10 editing errors per page - it makes it really hard to read and enjoy. It has things like two words running together (like this runningtogether), it has the wrong character being used - I guess the font they used did not have the right character, so it replaces a - with a |. Again, it makes for hard reading. It has paragraphs being broken mid sentence, so that the rest of the sentence is in the start of a new paragraph. It has quotes with an extra space like this: then he said," I've no time. It begins to get confusing as to where the quote starts and ends. As I said, these happen so many times on one page that it is really disruptive. I won't say it will ruin the book for me, but it is quite a distraction

This was published by General Books. That company should not be publishing books - their editing is a complete farce. I think these kinds of publishers have cropped up because of public domain, and authors' works being available for print after 50 years. But that may be a different discussion altogether

[dfloyd]

Because these books are in the public domain, they are typeset using computer type. The errors occur because they are inadequately proofed. These are digital print-on-demand books which are printed on a digital printer.

I ran into this when I started reading some Dumas' Romances. I finally went to Abe Books and found many Dumas' works printed in the US near the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. These books only ran about ten dollars and there were zero errors. Dumas wrote 48 volumes of Romances, and now the print-on-demand people try to sell them. They are generally terrible, and should be avoided. If you are like me, and you don't like to read off a screen, buying a real printed book is the best answer.

Some of the people who sell books quite old, but make good readers, are ABE Books, Alibris, and Biblio. These are all on the internet so you can browse their inventory or search for a particular book.

[PeterL]

Proofreading is a subset of editting, but your explanation about the electronic setup makes sense. It might have been created by converting a scanned copy. That's a great way to start with old books, but they really need to be gone over word-by-word and line-by-line.

[1n50mn14]

Every single one of Stephen King's books :D. (not to start a Stephen King fight, but there are SO many typos and grammatical errors, it is pathetic).

[cgrillo]

At one point I was reading Varney the Vampire, a penny dreadful along the lines of Wagden the Werewolf, etc. It was interesting to see where all of today's vampire cliches began, but the editing was too bad and I couldn't finish it. I got close to fifteen chapters into it and then just stopped. A novel that's over 1000 pages long really needs a little more excitement than 50 pages of people wondering whether what attacked their sister was a vampire. It's a dizzying book; at one point a doctor describes how it was certainly not a vampire that inflicted the wounds that were being discussed, while saying that the vampire theory does fit everything perfectly; later, I read, after Chapter 38 or something, a major character never appears again, nor is he ever even mentioned again.

I posted that on the 'Books you did not finish but you want to finish' (or something along those lines) thread. The continuity errors, bad grammar, and occasional typos made it unbearable. I think the "50 pages of people wondering whether what attacked their sister was a vampire" were in part due to the fact that the author was paid by the word for that; it also explains the abnormal length.

Also, my copies of Mardi and a Voyage Thither Vol I and II have many ridiculous typos. At one point, a character named Mohi was referred to as 'Mold.' At least, I assume they were talking about Mohi, but it's a little hard to tell... Sometimes, with those books, I just have to take my best guess on what they actually mean.


It has quotes with an extra space like this: then he said," I've no time.

Mardi has these as well. It irks me a little, because sometimes it will be like: " I do not know what to put in this example quote so I will stop now.
"

A whole entire line will be dedicated to one quotation mark, and then, each paragraph is seperated by a blank line. It makes for pages with very little words on them.

Still, though, I am enjoying at least the latter.