Comments on: Copyediting Boobos

By: Sunny88061

Sunny88061 — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:28:12 +0000

Hannah Howell is the worst offender–but I find it in a lot of books these days—discrete instead of discreet. Every time I see it, I just want to shake the author and send her/him back to grammar school.

discrete: detached from others, separate, distinct

discreet: prudent, circumspect, polite, considerate

By: Todd

Todd — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:30:34 +0000

I notice copyediting errors and, if there are too many or they’re too obnoxious, it really throws me out of the book. What REALLY gets me is that there seems to be an increase in redefining words. I’m seeing “ancestors” used to mean children and children’s children and “descendents” to mean parents and so on back. I’ve seen “hoi polloi” used to mean an elite and in one book someone was “choosing his predecessor”, rather than his successor.

By: Leilani

Leilani — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 07:00:07 +0000

Although I’m trained as a biologist, I’ve become a bit of an editing fiend over the years, as my new staff are finding out! When reading for pleasure, I’m usually willing to overlook mistakes (it’s not a letter I will be signing, after all), unless they are persistent throughout the book. For example, I have recently been glomming older Liz Carlyle books. What kept pulling me out of the story was the repeated misuse of “which” versus “that.” Very, very rarely does she (or the copy editor) get it right. It’s like she almost went out of her way to use the wrong word every time. Maddening!

By: Jeannie

Jeannie — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:05:29 +0000

One that I have noticed recently is mixing up passed and past. It drives me crazy!

By: escschwartz

escschwartz — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:30:12 +0000

I have received “reissues” of one or two Kindle books where corrections were made which I thought was wonderful.

I have also sent email to publishers (with copy to the author) when I thought that the ebook needed serious correction because it was very difficult to read. I figure no author wants her/his work to be displayed in such a poor way. One author wrote back to thank me but admitted that little was likely to be done to correct the digital text errors even though corrections could be made and the corrected version sent out to purchasers. I guess the publisher figures they got my money already so why bother.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:49:28 +0000

Hmm, this is different than I’d learned, but it does seem to be an accepted definition, depending on which source I check.

Adaptations in language sometimes frustrate me, but I guess they’re always going to happen.

I can’t help but wonder if the sloppiness in copyediting will just reinforce bad language usage, until such errors become commonplace enough to be acceptable variations, and the language evolve again.

By: Lilly

Lilly — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:05:41 +0000

First one to report an error gets a coupon for a free ebook from the same (self)publisher.

By: Lourdes

Lourdes — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 12:23:58 +0000

Principal for principle kills me! Aaarrrrgh!!!

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 01:34:26 +0000

Actually, homophones (sound) & homographs (spelling) are subsets of homonyms, so homonym is a correct term for either.

By: Alaina

Alaina — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:44:56 +0000

Ebooks are tricky, because there are A LOT of formatting errors that are introduced when the files are converted from a print to a reflowable format. Things that you would never think would be a problem, like spacing in weird places, happen because in the print file a designer codes the word to break in a certain place if it appears at the end of the line, so the text block retains its form. These codes are embedded in the file. When the print file is converted to an epub/reflowable text file, the designer’s codes are carried over, although the reason for them no longer exists.

Most of the large publishers are trying to create rules to ensure that doesn’t happen, but for older titles you definitely still see it. Hope that makes sense.