I spent a lazy weekend (first in ages) lounging and napping and spending time outdoors on what was one of the nicest winter weekends. Also, I started (and finished) reading Carrie Fisher’s new book Wishful Drinking, one of the better autobiographies I’ve read. No, let me restate that – it was a compelling, funny, fast-and-furious look at addiction, bipolar disorder, family, patterns, obsessions, and how she turns men both bald and gay. All in under 150 pages. That’s what I like – tell it like it is, but don’t dawdle. It was one of those books that left a deliciously odd feeling of seeing inside someone’s brain and liking her view.
What I didn’t like was the obvious absence of true proofreading. Oh, someone did the obligatory spell check because there weren’t glaring errors, but somewhere around page 135, there it was – the use of “then” when the sentence clearly called for “than.” Those of you who know me know that’s enough for me to toss a book aside and call it rubbish. Alas, it was near the end and I’d already devoted time and emotion into this. Let’s press on. I overlooked the “internet” spelling instead of “Internet.” Some people just don’t like capitals (e.e. cummings was a perfect example). And I’m aware that someone who writes compelling stuff like Carrie Fisher doesn’t usually require a proofreader. But there it was, ruining my day – a misused word.
The point is we all need proofreading. If you look at any of my posts here, you’ll find oodles of errors. I do my best, but I’ve yet to memorize ALL of the Chicago Manual of Style (or any of it, for that matter). I proofread, but often I miss stuff. And given the fact that I type these posts in the middle of my first cup of tea, I beg you to understand my pre-caffeinated state.
These days editors are ultra-busy, proofreading departments are ghosts from the past, and mistakes get into print. When they do, I go on my tirade about how proofreading is dead, and eventually I move on. But if it’s your stuff? We have to ask ourselves how those mistakes made it that far in the first place.
Do you proofread your own work? If so, is it a quick spell check or a line-by-line edit? Whose job do you think it is to proof your copy? Have you had an error appear in print? If so, was it one you made or one that was introduced?
Besides, spell check and grammar check are often WRONG. If that’s what you rely on to “proof” your work without doing word-by-word IN CONTEXT, you’re screwed.
The worst mistake was in an article in an almanac, where the editor transposed the date of an historical event, didn’t let me do a final proof, and the piece went to press with several million copies in distribution. My date was correct, I fact-checked, but it was somehow transposed in the editing. I looked like a big fat idiot on an international scale in regard to a topic about which I write often, have done mountains of research, etc. The editor refused to add an errata slip or run a correction on the company’s web site. I was furious. And they wouldn’t add a clause into contracts beyond that to avoid this type of mistake. It happened nearly five years ago, and still rankles.
I’ve had errors–both my own and ones that were introduced–make it to print. Here’s an example of each:
-While I was still with my former employer, I did two versions of a products and services brochure. I and several others proofread both, but one small typo made it past all of us. The day they came back from the print shop, one of our account executives came by to get several copies. She took one look at it and immediately spotted the typo. She was included on my proofing list from that day forward!
-I wrote a letter to the editor of a small neighborhood paper last fall. It was blissfully error free, until the editorial staff butchered my pronouns.
Got the same pet peeves with the addition of overuse of “that” to boot. I do proof my stuff, and if it’s something I plan to submit, I run it by my crit group. Sometimes your eyeballs just refuse to pick up your own nits.
Thanks for adding to my virtual gumbo today!
Every book I’ve edited has gone through multiple edits and proofs, yet invariably something shows up in the printer’s proofs. In most cases we catch the errors at that point, but my own recently released novel contained a terribly embarrassing error in the printed book.
In the acknowledgements, I put Desire as the first name of one of the writers who critiqued the manuscript for me! Her middle name was Lesire and I combined her first and middle names as her first name.
There was a blurb from her on the back cover and at the beginning of the book, and her name was right in those places, but it was wrong in the acknowlegements. The mistake was mine, but my editor and two proofreaders failed to catch it.
The writer herself was very generous and had a good laugh over it, saying she was going to insist her husband call her Desire from now on.
But I felt awful and am almost too embarrassed to admit it.
Put me in the camp of having made the mistake and having had the mistakes applied by someone else. In both cases, it sucks. You’re the one who looks foolish, no matter how strongly you’ve protested.
In a recent case, I superimposed two letters in one word. My spell check, as Devon pointed out, failed to find it. I didn’t follow up with a thorough enough proofing. The client saw it and I got chewed out (rightfully, too – that was my mistake). Naturally, it was a very prominent word in the copy.
I’ve also had editors take my carefully-crafted prose and insert all sorts of mistakes as they cut and trim. These mistakes are harder to accept because I don’t get another look at the copy before it goes to print. I have to trust that these people are checking their own work on, well, my work.
Several things pop out:
1) Love short, snappy, get to it memoirs. (And of course I’d like to think mine is all three.)
2) Couldn’t agree more that proofreading is critical, and when people can’t get then/than straight, I need read no further.
3) Sorry again that I was so close, and yet so far. But you’re right about the weather – GORGEOUS!
Lori, mistakes like that really irk me too. When I come across a mistake in a book, I usually screech and start bouncing up and down in my chair, then insist that my husband look at whatever mistake I found. I’m sure he thinks I’m slightly nuts. Thankfully he married me anyway. :o)
I’m much more likely to overlook the occasional mistake in blogs and emails, and admittedly I don’t proofread my blog posts very often — but in professionally published books there is simply no excuse.
Exactly, Katharine. This is a less formal medium (and much easier to edit). If it’s in print, it needs to be checked out more thoroughly.
Carrie, I’m sorry I missed you, too. :)) I hope you had a nice break from the snow! Ours is almost all melted already! Hard to believe we were freezing our teeth off last week.
Your pre-caffeinated state…LOL, that is why I made a rule at my work that absolutely NO emails are to be sent before the 2nd cup of coffee.
I usually proofread line-by-line unless I am in a hurry to get something posted. I have never had an error appear in actual print, other than my only printed short story which was an error on purpose. The short story was a giant run-on sentence that was a page long. It won my school $1,000 for the writing department. The committee probably felt sorry that the students from my school did not know how to effectively use punctuation. Go figure.
LOL! Sal, that’s a great story!
I agree. We all need to proof-read and then have our work proof-read by someone else, or several someone-else’s. Cause one glaring grammatical error in a book does it for me too.. it just takes the book’s standards down by, like five notches in one go!
Oh my. Do NOT get me started on this one. I had to actually start a blog about things like this because I couldn’t take it any more.
Just dropping by this post one more time to tag you. I’ve started following your blog on a daily basis and I’m so glad I have, which is why I chose you for this. :o)
I have a sad story on how my work was edited way back in college. We then published a class magazine which was distributed in the entire school. It was too late when I realized that the editor (who happened to be my classmate) jumbled up my words creating unpardonable errors on tenses on the very first paragraph of my article which ruined my entire story ( it was supposedly written to narrate how life WAS like in that small town I featured). I think it pays to read your work again after your editor has done his job.
This is a thought-provoking post. You are always good in squeezing our juices.
I have left something for you over my blog. It’s something special. 🙂
I'm adept at catching mistakes made by other writers, but unfortunately my own errors are often invisible to my eyes, no matter how closely I edit line by line.
At my last job I wrote an eight-page newsletter, which was proof-read by three or four staffers. At least that many errors went undetected. The final irony was that as soon as I read the published copy, the mistakes jumped off the page at me.
Go figure!