Typos are common. Even with multiple revisions and proofreaders, mistakes slip through.

one of my theories is that it is how they trace pirated copies. have different versions of different mistakes and see which ones wind up being shared, there is your piracy source. but that's just a tinfoil hat theory.

Very interesting! Thanks for the quick reply. For some reason I thought published books would be perfect in spelling and grammar 🤣

Some typos are common, yes, but I've only noticed a ton in books that seemed more poorly written to begin with

Paper typos is the new paper towns. I dig it

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I read on the Kindle and have noticed numerous typos in numerous books. I assumed that these amount of typos were specific to kindle versions but I guess not.

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It tends to happen more with fantasy, which are the books you've included. Why?
Well, because the list of unrecognized words in a fantasy book is WAY LONGER than the list of unrecognized words in an autobiography. So, you can't really use a quick spell check as easily.

Heck, some books like Mieville's Kraken are written in such an esoteric style, I don't even know if you'd recognize an error.

I think they're more common in Kindle books that were imported via OCR. Some older fonts and older editions don't always scan well.

Yep, it's because the editors end up having to put in such intensive efforts to improve the writing, that a) they are unable to focus on the smaller issues b) the excess corrections and changes introduce new errors into the manuscript.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap

It's next to impossible to have an error-free book. There're too many people and steps involved where errors can be introduced into the process. Famously, the KJV Bible had typos, and there were plenty of scholars checking it. I find typos, missed punctuation, in most every book I read, more so with books published since the '90's. I think publishers are less concerned about editing these days, and then there're the self-publishers.

Everytime I see one, I feel like I should be an editor.

Same hahaha! I usually take a picture of it and text it to my reading friend 🙃

In theory there are not many typos. But hoo boy have I read some books. I even got into it with an author, once. It turned out when they were shopping around for editors, they were being quoted $4000. And I couldn’t decide if the editors were trying to rip them off, or just looked at the sheer… OK it was really, really, really bad. so many typos. Occasional randomly capitalized words. I just, I just couldn’t.

It’s because the publishing industry has been cost cutting incredibly hard, mostly by not replacing the people who leave in the modern heavy crunch era. I imagine these example books were edited by one person in one day. Small presses are starting to outsource work at this point. If you’re lucky and courting the big time publishers, you’ve still got an editor with 5 books for a fiscal quarter.

Oh sweet heaven, OCR problems. I am deeply familiar! Here are a few of my common finds: d=cl h=ln W=|V B=8 m= nn (and vice-versa).

With the kindle you can actually report typos. I don’t know if they ever actually do anything with the reports though.

I would rather have typos than pages smeared with ink so badly you can’t read it. I’ve had both, especially frequently in the last few years. It does seem more common.

One of my favorite book series has a typo that I have report through the Kindle app on every re-read. I think 5 total reads over the last 10 years. It has yet to be fixed. You would think they would have some automated fixing system integrated into error reporting for simple text errors. I guess not though.

Newspapers also

It's not uncommon for a big book to have one. But most books that have them frequently are either poorly edited or poorly written. Or both.

The few editors I've talked to in person never got enough time to comb through everything properly. Plus not every editor is created equal, be it because of their specialty or skills.

There are books that get more time and attention, a whole team of the best editors and betas going several rounds using fancy software and their best judgement. But more books are published than ever, sell in relatively low numbers, and more and more of the publishing process is relegated to the author (even if you don't self publish), so sometimes it's one exhausted intern with barely enough time to read the whole thing.

Sometimes Typos will have something hidden.

In OG Ready Player One each misplaced letter if put in a string gave you a website that brought you to an AR game, that eventually took you to a retro arcade on one date. Whoever won the retro gaming competition won a Delorian.

As an avid reader for (consults a calculator) 66 years, I can tell you that yes, the frequency of typos has indeed increased. Greatly.

I recently read a book that had been re-released by the author because he was angry with what editors had previously done to his story, as he explained in a long preface. Well, that book read like it had been written for an 8th grade writing class. Authors should not edit their own work for the same reasons programmers don't do QA for their own code.

I’ve spent the past 30 years as a freelance copy editor for nonfiction books and other documents, and have worked for dozens of publishers. The short answer to the question of errors that make it into the published book is that publishers don’t want to pay for quality.

Many tasks in the life of a manuscript are now handled by freelancers, and in some cases every step except project management is outsourced. So that’s one issue, that managers might not have access to the best copy editor out there. But another issue is that good copy editors—like me!—get tired of doing what amounts to pro bono work: when publishers pay very low project/page rates, they’ll get lower-quality work. When I accept work from publishers who pay a low rate, I read it only once then skim once more quickly. It’s far from ideal, and leaves lots of bugs no doubt, but it’s what they’re willing to pay for.

On the other hand, I have other clients who pay by the hour, and tell me to spend as much time as needed to catch every error. With those clients I read three or sometimes four times, and very few errors slip by me.

Online on translated books its not rare yeah

It’s very common. I’ve never understood why and am still surprised every time I come across a misspelling or grammatical error. Seems like that all should be automated by now.

Recent one, headline of a half-page newspaper story: Julia Roberts Finds Life And Her Holes Get Better With Age.

It's common for books to have typos. But I read somewhere that the rule is one typo is accepted per 10,000 words. Basically, if every chapter has typos, someone had a bad editor or proofreader.

I read a self published book; so many error especially with apostrophes. It would say he 'd or ins 't and a few isnt'
I'm a bad speller and a two finger typist. I'm grateful for reddit and others having spell check. But when users have the tools, and still misspell?

From 2018 at least.

I read a lot, and for traditionally published books, 3 or 4 small errors per book feels normal and acceptable. Any more than that and my eyebrows start to go up.

In my experience, some indie books are exceptionally well edited, and some are not. Many popular authors fall in the latter category, and I have to assume that readers love their stories so much they’re willing to overlook subpar editing.

Most books I've read don't have many typos. Any book I have read that has been translated to English though.... Typos all over. Even in the "good" translations.

One or two is common, but I've noticed books published in the last few years blatantly failing to follow basic style guides. I read one book that never had a space after an ellipsis and another that didn't italicize foreign words.

Are they all from the same publisher?

Thanks. I only just read it on an FB group, undated.

Yeah, the publishers are under intense pressure to get the books in the stores and they rush. That's when things get missed.

3-4 errors per page seems excessive and unacceptable in a “traditionally” printed book. I’ve only seen it happen with really trendy, popular, fast literature, where getting it out quickly is more important than the quality of the edition. Especially since the fan base for those books don’t usually mind or notice.

Editing has gone to pot since the late '90s.

This. At some point somebody decided they'd rather have a little more money at the cost of reputation and clear communication. Many places regard copy editing as an unnecessary luxury.

If this is real that’s super freaking cool! Someone’s a gunter.

If they pay me per correction I'll do it. Otherwise I'm not working for free.

Sub-editors. They all got fired. They were the ones doing the work. Editor is an exec position in publishing firms. This is also the reason why online news sites suck. Subbies used to re-write articles to make them readable.

maybe You should be a professional proofreader, lots of work around correcting other peoples mastakes.

Typos happen, but they are definitely not common enough that you should be picking some out in every book you read.

It of course occurs a lot more with self published books.

Another cause could be a bad OCR scan for ebooks.

I agree that many per page would be unacceptable. I said 3-4 per book.

I just hate it when I see historical errors. In Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy she writes a bar scene where everyone will remember November 23rd as the day President John F kennedybdies. He died on 11/22 not 11/23.

You’re right, my bad, I misread. Yes, 3-4 per book are admissible.

No worries.

I've noticed typos in books converted between .pdf and print. I assume some OCR is used which reads the wrong letters and the editors miss it during the proofread.

It amazes me that “callling” would get through—so they not use a spellcheck ?

Thanks, I was going to say they're much more common now, but I wasn't sure if I was just now more aware of them (I'm an editor now, but I sure as heck wasn't anything more than a student when I first started reading).

And don't even get me started on self-published books...

So I guess it's a good thing I tend to proofread my shit before even saving it, yes?

Caught a couple in The Expanse, a major sci fi series from a mainstream publisher that definitely would’ve had a professional edit or two done to it.

Even Stephen King said a couple get through in his works. One example was how he accidentally said the cast went ‘peasant hunting’ and it somehow got through all elements of the editing process.

Mass market game and movie tie-ins in particular have deadlines that have to be out the door at a certain date.

I was reading a copy of Mary Barton recently that on several pages just had random dashes, commas, brackets, slashes etc throughout. Don’t know how that sort of blatant error makes it through.

Strong disagree. I hardly ever come across typos in books! Traditional publishing almost never has typos. You might see them a lot in self published, potentially?

The only time I ever saw typos in books was on kindle. When I switched to a different ereader I stopped seeing any, and I never do in paper books. Kindle must have problems with their system, I think

That is very interesting. I never thought about it being a kindle or Amazon issue!!

It all depends on how much time/money was spent. If it's a cheap product that was rushed, sure, there are going to be more errors. I always expect to find at least one or two in any book I read, if I'm honest, and it doesn't bother me too much, but any more would get annoying.

There has only ever been one book that I returned because the formatting and general polish was just unacceptable; a kindle version of one of Terry Pratchett's books, of all titles, and I think they did a complete recall at the time.

Thank you. You're the first person in the thread to mention spell checkers. I write and the vast majority of my spelling errors are caught by the computer. Many more are underlined for me to check. So yeah, unusual things can get by, but I don't understand why the OP is seeing so many.

I read ARC’s for writers, and I send them pages of errors. Pretty sad actually!

I read a book that was so badly proofed that the wrong character’s name was used in a scene. The man, “Al,” was talking to a woman, “Barb,” and during the conversation “Carol” replied to Al. I had to reread the passage several times because Carol wasn’t even in the house, and I was totally confused.I finally figured out that the author meant to write Barb but wrote Carol by mistake, and no one caught it. That’s the worst typo I ever found.

I began professionally reviewing books in the early 80s. Over the years I have seen a steady decline in the quality of both orthography and proof-reading. At least one book, privately printed, was almost unreadable because of it.

Part of the problem is that costs are rising and often proofing can be air tasked or subbed out to freelancers, who don't have the experience, but are cheap.

At the very least, no book should have any error other than grammar or 'literals' (words spelled correctly, but the wrong word - their for there and so on) now we have spell-checkers.

But often, and increasingly, that's not true.

Just another reason to love old books.

Editors seem to be a thing of the past. If you don't believe me just read anything - books, magazines, news.

I commonly notice typos in books. But then it might be mostly in romance novels, which at the rate they get churned out probably have a short editing cycle. Usually the typos I see are usage of the wrong word spelled correctly, e.g. they/their (though actually that one is rare, I just can’t call to mind a specific example right now). Have definitely seen such typos in fantasy and mystery novels as well.

I usually find like 2 or 3 typos in each book I read.

But lately I’ve been listening to audiobooks so it’s harder to tell.

I wonder if someone has mispronounced any words…. ? I’ll have to pay closer attention.

I’ve noticed this recently too! I got a new copy of the book Jurassic Park and there are some typos so bad that I just couldn’t figure out what was trying to me conveyed.

It inspired me to dig through some old boxes in the attic to find my hard cover copy that I got in the 90s and the typos are not in the original one! Somehow a book printed more than 20 years after the original edition has more typos in it!

Yes, I was going to say that just having a few typos in a book is probably an editing issue. Probably editors that are overworked and/or underpaid, so of course they're going to miss stuff. And, as a writer, I know I might occasionally use a wrong word if I get too tired or distracted.

Plus there are things that not even the best editor on the planet can fix...

Psycho by Robert Blotch has ''should of'' and ''could of'' a few times.

I work in a library, and we just got 3 copies of a new true-crime book from a major publisher that has a typo on the main title page. 😬

Did you get a high score on the SATs?

Hahaha that's so funny! I bet you guys had a good laugh out of that.

Wow how interesting they introduced more mistakes doing newer prints!

Haha, now that's funny! It's amazing that from the author to editors and publishers, no one caught that! 😅

Once a book gets transmitted to the design department, the programs they use are no longer Microsoft Word with spell check. So, any number of errors can get introduced when changes are requested after the book hits lay out and they become much harder to catch. Add in crashed schedules, overworked editors, designers, and managing editors…. And mistakes happen!

I’ve noticed a lot more too. Some of them are so bad I almost felt like editing and mailing the copy back to the publisher and letting them know this is how to edit a book.

InDesign has spellcheck

This would only work for pre-release stuff. They aren't going to submit multiple ebooks with different typos to amazon, only one. And once it's released, someone is going to buy it, and share that copy and it will trickle through all the free ebook sharing sites.

honestly i have to say ulysses (james joyce) is pretty riddled with typos lol

I wouldn’t have been able to continue at that point. That one irks me more than a mosquito bite.

Yes, it's very bad. English is my second language, I shouldn't be able to spot such mistakes lol

I must just be lucky then. I used to be a copy editor so I’d certainly notice!

I agree. I love the convenience of using a Kindle but I was surprised but the number of typographical (and unintentional grammatical) errors I see compared to paper books.

Typos are common but it varies a lot. In some books I don't find a single in one, but in one fairly recent first edition novel I found dozens before I stopped counting. For example the author/editor/proofreader had a tendency to confuse b and h.

Back in the day, my friend Spike MacPhee started re-editing what he called Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Typos. There were dozens upon dozens of them.

I see it so much as well, and it's really frustrating. But it's not really one person's fault, I'm sure editors are more than qualified to find these mistakes, they just don't have the time because they're pushed too hard for work

Wasn’t that how early map makers did it? They put a random town that didn’t exist on the map. If another map company came out with the same fake town, they knew they stole the map.

Yes, but keep in mind that we all have a blind spot when it comes to our own writing and we should never attempt to copy edit ourselves. This is why self-published books are so laughably full of errors, and also why the manuscripts I’ve worked on that presented the most challenges have been those with a note attached from the author: “This won’t need much work because I have [or my wife has—for some reason it’s never a husband!] already copy edited it.”

I find typos all the time. Apparently if u inform them they might send u a free revised version as Thk u for helping them catch it

What are you trying to say?

Being able to RE-read something over and over is a skill. I figured they probably did well on standardized tests.

Glad I asked. Your comment came off sounded critical which is probably why people downvoted you.

I wonder if “should of” and “could of” might be typos that would stand out even more for someone with English as a second language, since the error has more to do with a lazy mixup of the sound rather than mixup of the meaning? (Not that there’s any excuse for them being in something published.)

That may be so, it's the same when people mix up they're/their, your/you're or too/to. At least I haven't seen them in a book (yet) but come on, homophones aren't that hard.

Yeah. Thanks for asking. That’s Reddit I guess. It’s ok.

When editors get passes of deigned files, they don't have access to the indesign program. They get it as a pdf. It's really not the same thing.

As an editor, my first question would be whether these are in dialogue. If yes, then it could be intentional, as the author may want the character to say it that way specifically. If it's in the narrative, well... 😬😬😬

yep. i think Oscar found a bunch of leakers a few years back when they marked their 'for review' DVDs with unique frames.

it would work if you are sending out free copies for reviews. i have seen more than a few pre release copies floating on the choppy seas.

One issue as an editor is bad spellcheckers. When a processor or editing software's spellcheck flags half the words as wrong, you end up missing a few. It gets evenore frustrating when the program doesn't save your additions to its dictionary. I used to run article edits through Scrivener until I ran into one occasion where Scrivener insisted that the words "obsessive" and "denialist" didn't exist. It doesn't explain all typos, but it is a reason that gets brought up in writing circles sometimes.

And just now my phone fought me against "denialist" while not catching my initial misspelling of the word "wrong."

That's what I said. This would work for pre-release stuff. But, it doesn't explain someone buying a finished product and getting a poorly edited mess.

I remembered I had taken a picture of one of these mistakes somewhere. Just found it, it is indeed in the narration, "must of" in Psycho 2, in the first line of chapter 7 haha.

Sargent Nicolas Angle

awkward

My copy of All the Light We Cannot See has a typo in it and that novel won a Pulitzer. I bought my copy 8 years ago years after it came out so I don’t know why they haven’t edited it out by now

I also recently read a pretty fun queer YA novel that was great except it was choc full of errors that made it kind of infuriating to read at times

I must ruefully admit to being someone whose fingers (without direction from any higher brain function) type a random homonym at every opportunity. I’ll catch them all when I carefully proofread, but, since there aren’t enough hours in a day, my emails generally convey the clear impression that I’m a complete illiterate! :)