30 Comments

I always enjoyed the mistyped version of Bulwer-Lytton's ringing phrase 'The pen is mightier than the sword', after the printer ran the second and third words together.

And one of my favourite stories about an editor's error is the last line of Nabokov's short story 'Bend Sinister', which to his annoyance was turned from "A good night for mothing" into "A good night for nothing". What you might call the mother of all misreadings.

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Those are fantastic.

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Miller's Book Review, "Typos in James Joyce") I can't help editing and proofing as I read anything and everything. It seems to be a mental tic with me. Advanced education in Latin, English and linguistics studies may be the cause. Hence in a long reading history I've (reluctantly) had to track (inevitable) evolutionary changes in the denotations of words. There's one of my least favourites in this piece - "honing in". Originally, "homing in". To hone: to sharpen a tool. To home in: to focus more closely on as target. Well, it's too late now to salvage that particular word. Thus a little more of the linguistic precision I treasure declines to fuzziness in everyday usage. (cf use of "to beg the question" when "to raise the question" is intended - very fuzzy).

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The best way to proofread for spelling and grammatical errors is to read the text aloud. What the eye glosses over, the tongue and the ear notice. But that would take a lot more publication prep time for a printing house, and probably involve a whole new editing position - the auditory proofreader? the audible editor?

But reading aloud probably wouldn't have caught the errors in Joyce's 'Ulysses'. If one completely jettisons the conventions of written language, one can expect that not even one's publisher will be able to see where the printed text went wrong.

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The auditory trick works. We definitely used it when proofing manuscripts. I still do sometimes.

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I read the material backwards.

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Yes, that’s a great trick too.

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There's a probably apocryphal story about Robert Browning that if it's not true, should be. Apparently Browning talked to a group of his readers and was asked a question about the specific meaning of one of his poems. He's supposed to have said, "Well, I knew what it meant when I wrote it, but now only God knows what it means." Apparently, he passed off judgment and interpretation to a higher authority than his readers.

I wish I could find the roots of that story, but it's evaded me.

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What a great story.

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My last book is about countertearoom experts! Now this is a weird portal. You can even listen to it (with original music) on my substack. Keep up the great work, Joel.

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I love the Sinner's Bible. It is one of the all-time greats.

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If we count who’s reading it, every Bible is probably a Sinner’s Bible, regardless of typos.

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So true.

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maybe they knew adultery was nearly impossible not to commit, because just by looking you're guilty of lust, just sayin'

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The bar is set rather high perhaps.

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Excellent article, Joel. Software has made proofreading more difficult because it thinks it knows what I want to write. It changes my words. And it makes proofreading mistakes. I enjoyed this article. Thank you.

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My pleasure!

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Um. Given my penchant for tea, and the fact that my favorite local tearoom just closed, I’m now wondering if I should be concerned about the possibility of “countertearoom experts.” Also, perhaps I could infiltrate as a double-agent and save the tearooms (and get free tea in the process).

I also wonder if the phenomenon of not seeing typos is related to the phenomenon when you suddenly lose confidence in your ability to spell basic words such as Wednesday or altogether. You second guess for no apparent reason and then find yourself looking up “beautiful” on dictionary.com because you don’t want to look ridiculous.

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I often double check my spelling, though these days I usually use ChatGPT—makes a wonderful thesaurus as well.

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I’m a typo-maniac. My editors used to laugh at my errors and collected them in a file they dubbed “Jeterisms.”

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That’s hilarious. I’d love to see those!

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Is "hones in on these allusions" a typo, or is this now acceptable usage?

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As an editor of thirty+ years, I would tag it unacceptable. You have to stand for some things.

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I hate when a perfectly good meme has a typo in it because then I can’t send it on. Memers, please be more careful.

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Just use spell Czech and all will be swell.

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I loved this, especially as someone who used to be in the editorial department of a business publisher, and having holy fear of any typo slipping through. Back in those days (only 1990s) they still had a complex system of binders with massive forests of post-it notes and colored pens on paper. After passing through so many “witch editor” hands, and given deadlines, it is a miracle anything readable got through.

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Newspapers ridding themselves of copy editors and proofreaders only undermined their credibility even more as the accumulated errors offered additional reasons to consider them 'fake news'

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Glad you survived prior proofreading errors. That aside, this was the most entertaining post I've read today. Keep them coming! Oh, I was at the Bible Museum (the one in DC) and I didn't see any examples of the Wicked Bible there.

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