jmc_bks

Today's SBD shall be brief and to-the-point.

Editorial staffs everywhere: WTF?!?

Maybe editorial staffs have disappeared in this recession, which might explain some of the sloppy writing.

Here are three typos or editing gaffes that I caught while reading last weekend. There were more, but these are the ones that I remember without consulting the books in question.

amatuer is not a word; probably the author meant "amateur"
when putting out a BOLO, the subject is not of "Indian decent" but of "Indian descent" -- that "s" makes a difference not only in meaning but in pronunciation
"no" is not the same as "know", and when a character lacks knowledge, "I don't no" is not the correct way to phrase the idea
to =/= too =/= two

I make spelling and grammar errors as I blog. And, unfortunately, in work papers, too. Everyone does it. We're all human.

Here's the thing, though, NY publishers and small epublishers: when I'm buying a book and I read sentences that lack punctuation and seem to not even have a passing acquaintance with the idea of S-V-O? When homophones are repeatedly misused and common spelling errors that even SpellCheck should catch are littered through out the book? I feel like returning the damn book and asking for a refund, or perhaps converting the document to .doc, fixing the obvious errors (not necessarily the dubious stylistic choices, though) and redlining it, then sending it back to the epublisher.