Typos in ebooks

[John the Miner]

What a joy it is to find some kindred spirits in this discussion re typos in ebooks!
I've been a proofreader since 1957 (spending 20 years of that time as the boss of a newspaper reading room); now I'm "retired" and running my own editing/proofreading business.
Late last century, newspaper publishers decided it was more economical to dispense with reading rooms and rely on their journalists to write and correct their own material, with some amusing consequences.
In my home town, the [statewide] daily instituted a box on its letters pages declaiming that it is "committed to accurate, fair and fearless publication of news and commentary". This subsequently became known as the "OOPS!" column or the "BAD JOKE" column among the staff when it first appeared due to the few and very selective occasions that it admitted that a mistake had appeared in the pages.
Now, in this electronic world, when anybody can write and "publish" anything in cyberspace without any form of editorial control (and certainly no proofreading input), it seems the chickens have come home to roost.
The use of OCR technology shows the limitations of its own usefulness in transcribing the printed word to its electronic form.
Unfortunately, the standard of education today means that more and more "readers" are seeing fewer and fewer literals when they scan a page, with less appreciation of any mistakes they encounter.
It also means that these same "readers" present the words they put out there in a barely readable form as far as intelligible discourse is concerned. They might know what they meant to say, but it's obvious they haven't proofread their own entries, thereby losing any impact their statements might have had.

[1611mac]

Originally Posted by John the Miner

What a joy it is to find some kindred spirits in this discussion re typos in ebooks!
-edit-
The use of OCR technology shows the limitations of its own usefulness in transcribing the printed word to its electronic form.
-edit-.

Funny how things have come "full circle" for me personally. In the late 70's my first real job was working for a yellow page company in the "computer room." (a 16 bit nova clone)

Input for the yellow page ads came this way: The copy was typed on IBM Selectric typewriters and then my job was to "scan" (OCR) the typed sheets to convert to "electronic format."

Soon after that "terminals" came in and there was no more scanning.

Now here we are in 2011, 35 years later and OCR is a major reason I can enjoy old classic books!

Weird

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

intheendofdays

Welcome to Mobileread ....

Those examples you have listed can be OCR errors, as well as formatting problems. Did you tell Amazon ?

A lot of those errors are also because the publisher uses a PDF file as the source. That generates all kinds of errors.

[John the Miner]

Ah, 1611mac! A man after my own heart.
My first introduction to electronic typesetting was late last century when the company I worked for (a Murdoch enterprise) put in paper tape readers to produce its papers in a cold type format. PAPER TAPE!
This technology had already been outdated for a couple of decades when they decided to resurrect the system from another of their newspaper concerns (we believed it had come from a bankrupt South Sea Island newspaper they owned and they had to keep it going for a while until something better (and cheaper!) came along.
The paper I worked for was touted as the state's most successful tabloid, outselling its nearest rival (a broadsheet) by thousands and thousands. They also made a point in saying, in the broadsheet, that it would never go tabloid.
However, when el momento de la verdad finally arrived, they had no qualms about closing the tabloid down and transforming the broadsheet into a tabloid.
I'll always remember that they had had a competition which had been running for weeks at the time, the main prize of which was a round-the-world trip. Of course, the suckers had to buy the tabloid to get an entry token to include with their entry so they had a chance to win it.
When we got the word on a Saturday afternoon that the paper (a Sunday publication) was going belly up, their last issue had the plea: "Don't forget to keep those cards and letters coming in, folks, if you want to win!"
Needless to say (although I'm saying it), nobody got to enjoy the promised trip, but the entries sure swelled the company's coffers by a goodly sum. Funny, that.
They informed the gullible public in a seven-line paragraph buried away on about page 36that the paper was closing down

[AlexBell]

Welcome, John. It's a pleasure to see another user of the ECO Reader, presumably someone from Australia, and another person who values good proof reading.

Regards, Alex

[John the Miner]

G'day, Alex!
Yes, an Australian.
Sorry. I had to dice the ECO reader ... when I got my first one, it went well for two charges (about 10 days' use), then it refused to start up the next time. I replaced that one with a new one, which refused to shut down after its initial first charge and first use.
Now I use a Laser 7, a media player/ebook reader which is going perfectly. As well, I have a couple of Cobolt media player/ebook readers. None of them use e-ink displays, which, when you think of it, are pretty limited in that they depend on outside light to read the screen, or else you have to buy a light to shine on the screen while it's being read.
Each type of reader has its own good/bad points, I suppose. Different strokes for different folks.
I came across the Mobile Read forum when I was searching for free downloadable ebooks for the e-readers. I entered the discussion on the merits or otherwise of the Kindles and the rights or wrongs of stripping DRM content off downloadable books (which I'm not in the least interested in). I'll stick to the classics and out-of-copyright texts.
I put my five cents' worth in and introduced the subject of the vast number of mistakes present in downloadable books and I gently suggested that some of the correspondents put their messages across in a barely understandable form, but was shot down in flames and told to get off and start up a new "tread", one called it.
So I'm sitting back and watching how this discussion goes (particularly the suggestion that the publishers should be shown just how shoddy some of their products are).
That will be interesting for all concerned on this side of the screen, but I think it will be absolutely ignored by the ones it will be directed to.

[AlexBell]

Hello, John

I'm sorry you've had trouble with your ECO Reader - mine is still working, though my Sony is my favourite.

And I'm puzzled that you had the reaction about proof reading. There have been many threads about typos in ebooks. I started one entitled 'Hall of Shame' but it petered out. Still, I'm sure many people share our views.

Regards, Alex

[John the Miner]

... and did you happen to take notice of the amount of spelling mistakes put in their submissions by the ones who contacted you?
It amazes that people can sit down at a keyboard and bash away at it, put their thoughts down on screen and hit the "send" button without reading what they wrote.
It's a DFW, to use an Australian acronym ... maybe you've heard it?

[crich70]

Ah the IBM Selectric. Probably the best typewriter ever made. Some 20 yrs ago I took a college course in office machine repair and we had to strip the IBM Selectric down and put it back together in a working order. Not an easy thing to do since each part worked with the others around it so that a mistake in a setting could throw a lot of things off. No doubt some errors do creep in due to the person who is supposed to scan it for typo's isn't paying proper attention to what he/she is doing, but I have a feeling that as long as humans write there will also still be some typo's that creep in.

I remember a couple that the (former) editor of a paper caught once (they were mentioned when he was being roasted). One said, "hens for sale, all dressed and ready for the rooster." It was supposed to read roaster instead of rooster. lol. The other was a missing comma in an ad to sell a car. Part of the ad advertised "nine person roof rack," because a comma was left out between person and roof. *snicker*

Originally Posted by 1611mac

Funny how things have come "full circle" for me personally. In the late 70's my first real job was working for a yellow page company in the "computer room." (a 16 bit nova clone)

Input for the yellow page ads came this way: The copy was typed on IBM Selectric typewriters and then my job was to "scan" (OCR) the typed sheets to convert to "electronic format."

Soon after that "terminals" came in and there was no more scanning.

Now here we are in 2011, 35 years later and OCR is a major reason I can enjoy old classic books!

Weird

[rogerVA]

Typos are rampant in the ebooks, especially in the various cheapo ones I might buy. I notice the same thing on various professional websites, too. There's something about typing for a digital audience that seems to make publishers care less about making sure every word is right. It suggests they think they're more ephemeral in nature than the printed (on paper) word, which is, I suppose, true. This annoys me greatly and is another reason to hold onto "real" books of titles/authors you really enjoy.

[1611mac]

I'm not a speed reader (wish I were) but I wonder how typo's affect a good speed reader.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by 1611mac

I mostly read classic works from the late 1700's to 1800's so my "books" are mostly ocr scans from places like google books, etc. These are free works so they have not been cleaned up.

Add to that that some are in "old english" which tends to drive OCR software nuts.

But thru it all... I am grateful to be able to read the works and most are surprisingly pretty easy to read.

.

You know that many of the classics are available here at MR in carefully proof-read versions?

Books printed written in the 18th century are not "Old English", by the way. "Old English" died out around the 12th century, and refers to the language of such works as "Beowolf", the opening lines of which are:

Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum,
þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon,
hū ðā æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scēfing sceaþena þrēatum,
monegum mǣġþum, meodosetla oftēah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ǣrest wearð
fēasceaft funden, hē þæs frōfre ġebād,
...

which I'm sure you'll agree is not very like 18th century English.

[pidgeon92]

I purchased Say You're One of Them from Fictionwise. In the second story of the book, there are several instances where something - I am assuming it is some sort of odd foreign character - is being replaced by "do02D9," and worse, sometimes by "zoke02D9ke02D9."

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by 1611mac

I'm not a speed reader (wish I were) but I wonder how typo's affect a good speed reader.

I take it that was deliberate?

[1611mac]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You know that many of the classics are available here at MR in carefully proof-read versions?

Sorry, when I say "classics" I'm referring to classics in my field which is church and bible history. When I say "old english" I'm referring to "u's" being "v's" and "s" being "f", and also the early spelling differences. Such as "The Prouerbes of Solomon the sonne of Dauid, King of Israel, To knowe wisedome and instruction? as found in the first printing of the King James Bible.