I’m readying the next Monster manuscript for e-publishing at the end of this month. Two friends have already proofed the manuscript and found some wonderful little monster typos. PEAK instead of BEAK would have been particularly embarrassing as the character is talking about a parrot. I’m wondering if my third proofreader will find anything the other two have missed.
Proofreading is a tough job!
I’m pretty good at it when working on someone else’s text, but my own is another thing entirely. It’s just too easy for the eye to glaze over an obvious mistake THEN for THAN, IT’S for ITS and HIM for HER. Gender bending is great when it’s intentional, but not so much fun as a typographical error.
A few years ago I was reading a soon-to-be published mystery from a major publishing house in pre-publication reader proof form. The Strand bookstore used to sell a lot of these. They were located in a dank corner of the basement. My mom, an inveterate bargain hunter and voracious reader, used to haunt those shelves in her pre-Kindle days. I spotted husband for wife on a particular page and noted that the mobster’s son was married to a woman and not another man. A few months later when the book came out, I checked that page in the hardcover edition and discovered that the typo had NOT been detected.
Oops!
I hope my new Monster — Bram Stoker’s Summer Sublet — is free of such mistakes, but I can only try and rely on my proofreading friends.
Although I don’t make a big fuss about proofing my blog posts and I’m sure they are riddled with mistakes. It’s somehow more forgivable. A book, electronic or print, is just more permanent.
Making a Monster is hard work.
Don’t you just love typos, and you rarely spot your own. So frustrating isn’t it.
It’s a great game when they are in someone else’s book — but such a pain when they are in my own work. Makes me CRAZY!
The proofreading will always be with us. And like you said, it’s impossible to see our own mistakes.
It’s humbling. When you write you get to create a universe, but you still can’t check your universe for typos!
You know… I don’t think it’s so bad when there are a couple typos in a “fun” blog post. – Oh well… unless you’re a teacher, a writer, an editor or something else important. LOL
LOL…. writers and typos, the bain of our existence.
I’ve found a great way of finding typos when I self-edit. First I export my manuscript to epub format then I use the Calibre software to convert it into kindle format. And /then/ I read in comfort with the manuscript file open on the pc. I swear those typos just about leap off the page at me, snarling and slobbering.
Roll on the sublet!
Interesting, a technical solution to a non-tech problem!