OrlandoNative wrote:kzt wrote:I've been told that one of the reasons for the errors and typos is that there isn't enough time to stomp them out.
Plus, the detailed editing that is needed just isn't occurring due to time. For example, AAC needed some serious editing, but I'm told it was either publish it now or wait months and David had other things to do.
The defects in CoG are much more obvious, but there was also not enough time to fix them due to David and Eric's schedule issues prior to the submission deadline.
My email client has a spellchecker. So does my word processor. That may not catch the logic and syntax errors, or substituting the wrong occasional wrong name, but it should at least catch the typos.
On the other hand, if many of those other kinds of errors are obvious to *ME* on my first read-through of the book; and I'm not a proof reader or editor by profession or inclination, one wonders just how difficult - and time consuming - it really would have been for the "professionals" explicitly hired for such a purpose to have actually done their jobs.
Nobody's perfect, but some things are definitely hard to explain and/or justify.
Spellcheckers won't catch typos where you have homonyms (to, two, too). And they will report false positives--reporting a spelling error where the word is actually spelled correctly when the word is not in the spell-checker's dictionary (as an example, the spellchecker built-in to the Firefox web browser consistently reports the word manticore as a misspelling, regardless of whether it is capitalized or not).
Other problems include names--both names of places and people, especially where the name is either not common or foreign. The Safehold series has to also deal with the aversion of the
Eternal English trope (used in Safehold as My Nyme is ____) and the use of the
Gratuitous Foreign Language trope.
As for noticing errors on the first read through, you
usually will notice spelling or grammar errors
only on the first read through. After the first reading (and to some extent, even on the first reading), your brain starts correcting errors that your eyes are reporting. It is almost impossible for an author to catch these types of errors, which is why proofreader editors exist (although reportedly publishing houses seem to be cutting back on them--$$ issues).
And don't even think about computer grammar checkers.