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Boy, Am I Angry: Book Goofs

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King Of Jazz

Boy, Am I Angry: Book Goofs

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Posts: 11578

Apr 13 09 9:54 PM

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It takes a monumental single error to all but ruin a book for me, and it's a shame because the 2008 book, THE STORY OF 42nd STREET, by Mary C. Henderson and Alexis Greene, is pretty classy and wonderful otherwise. Henderson has written distinguished books on Broadway theaters. So, what was the error? A 1998 photo showing the figures of Abbott & Costello "pulling" the Empire Theater a few yards down the block. But they're identified as Laurel & Hardy! A &C began their career at the Empire, hence the figures. L & H had squat to do with 42nd St, never mind the differences in appearance. To me this is such an incredibly stupid error that no one caught that I'm annoyed with the whole book.

Anyone else get seriously annoyed about a four-alarm error in a book?

Last Edited By: King Of Jazz Apr 13 09 9:57 PM. Edited 1 time.

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kevin g shinnick

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Posts: 15172

Apr 14 09 7:39 AM

The proof reader is probably 10 , and cannot tell the difference between comedy teams ....at least he didnt call them DAVID SPADE and CHRIS FARLEY!

King Of Jazz

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Posts: 11578

Apr 14 09 8:01 AM

I find that somewhat comforting, thanks.

Lelia Loban

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Posts: 5924

Apr 14 09 9:14 AM

Mistaking Abbott & Costello for Laurel & Hardy is a lulu -- but I'm finding errors in every newly-published book or periodical I read these days. I think cost-cutting publishers have decided that copy-editors are expendable. Maybe they think readers are too illiterate to notice. Even my favorite magazine, the superbly-edited New Yorker, has printed some typos lately. Given the killer deadlines, errors will slip into any daily newspaper, but thanks to staff layoffs during the economic downturn, copy-editing has gone straight to dinosaur hell at The Washington Post, where I now see grammatical howlers, spelling mistakes and other whoopsies not just every day, but on nearly every page.

http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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David Morrill

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Posts: 15215

Apr 14 09 9:45 AM

My secretary just pointed out an article where someone mentioned people walking around with "oozies."

Of course, the writer meant the automatic gun. At least I think so. But, I suppose, he could have been talking about horny pubescent males hitting the streets.

King Of Jazz

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Posts: 11578

Apr 14 09 9:59 AM

I have a long history of scribbling corrections in library books, including this latest.

King Of Jazz

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Posts: 11578

May 6 09 1:17 PM

I swear that publishers are getting lazier and lazier with whoever writes captions...the latest know-nothings mislabeled a photo in a new Vincente Minnelli book, identifying big band singer Helen O'Connell and a musician as Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton. I mean, c'mon. I took out a green ink marker and made a sprawling correction in the library book.

Lelia Loban

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Posts: 5924

May 6 09 8:48 PM

I think the book publishers are doing the same as the newspaper publishers: eliminating jobs to save money. The anonymous copy-editors are easy to sack because they're easy to replace in more affluent times.

http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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King Of Jazz

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Posts: 11578

May 6 09 9:01 PM

Alas, and the results are some extremely annoying errors.

Even an otherwise well done new bio on Fred Astaire has "loose cannon" as "loose canon."

Last Edited By: King Of Jazz May 6 09 9:04 PM. Edited 1 times.

doctor chu chow

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Posts: 1757

May 6 09 9:35 PM

king, i assume you mean the peter levinson book? would you recommend it? i've read THE MAN, THE DANCER by bob thomas, which, although good, didn't look too far beyond his working life.

King Of Jazz

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Posts: 11578

May 6 09 9:58 PM

I've only just begun it, but it seems to cover a lot of new stuff--one chapter deals exclusively with Astaire's clothes! It also deals with the less than wonderful Robyn (the widow Astaire, that former jockey) who keeps Astaire's film clips hostage for impossible fees.

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Lelia Loban

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Posts: 5924

May 7 09 9:29 PM

Rencently I wrote a generally positive review of two books. With a limited word count available, I had a hard time deciding how much space to devote to the fact that both books were full of typos. Most of the errors were obvious finger-slips or spell-checker flubs -- the kind that result when someone intends to write, "causal," types "cauasl" by mistake, then fails to notice that the automatic spell-checker has seen the word as "casual," so that a causal relationship becomes a casual relationship. That particular mistake probably isn't the best example, because it makes nonsense of a thought. Few of the errors I spotted were that serious. Still, I caught small mistakes on nearly every page of one of those books.

My rough draft of that review looked fairly savage. I toned it down, mentioning the mistakes but reasoning that the considerable strengths of the books' contents meant more than the superficial (nuisance-level) sloppiness. Also, the proofreading in these two books was no worse than in most other new books I'd been reading. Not sure I made the right choice.

http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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King Of Jazz

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Posts: 11578

May 8 09 2:31 PM

I can tolerate spelling typos, sloppy as they are, to rank factual flatuences such as those I've pointed out in this thread. They bug me to high heaven because for many readers they're probably accepted as accurate information. On a more complicated level, sometimes celebs in their memoirs make wrong assumptions about other people's careers, sometimes mis-remembering or just flat getting it wrong, even with their own career. A current autobiography of actress Kristen Chenoweth has her seemingly adding her own captions to her photos, cooing over a still from the TV-film THE MUSIC MAN when it's pretty obvious it's from the TV-film ANNIE! After all, Kathy Bates as Miss Harrigan is squarely in the middle of the photo. Geez.

Last Edited By: King Of Jazz May 8 09 2:36 PM. Edited 3 times.

Lelia Loban

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Posts: 5924

May 9 09 7:31 AM

>>After all, Kathy Bates as Miss Harrigan is squarely in the middle of the photo. Geez. >>

When I find that type of error, it drives me bughouse and I do single it out in a review. It's easy to understand how such brain-fart mistakes happen -- I make them myself -- but it's bothersome when they survive the editing process.

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HarryLong

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Posts: 25284

May 10 09 4:20 PM

Ahem ... it's Miss HaNNigan ...

The Mysterious Mr. Long

King Of Jazz

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Posts: 11578

May 10 09 6:48 PM

Woops....just shows it's contagious.

Lelia Loban

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Posts: 5924

May 14 09 8:49 AM

That's my biggest worry about criticizing other people's goofs: on re-reading my own writing, I frequently catch myself making a similar error in close proximity to the criticism. But what bothers me much more is the thought of the errors I fail to catch until they're in print. If I make the mistake here, I can either make a joke of it or go back and make it disappear, but if I screw up in a printed magazine, I'm busted for all eternity, or at least for the small portion of eternity when anybody's interested. That's why writers should show proper gratitude to good editors. Apropos of which, thank you, Harry -- and if you haven't caught one yet, thank you in advance!

http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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Ken Hanke

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Posts: 72226

May 14 09 10:13 AM

Administrator

Typos are a relatively small concern for me, because they're so obviously just that, though I see a lot people excusing misspellings as "typos" when it's clearly a case of not knowing how to spell the word. I'm more annoyed personally by the mangling of English I hear on a daily basis that I know full well will soon find its way into print if it hasn't already. Watch for "based off the novel by..." to appear any day. Also, be ready for "called out" as opposed to "called in" as regards taking a sick day. Telling people, "No, you call out when you fall off a cliff. You call in when you're not coming to work," seems hopeless. I once corrected "based off," only to be told, "That's right -- it should be 'based off of.'" Mayhem followed.

Other annoying things -- writers trying to set scenes with things they know nothing about. In a recent bio on the Beatles the author twice tries to invoke tropical settings by affording scents to flowers that don't have any. Then again, he also obviously had the cooperation of Sir Paul, and as a result everything Sir Paul says is the last word on any subject. That's considerably more distressing.

HarryLong

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Posts: 25284

May 14 09 10:47 PM

>>I see a lot people excusing misspellings as "typos" when it's clearly a case of not knowing how to spell the word<<
Or knowing which word to use. Just today - on another message board - I found a post by an established author of film books declaring Buster Crabbe an "axiom" of 1930s films ...
My favorite of all time was in an article in our local newspaper about a famous mansion in the area that was bilt in 19xx and raised in 19xx. The same misuse of that word appeared twice in the article. Bad enough the writer didn't know the word ought to have be razed ... but where the hell was the so-called editor? (BTW - this is hardly the only mis-use of raised I've spotted in print.) Not to toot my own horn - after all, both VHJ and STFM are littered with typos that squeak through - but I'm not going to allow a ms. to go to print with words that are clearly not the ones the writer ought to be using.

The Mysterious Mr. Long

Lelia Loban

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Posts: 5924

May 16 09 8:14 AM

>>Not to toot my own horn - after all, both VHJ and STFM are littered with typos that squeak through - but I'm not going to allow a ms. to go to print with words that are clearly not the ones the writer ought to be using. >>

VHS and STFM look a lot less littered than average -- one of the many reasons why I'm happy to take assignments from them. My own mistakes drive me nutty enough, but the errors that have really sent me non-linear have been the ones editors (not Harry and not Richard, praise Cthulhu) have imported into my texts. Editors have changed my good grammar to bad grammar. Editors have changed correct choices of words to ignorant-looking choices. Of course I'm the one dangling from the byline and looking like a dodo. I can screw up on my own without that kind of help....

http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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HarryLong

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Posts: 25284

Jun 21 09 8:45 PM

Yes, there are several editors out there - and no, I will not name names - who reveal in their own writings that they clearly have a less than perfect grasp of the English language. Not that I know everything for that matter ... Kevin, proof-read one of my reviews for the upcoming STFM and corrected "dessicated" - as I've been spelling it for years - to "desiccated." I really have to look that one up (in the heat of getting the issue pulled together, I didn't reach for my dictionary) as both come through as correct with spell-check ...

>>Editors have changed correct choices of words to ignorant-looking choices.<<
Oh, yes, I just love when that happens. [Did your the needle on you Sarcasometer go into the red zone just now?] I once handed part of my Poe ms over to someone for fact checking & it came back with the note that he hoped I didn't mind that he's done some editing because he was, after all "a professional editor." Phrases were altered so that the musicality of the language was lost (my background in theater means that I "hear" my pieces and write accordingly) and words were substituted, giving an entirely different meaning to my statements.

The Mysterious Mr. Long

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Boy, Am I Angry: Book Goofs

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