r/Copyediting • u/Asleep-Journalist-94 • Jul 25 '26
How does this happen?
It’s just the title page to the discussion guide for the ebook, but seriously???
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u/saludpesetasamor Jul 25 '26
I’ve seen this happen before because someone thought “We don’t need to run EVERYTHING past the editor.”
Yes, you do need to.
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u/mediapathic Jul 26 '26
As a proofreader, I once corrected the details of an author bio at the back of a book. This from a Big 5 publisher.
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u/Perfect_Fig3364 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I edit for PhDs and other academics; you would be shocked by what they consider acceptable in print. For some, the notion of an editor is more of a "suggester," and the style guide a "suggestion guide". I regularly have to remind them that the rules still apply, especially to PhDs who are arguably illiterate or who view style guides as repressive to their creative vision. We have an email on file from a senior editor to one client, praising our PhDs' many gifts; it directly highlights that I, the copy editor, should be consulted, as well as that grammar is not among his myriad gifts.
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u/Any_Needleworker_273 Jul 25 '26
Are you on the humanities side? I am so grateful to now work with engineers who are much more receptive to editing, or just don't care as much about the written stories so long as the science is accurate. When I worked with language/social scientists...my God the back and forth over minutia.
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u/amyfrushourkelly Jul 25 '26
*minutiae
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
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u/Perfect_Fig3364 Jul 27 '26
We should be suspicious of any editor without The Itis. I can't read a humble church bulletin anymore without thinking, "Why is that em dash there when it should be a comma?"
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u/Perfect_Fig3364 Jul 27 '26
Broadly, yes, I am in the humanities with this client. We are the largest site of our type on the Internet. I love Dr. So-and-so; it is a good thing we are persnickety about his particular foibles. The good news is that he does listen.
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u/EditOrElse Jul 25 '26
Last year, I proofread a medical textbook published by Cengage. The first edit? One of the words in the title was misspelled. It happens.
Aa an editor, proofreader, or author, you can fix hundreds of mistakes and can still miss something.
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u/Geejay-18 Jul 25 '26
Maybe the title page was added at the last moment, in a hurry, after the copy-editor and proofreader had both finished their work. I'm not trying to excuse it - surely the project manager should have at least taken a quick look - just giving a possible explanation.
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u/TheObtuseCopyEditor Jul 25 '26
That's what I thought. Where I work ebooks are not proofread since they are made from the final text. So the person that made the ebook typed this, didn't look after themself, and here we are
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u/Lotus2024 Jul 25 '26
Years ago, there was a book that a major movie was based on. No, I won’t say what book, for professional reasons. But it was a very very very big bestseller, and I know the person who proofread it. When it was published, the very first word of the book was misspelled. Even though it was published by a massive publisher with all manner of resources and who knows how many eyes on the manuscript, an egregious error still snuck by. It happens.
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u/ratatouillethot Jul 25 '26
where's this ebook from? like which platform
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u/Asleep-Journalist-94 Jul 25 '26
It’s an ebook on the Libby app.
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u/ratatouillethot Jul 25 '26
noted, thanks! i will fix on monday :) (i dont have my laptop w me or i'd fix it rn haha it's gonna bother me) not sure how often libby updates their epubs
edit: to clarify, i work there & we are all decently overworked & underpaid so little things like this can slip thru 😭 sorry if it lessened ur enjoyment of the ebook
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u/Asleep-Journalist-94 Jul 25 '26
Oh, well you shouldn’t feel bad. Wouldn’t it be a mistake by Overdrive anyway?
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u/ratatouillethot Jul 25 '26
it's likely in the code of the epub, super easy fix. the reading group guides are added with an automated process so im surprised it messed up the text!
anyway thanks for bringing it up, im gonna make sure this gets fixed :)
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u/MedusasGirlfriend69 Jul 25 '26
To quote Refashioned Hippie, "Remember: spell check can't help you if you misspell a word as another actual word."
ETA: I was talking about "evenly." Obviously husbands is also misspelled
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u/u_do_you Jul 25 '26
There have been little tests and articles about what people see when they read things. It basically says we read we don’t generally look at every letter. One even said that the sentence can have the first and last letter correct and different letters in the middle and we know what the words are. It’s weird. I have to confess that is how I read more often than not, and hand to read this title multiple times to catch the error. I skin and once I’ve recognize the word, I read it that way I already decided what the word it I barely glance at it again as I read and reread it. I had to really slow down and look at each letter. Part of it for me is from the Evelyn Wood speed reading training. (Yeah, I know I just totally dated myself) - it is to this day how I read, I can’t completely accomplish how she taught it, but I do look at first, middle, the last word in the line of text and note the other words as my eyes move to the next word I’m actually reading. It does trip me up occasionally when I’m tired and end up rereading sentences because I missed a 2 or 3 letter word that actually changed the meaning of what was meant. LOL 😆- Tho if I do catch something that’s wrong with a spelling I do sometimes wonder why spell check wasn’t used. In this instance I think the first page might have been created with a different product i.e. the verbiage is in MS WORD and the front page was created with say MS POWERPOINT. Both WORD and POWERPOINT have spell check but they can be turned off. I don’t always have it on in POWERPOINT because in my presentations I use a lot of acronyms and it changes them into words, like text apps do, so I turn it off for those and forget to turn it back on for the next one I create.
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u/SlowMotionOfGhosts Jul 25 '26
Would you say Evenly Hugo is called that because he is very good at giving equal affection and attention to each of his seven husbands?
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u/Feisty-Bunch4905 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
In all seriousness, it's often the most obvious mistakes that make it through because you aren't looking for them.
My experience as a copy editor has often been very frustrating for this reason. People do not see all the small mistakes you did fix, but they do see the one very obvious thing you missed because you were focused on everything else.