December 06, 2011

Typographical Errors

A friend on Facebook commented that one reason she likes to follow authors was that she loves it when they share their typos with their fans.

My first thought was, “Ack! Share those little things I’m supposed to keep hidden? No Way!”

My second thought was, “Hey, how cool would that be to read typos committed by my favorite authors?”

I commented that I would keep that in mind, and then turned to editing my upcoming book, Assignment to Earth.

This is the final edit before publication, and the manuscript has been in process off and on for 22 years, so you would think I would be down to tiny things. I won’t bore you with the missing punctuation, the period that should be a question mark, and the double punctuation hanging around, but there are a few that made me laugh at the absurdity of what it actually said, and also give myself the “V-8 salute” that these had not been found earlier.

Trusting that you have a keen eye, I won’t tell you what the mistake is, but let you discover it on your own.

·         One character turns to her superior officer and says, “What do you us to do, Sir?”
·         “This must be the great-grandpappy,” he said with a grimly.
·         He bent to the task, determined to obtain answers to each and every one of his many and questions...as soon as she woke up.
·         He shook his head slightly, if trying to realign his thinking.
·         Chapter Thirty-two…Chapter Thirty-three…Chapter Thirty-three…Chapter Thirty Four…

I can understand how extra keys could get pushed, or not pushed fully down, but how entire words could be missing for years and never be noticed, is totally beyond my comprehension.

For those who really enjoy typo hunts, after I fixed the accidental typos listed above, I put a (different!) typo into Assignment to Earth just for you. Email me if you can find it!

~Marie

2 comments:

  1. AMJ, our friend Janette had one of the funniest typos I've seen -she put it on fb herself, so I don't feel as if I'm telling tales out of school - J wrote that her protagonist, a teen-aged LDS girl, walked out of a 'saloon' instead of a 'salon'. There's a lot to be said for not merely relying on spell-check!

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  2. That is really funny, thanks for sharing it!

    Anyone else have funny typo stories they'd like to share?

    ~Marie

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