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How do you Spell Anyting? |
If you are looking for new ways to understand this civilization we find ourselves in, look no further than this news item:Copyediting and layout at the Orange County Register and a sister newspaper is going to be outsourced to New Delhi, India. According to the blog LA Observed, "The story is that, when many of the Register's weeklies switch to three days a week, the Indian rent-an-editors will help avoid the hiring of new copy editors who just have to be laid off if the Register continues to tank."
Maybe it's our schools, maybe it's our inability to focus, maybe it's the economy or the Microsoft Word spell checker, but Americans are not spelling or editing very well.
I've been ranting about this for years. Nothing has improved. I once wrote I've been tripped by typos. Stumped by spelling. Messed with by misprints.
A friend told me, "I know when I'm reading a book the inevitable typographical error is going to strike. It may happen half way through, or two-thirds of the way through, but it always stops me reading, and then I wonder if I'm going to finish the book, and sometimes I don't."
I know how she feels. One of the most beautiful books I've seen -- Venice: A City, A Republic, An Empire by Alvise Zorzi -- is marred by an overwhelming number of careless errors. A book this expensive -- sixty dollars -- should be vetted before it is printed and sold.
What really dunked my biscotti was the misspelling of proper Italian names. Perhaps various mistakes can be blamed on the difficulties of translation. But no Italian would mis-name a Visconti -- the famous clan that ruled Milan for 200 years. In this book the Visconti have unaccountably become (on page 268) the "Vosconti."
Publishers once paid over-educated people to fact check and proof read. Those days are past, or passed, or Pabst, or whatever.
In Tim Moore's travel memoir The Grand Tour the author names (page 7) Thomas Jefferson's famous mansion "Montebello" instead of "Monticello." Ouch.
Beverly Sills' autobiography has become a collector's item because of its first sentence: "I sang my first aria in pubic (sic) ..."
At a trade show one publisher ceased handing out hundreds of copies of a new natural history guide to birds when it was discovered the same photograph had been used to identify two quite different birds.
On the outside cover of Sharon Doubiago's book of poetry Body & Soul Gloria Steinem delivers a nice blurb. Her name is misspelled "Steinhem."
Reviewer Florence King found her meticulously clean Sunday book reviews had numerous mistakes added when they were printed. She wrote to her editor:
"I am now wondering how many other of your reviewers have had experiences like mine... I intend to read every review with an eagle eye and mark all errors of fact, spelling, punctuation, bad grammar, and general knowledge, as well as all suspicious examples of tempo and euphony gone awry, and send them to you. You are badly in need of a proofreader and now you have one -- after the fact perhaps, but a proofreader just the same. Starting this coming Sunday I will be permanently poised over your shoulder and ready to pounce."
Personally, I never make mistakes, at least on nights when my wife is still awake when I finish writing. She's my editor and all-around skeptic and as she will tell you, if you do find any mistakes they're all my fault.
Aired Sunday July 6, 2008 at 10:55 am and Wednesday July 9, 2008 at 1:00 pm
NOTES:
LA Observed: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/06/register_outsourcing_edit_1.phpThe original (2002) Words on Books on proofreading: http://www.gallerybookshop.com/bkm/wob020118.html
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Check out the programming on KZYX, Mendocino county's own public radio station.
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Copyright © 2008. All materials posted here are copyright protected. Please do not copy or distribute without contacting Tony Miksak for written permission.