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Mistakes in books. Have you ever found one?


Janet

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I've found a lot of mistakes in books. I have noticed two mistakes in the book that I am reading at the moment, 'The Dandelion Clock' by Guy Burt (so far).

 

Ever since I started helping a writer friend to edit her work, mistakes jump out at me. Before I might not have noticed them as much, but now mistakes in books bug me.

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  • 3 years later...

Football books very often contain glaring factual errors. Sheffield United goalkeeper Alan Hodgkinson's book, Between the sticks, contains lots of howlers, often about games he actually played in.

Spelling mistakes grate on me...In Thirty one nil, James Montague talks about a root out of Haiti.

Edited by itsmeagain
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  • 7 years later...

I read a book by David Lodge. I think it was called Thinks. Towards the end there was a character who had been in his previous book, Nice Work. However, at the end of Nice Work she had formed a business partnership with the other main character. I cannot remember what it was that made me wonder about it, maybe because she did not seem particularly well off, but I wondered whether their company had gone bust. I heard David Lodge on the radio mention that he had forgotten about the business and no one had picked up on it.

 

Derek Robinson wrote a story about Royal Flying Corps airmen called Hornet's Sting. In one chapter a pilot has to crash land in German held territory. He kills some German guards and steals a uniform then tries to make his way back to allied lines. On the way, somehow without having to speak to anyone, he ends up on the German front fighting the British. He had gone potty by then. British soldiers find him in a fox hole and rescue him as a hero, but he would be wearing a German uniform. Maybe I misread it. Surely they would shoot him.

 

I thought I found a plothole in a Jack Reacher book once, but I cannot remember what it was.

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In The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue Addie has a picnic near the church of Sacre Cour in Monmartre, making particular reference to the steps. The date is 1752 ish. At that date the only way of getting up there was by sheep track or ladders and the church wasn't built until the late 19th century.

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I thought I found one in Far From the Madding Crowd. Gabriel Oak's ewes lamb in winter time. However, I was informed, on another literary forum, by a shepherd, that there is a breed of sheep called the Dorset Horn that lambs the year round.

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12 hours ago, KEV67 said:

I thought I found one in Far From the Madding Crowd. Gabriel Oak's ewes lamb in winter time. However, I was informed, on another literary forum, by a shepherd, that there is a breed of sheep called the Dorset Horn that lambs the year round.

 

In NZ lambing starts as early as July, which is midwinter here. It's all to do with getting them big enough for Christmas. I feel sorry for the little lambs being born in often very cold and wet conditions and losses can be quite high. Sheep are raised outdoors here.

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12 hours ago, itsmeagain said:

Methinks JK Rowling needs to sort aaht 'er knowledge of aah Yorkshire fawk speak...it's  'so thaa's never vawted ', not tha've,  which mayons thaa have.

Get me...?.. 

20230715_123405.jpg

 

I think we need you to read it to us so we get it right 😁

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Yes loads of typos like the one above, also I quite often see a random "a" suddenly appearing in the middle of text, and the book I finished last night got a character name wrong, so it said "Frank" instead of "Fred", which meant that a murder victim had suddenly revived!  What? I thought, then re-read it and realised what must have happened, ie someone got the names muddled, or maybe it was predictive text and it picked the wrong name beginning with F!

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3 hours ago, Hayley said:

Does everybody else’s brain imagine it being pronounced the way it’s spelled too? 😂.

 

These are the kind of mistakes I’ve found most often! 

The problem is that authors often have to proof read their own books these days, even with the big publishers, and if you have written something your brain sees what it wanted to write and not what is actually on the page so it glides over mistakes unless they're glaring. That's especially true if you have to re-read twice in quick succession

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