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What’s the worst proofreading you’ve found in a book?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2026
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My father in law worked in a print shop for fifty years. Before computers and machine translation and spell checking the process of preparing a book for print was extremely involved and went through many verification steps. Where he worked did not print sci-fi books but they did print poetry and translated texts. Proof reading was done by several people, sequencially. Print proofs were made to check for formatting. The work was done in steps planed to eliminate as many errors as possible at each stage. Computers made a lot things easier but also created new problems.
On the other hand, setting the printing press could also introduce typos as well that wasn’t in the draft.
It’s definitely not easy to print literature.
And that’s also not entirely what I’ve heard, some authors do their own proofreading and that’s it, so each publisher probably does their own thing too.
My father in law still worked with lead printing blocks that had to be mannualy set on the plate. Novices on the task would have their work checked; seasoned workers developed the hability to read text backwards. There were typos and mistakes, obviously, but not as many as one would expect.
I proof read my own writings as well but it comes a point where a fresh set of eyes is highly advisable to find those little quirks and easily overlooked mistakes. If publishers can't be bothered to check their author's work, something is very wrong. An author self publishing doing some mistakes is forgiveable but publishers spent to much time and resources making themselves the only "professional and legitimate way" to be published to enjoy the same leniency.