Rampant Misspellings

[XDude]

Hey all!

Long-time Feist fan here. I first read his books back in high school and just started collecting them in hardcover last year. I now own all of them, even going so far as to have the Legends series forwarded to me from a friend in the UK, and just finished reading Flight of the Nighthawks tonight.

I display my collection proudly, and don't for one second regret having spent hundreds of dollars on it. There's just one thing that bothers me...

...does Feist have a proof-reader? Or a spell-checker at least?

The Serpentwar books were packed with misspellings, and while I was happy to see less of them in the Conclave book, I was wondering if maybe I should offer to lend my services. Heck, I'll even do it for free.

If you create a world, sure, you have the right to change characters' names between series as you see fit... but for Pete's sake, you ought to be able to spell them properly over the course of one book.

Or is it just me?!

[I, Brian]

Would you like me to ask him? I think that's a very good question.

And welcome to chronicles, XDude.

[pixter]

I'm reading Magician right now (author's preferred edition) and I noticed a few misspellings myself. The funniest was Pug was actually misspelled as Pub, once. I had to go back and read that sentence a couple of times to make sure my eyes were working properly. I'm still enjoying the book, but it struck me as odd that there would be easy to catch spelling errors like that in a popular book that has been around since the 80's.

[nixie]

I'll check it out later but I'm sure I read somewhere that Feist suffers from dyslexia

[Teresa Edgerton]

If the problem is his, that is what copy-editors are there to fix. More likely the errors crept in during production. Theoretically, authors spot these things when they get the page proofs or galleys, but by the time you get to page proofs you've read the same lines over and over so many times, the eye sees what it expects to see rather than what's actually there. (For a dyslexic writer, I imagine that would be even more of a problem.) There still should have been a proof-reader, but proof-readers let more and more mistakes get by these days.

Maybe you're thinking of Terry Goodkind, nixie. I've read that he is dyslexic.

[aarti]

Sometimes, if you contact the publisher with complaints about the editing, they will give you a new edition of the book that (theoretically) has many of the mistakes fixed. I'd do that if I were you and it really annoys you.

Spelling mistakes in books really irk me! I know I had beautiful new editions of a lot of Georgette Heyer books, re-issued by Arrow. But once I started reading them, I noticed a lot of errors. When I contacted someone at the publisher, she was very nice about it, apologized and told me that it's hard to find people who can edit "period language," and sent me a brand new edition, free of charge.

[Adasunshine]

Actually nixie's right, Feist does suffer from dyslexia, it's on this site...

http://www.edlin.org/sf/eng/november/feist.html

Raymond (Elias) Feist (1945-) were born in Los Angeles, USA. He studied communication arts at the University of California, San Diego and graduated with honours and received a B.A. in 1977. He started writing as a hobby in 1977, and started to write seriously in 1978. Among authors that has influenced him he lists Alexandre Dumas (father and son), Harold Lamb, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rafael Sabatini. He has been much influenced by adventure writers from the 50s and forwards. As his fellow collegaue Terry Goodkind, Feist suffers from a form of dyslexia. He lives in San Diego, Califronia together with his wife Kathlyn Starbuck (also an author), their two children and two cats. Among his interests are collection movies, wine and horses. He is very actively around on the net and participates on mailinglists.

xx

[Cloud]

funny you should mention that. I ALWAYS notice misspellings and grammar errors in books. and tend to circle them.

I know, I'm obsessed.

[Tinuva]

wow i notice the mistakes but to circle them? lol good one

i try to ignore mistakes, i read over books quickly, but when i readover a spelling mistake i have to stop and read it again to wonder what is was that i sensed was wrong... i find it a bit weird, though i dont know about you

[j. d. worthington]

Actually, this has been a growing problem in mass market publishing since at least the 1970s. About 1976, I began to notice a growing number of errors with spelling, punctuation, and grammar, but especially spelling and -- oddly -- pasteup/composition. It was really horrible with certain paperback publishers during the final years of that decade, but didn't seem to happen much in hardbound publishing until about the mid-1980s. Since then, it has become so frequent that it's almost a shock to come across a book that doesn't have at least a handful of real howlers. I worked as a typesetter and proofreader for many years and, had I made the sorts of mistakes I encounter in books these days, I'd have been out on my butt in no time. What the problem is -- mass production, poor oversight, poor education, etc. -- I don't know, but I find that such things tend to detract rather seriously from my enjoyment of a book ... and, no, frequently it is not the writer's fault. As I said, as a typesetter, I saw far too many overzealous editors that, to use Heinlein's phrase, liked a writer's work better once they'd p***ed in it.

And, yes, this is a truly growing problem; the majority of the books I read these days are much, much older, and typos and other such errors in them are about as scarce as hen's teeth....

[Valko]

I noticed it more in 'Into a dark realm'

[Cloud]

Coldwater Creek obviously pays English majors better. Ya notice all those damn flowery descriptions of clothes in their catalogue? It's hard to decipher the real info like, oh, I don't know--fabric composition amid all the "blue like the sun, soft like the rain" mumboj.

[Nakor]

I have noticed mistakes here and there in various books of Feists. I just make a mental note that it must have been overlooked by a proof reader.

It doesn't lessen Feist as an author in anyway for me. In fact it makes it more noticable how well he writes and what great pictures he conjures, as after reading the next paragraph after the mistake, I've forgotten all about the mistake and am completely into the story again.

[Gothic_Angelica]

I've been reading the books for years and its only since a friend pointed them out to me have I occationally noticed the spelling mistakes.

Or in talon of the silver hawk where he picks the sword up twice?

Still love reading the books though, they make up the largest part of my collection.

Gothic

[Anaya_Iasthai]

I read just about all of Feist's books again last year, and I really noticed the errors. In the last book of the serpent war saga (I think) there was more than spelling and grammatical mistakes, there was a couple of plot problems too - for example Eric told his half-brother (? sorry it was a while ago) twice about the baby von Darkmoor.

It seems strange that there are so many mistakes in his books. I don't notice it as much elsewhere.

But that doesn't mean I don't still love his books . I wouldn't have read them so many times if I didn't lol.