[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....