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The Importance of Eliminating Typos?

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
@ Devor. That's two jinxes I'm calling haha. What's up with that? You're a faster typist than I am and I tend to be really wordy, saying the same thing.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Caged Maiden,

I have specific goals in mind for my writing. My measure of goodness is twofold:

1. Is my writing engaging? Is it hard to put down? Does the reader want to return to it as soon as possible when they do have to put it down?

2. Does it envoke an emotional response? Does the reader care about the characters?

These are the two things that I look for in a book, and, if a book meets one of those two criteria, I consider it a success.

I'd love to meet both those goals, but, truthfully, I've found few books that do. I don't know if I'll ever achieve #2 to the level that I desire, though I'll keep striving.

Right now, I think that my writing achieves #1 well enough to be of an acceptable quality. That's going to be my "good enough."
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
It certainly sounds like you're ready to pull the trigger then. I'd say give it your last effort and do it!

I think if you're ready, it's as ready as you'll ever be, right?
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
That link is either a bad copy-paste or a secret little Easter Egg cleverly posted to promote Dragon's Egg. Definitely the second.

My post was more to BWFoster and how I interpret his interpretation of the phrase, based in part on a common interpretation implied by the word "just," which I interpret to mean "barely" good enough..... I'll shut up now.
Strange! It's supposed to go to post #25 in this thread, but when I click it now, I don't get a URL at all, but text from Dragon's Egg. No, not deliberate!

@BW, I like the focus you have. Good luck with your debut novel!
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I was taught a long time ago this bit of wisdom: there is no such thing as typos, there are only mistakes.

Put another way, to the author it's a typo, but to the reader it is a mistake. I can think of no reason to allow mistakes out the door if I can prevent it.
 

ALB2012

Maester
Typos happen. Even professionally edited books by well known authors have them. Of course ideally they shouldn't but they do. No book is perfect, someone will always spot something - that pesky typo, a slightly weak character, an inconsistency the author my not even have considered. Look at any well known book and I bet you it has a mix of reviews. Someone won't like it. Badly written books can become best sellers (I am not saying they should do but the fact that is so) and well written but slightly... rough books may not. New writers often find their book might not be as strong as it might be but that is usually discovered AFTER the event.

I agree an author needs to do the best they can with the resources available (whether that includes a professional editor or not) but they also need to be realistic. Writing gets better with experience.

My own book I know needs... a little polishing and that is something I am intending to work on. Book 2 is better in many ways and I learned a lot, hopefully what is learned from that will be taken onto subsequent works.

Do the best you can do, then learn from the mistakes which will be there and then make the next one better. At least with e-books they are easy to upload again if you do find something.

I am not saying you should just toss out a rough book but if you do the best you can then that is all which can be asked.
 
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pmmg

Myth Weaver
:zombie:

I hate typos. And I greatly appreciate anyone who points them out to me. I can look at the thing a thousand times, and then one day...Bam! right in the first paragraph of the first page...a typo? I am not even sure how that is possible. And for me, my brain just plays tricks on me. I can omit entire words and never see that they are missing. Its actually quite vexing, and I consider it just a blind spot. I will go the route of getting it edited by another before I put it out. And if over time, readers care to point them out as well, I may fix them in another edition. That part depends.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
For final checks, I have my computer read my stories aloud, and then use an online writing checker. Not perfect, but I pick up quite a lot of stuff. I even have Grammarly advising me now. Not that I pay attention to all the advice.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
It is flat-out amazing what stupid shit will get past Grammarly and other checkers as far as typos and just weird stuff. My impersonation of the apps thinking goes thus: That's such a terrible error grrbl-gonk... Next!
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
It is flat-out amazing what stupid shit will get past Grammarly and other checkers as far as typos and just weird stuff. My impersonation of the apps thinking goes thus: That's such a terrible error grrbl-gonk... Next!

LOL. You need to ignore most, but it's still useful for some basic mistakes that you can't see because you're too familiar with your own ms.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
LOL. You need to ignore most, but it's still useful for some basic mistakes that you can't see because you're too familiar with your own ms.
My team cheats. One of us is a linguist and a grammarian who will read the entire manuscript out loud as our final editorial sweep. We still miss mistakes, but not many. Also, I married our grammarian so she can't escape. ;)
 
Smart thinking A. E. Lowan on marrying your grammarian...

Another trick I've come across is to read your manuscript backwards (as in, start at the last sentence, then the sentence before that and so on). That way, you're not reading the story but the actual text. No idea if it works. My spelling in such that I don't rely on it too much anyway. I just pray that between my editor and the Word spell checker the novel gets to a decent quality.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
Smart thinking A. E. Lowan on marrying your grammarian...

Another trick I've come across is to read your manuscript backwards (as in, start at the last sentence, then the sentence before that and so on). That way, you're not reading the story but the actual text. No idea if it works. My spelling in such that I don't rely on it too much anyway. I just pray that between my editor and the Word spell checker the novel gets to a decent quality.

It works, but it makes me go crazy. I managed it for two novels.
 

Puck

Troubadour
An editor reads the first paragraph of two submissions. They are both similarly interesting. One has a typo, the other does not.

The editor picks up the one without the typo and decides to read on.

The one with the typo gets put to one side...

That's the way it works.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I record for my audiobooks—which maybe I'm not great at, but I keep the rights without paying through the nose—and between that and listening to it in replay and all the editing of audio, basic typos and weird phrasing/sentences are eliminated. Commas are still my bugaboo, I overthink the shit out of them, LOL.

Smart thinking A. E. Lowan on marrying your grammarian...

Another trick I've come across is to read your manuscript backwards (as in, start at the last sentence, then the sentence before that and so on). That way, you're not reading the story but the actual text. No idea if it works. My spelling in such that I don't rely on it too much anyway. I just pray that between my editor and the Word spell checker the novel gets to a decent quality.
 
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