Errors in Books

[David B]

Better to try and gently inform the author, rather than the creeps who think they know better and scribble all over public library editions of a book.

[phil andrade]

People who are brave enough and disciplined enough to write books excite my admiration. I don't have the guts or the gumption. It can prove an expensive excercise, too : so I've been told. When I see errors, and consider informing the author, I tend to draw back because it seems a ceorlish and cowardly thing to do; I worry about hurting the feelings of someone who has invested so much time, effort and, perhaps, money. Then there is the horrific thought of behaving like an " anorak". But, of course, there is this terrific compulsion to set the record straight. And if errors are not addressed they tend to get compounded....

Phil (PJA)

[Gareth Davies]

I sent a message to the author (he is a GWF member). He seemed genuinely appreciative.

[Gareth Davies]

How about this for something I have just read in the editor's footnote in D Day to Victory, the diaries of a British tank commander in the Second World War. It was written as a footnote to the entry for 20 Nov 44, Cambrai Day:

"For their part in the Battle of Cambrai in 1916 - one of the first successful uses of tanks in combat - .....".

[Bernard_Lewis]

Picked up a magazine 'booklet' on the Great War and poets in WHS recently. Interesting enough but, from memory, it had the first day on the Somme down as 6 July 1916. Close...but no cigar.

Bernard

[Moonraker]

Just finished re-reading Eleven Minutes Late by Matthew Engel, a whimsical and cynical look at Britain's railways. At the end he notes:

"The problem for a non-expert writing about the railways is that there is someone, somewhere, who knows more about every single sentence than the author does. The trouble is that it is never the same person twice."

Bravely, Matthew invites those wishing to correct errors to log onto his website.

So: presumably most authors are knowledgeable - but never completely so - on the main subject they are writing about it, but there are so many sub-themes they know only a little about.

My own modest efforts have focussed on Wiltshire and the army there, but the sub-themes include early aviation, sex and sexual diseases, other illnesses, army postal services, local court cases, railways and so on. But despite my local knowledge in one book, I placed Tidworth Park camping-ground in Wiltshire, wheras in fact it's in Hampshire (the town of Tidworth straddling the county boundary) and in another I provided some salacious detail about a sex-party close to "the church" in Shrewton, later remarking to a resident that perhaps I should have noted that there were two churches. "Actually there are three in the parish," he remarked.

And half-a-century I still recall the lady who claimed in a West Country newspaper to have researched extensively Jay's Grave on Dartmoor, only to place it in the wrong parish! (Jay committed suicide and by the tents of her time could not be buried in consecrated ground.)

Moonraker

[David Filsell]

Just to underline, and maybe it doesn'tI need saying - but I did say that in my experience publishers are rarely interested in corrections - not authors.

[healdav]

Errors should be addressed and authors contacted.

The crucial thing is that this should be done sensitively and graciously.

Phil (PJA)

I have written to a couple of authors (via the publisher) pointing out errors - even to Norman Stone. They have, without exception, been gracious and grateful; indeed downright amazed that anyone would notice the errors.

I have also written to at least one author asking for clarification or further details of something in a book. Again, always a good reply, and in fact I struck up a fairly lengthy correspondence with one author over some details that he had misinterpreted from his own notes!

[bmac]

If is a factual error, especially in a hardback book that might come out as a paperback and can be corrected, then I would guess most authors would like to know. Typos, spelling and grammatical mistakes - I don't think I've read a book that doesn't have them (and is it my imagination that there are more of them nowadays, particularly in fiction). Again, if there is a chance of a re-print or another edition (but how would you know that?) then perhaps, otherwise I'm not sure I'd want to know about that stuff too much. I've noticed enough of them in my own work already to be depressed enough as it is! I think there must be a law which says if a writer opens their own work at random the first thing they will see is an error of some sort.

[Moonraker]

Bill, your post exactly expresses my own views. As for "typos, spelling and grammatical mistakes ... (and is it my imagination that there are more of them nowadays, particularly in fiction)": I'm sure there are more, as publishers reduce costs. I was quite impressed that one of my publishers sent a copy of the proofs to a proof-reader - a diminishing breed, I think, and I wonder what happened to all those hopefuls who took a correspondence course in proof-reading in response to those adverts of a few years ago? But in the good old days, some books came with "addenda and errata" slips listing mainly errors that presumably were noticed once the proofs had been passed as correct. (They feature in quite a few unit histories.)

Moonraker

[SiegeGunner]

(Jay committed suicide and by the tents of her time could not be buried in consecrated ground.)

Canvassing opinion on a possible typo here ...

[Moonraker]

Guilty - or just checking that you're awake and alert. And I had looked up "tenets" to check the meaning.

Moonraker

[SiegeGunner]

An officer I have researched had a more famous younger brother, and when I bought a newly-published book about the latter, I was surprised to find that it contained an entirely erroneous account of his elder brother's military career in WW1. I wrote to the author, enclosing full details of his actual career, and received a very friendly and appreciative e-mail back, explaining that the information had been provided by a 'family source'. I was assured that the passages in question would be corrected in any subsequent edition, and I shall keep an eye out in years to come.

[Moonraker]

Just seen a review of my book about the Canadian Army on Salisbury Plain. It "is well-written and is not marred by many editorial errors, most of which are of a very minor nature [gee, thanks] (although it is useful to remind a British audience that Canada has provinces not states!".

In fact the two references to Canadian "states" are within direct quotes from local Wiltshire papers! Ironic, because the other day I noted in the thread on civil executions of soldiers that "having read quite a few Wiltshire papers between 1900 and 1920 ... I wouldn't take the reference as authoritative"

Ideally of course I should have picked up on the errors and briefly "corrected" them in my own text.

Moonraker