In our last post, we discussed and linked to an article about the importance of multiple editing rounds. As noted, we do in-house proofreading for our authors, and offer more detailed editing services to all writers (whether signed to us or not).
As proof that typos make it into even the most popular works, here is an article by Danuta Kean for The Guardian on famous typos.
Proofreaders may be worth their weight in gold to authors, but their oversights have proved lucrative for some lucky readers of JK Rowling.
On Thursday, an uncorrected proof of her debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with the writer’s name was misspelled as “JA Rowling”, became the latest muddled copy to fetch four figures at auction.
It sold for just under £10,000, which means it is not the most valuable mistake in the boy wizard’s canon. That honour goes to a rare first edition with the word “philosopher” misspelled on the back cover, which was snapped up in 2016 by a London-based businessman for £43,750.
Some apparent typos are deliberate – though it can be hard to tell. Given that much of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake makes little sense anyway, it is hard to spot an error by Joyce’s friend Samuel Beckett, to whom he dictated the novel. During one of their dictation sessions, Joyce answered a knock at the door with “Come in” – which Beckett promptly wrote down. Despite making even less sense than much that had gone before, Joyce liked the error and left it in the final version.
Whether by gods of literature or the God of the Bible, mistakes have a habit of appearing in books like molehills in a lawn. The most notorious one in the Good Book appeared in a 1631 edition, known since as the Wicked Bible because the typesetters failed to add the word “not” to the 10 Commandments, leaving the pious free to steal, murder and commit adultery.
