"Bad editing drives me nuts!" Topic

I have been reading "The Golden Talons" a book on the 17th Airborne. For years I have been looking for a book that details their campaigns in the Bulge and on the Rhine.
It fits the bill well enough and has many good photos I have never seen before; plus lots of personal accounts – especialy from the glidermen.
But Great Ceasar's Ghost! the editing stinks.
I am about 2/3 of the way through the book abd already on four occasions they have repeated a complete paragraph back to back. On one occasion the repeated the same paragraph three times in a row!
There are also many places where word order is messed up etc.
Takes awa from the entire experience.

Having written more than my fair share of books, I can say that even though this one is a privately published book, even books from large publishers are suffering from poor edit jobs. Everyone is trying to put out material as cheaply as possible, and all too often that means no real editing or proofreading.

which has led to the number of good editors, copy editors, or proofreaders dwindling.

I've noticed this in many of the newly published books I've been reading lately. Its a sad state.

Jim

I had rules and even a boardgame back in the 1980s. The publisher failed to check the items after converting the already edited files.
Horrible messes.

The news networks also don't seem to care about editing, especially online.

"Everyone is trying to put out material as cheaply as possible, and all too often that means no real editing or proofreading."

This is what will happen when the task is farmed out to AI…

AI might do a better job LOL

When I worked in the digital game industry, an executive said that gamers didn't care about spelling

I'm also sick of poorly edited books and news editors who are obviously under-qualified for the job. Example- Pen & Sword's Aspects of Arnhem is an interesting read and raises some good theories and arguments about what went wrong. But poor editing means that a block of paragraphs from the preface is repeated in a following chapter, and the same happens later in the book- though only a single paragraph that time. There's other problems- misuse of homonyms, corps designations getting mixed up and similar. So the flow of the book, and some of the arguments/theories, are affected. All that gives an unfinished feel to the book, which deserves better.

I got used to "Barkerisms" in WRG rules and I can ignore lazy journo's and their editors relying on spellchecks- so loading articles with American spelling and date formats. But such poor editing and proof reading from a serious publisher is not good news.

AI? It may be smarter, and more honest, than the news editor for the (Aussie) ABC, or the Telegraph's editor. But that's not setting a very high bar (about knee-high to a cockroach- do cockroaches have knees?). But there's still a whiff of snake oil around some of the claims for AI.

I have some hope for AI editing. (1) it's probably cheaper and easier than teaching elite university English grads to proofread. And (2) I bet you can eventually teach one to look for modernisms and Americanisms, which would brighten my reading of Regencies. But for clear comprehensible English, sensible order and consistent use of terms, there's no answer short of educating the rulesmiths. Good luck with that.

When I was a grad student (i.e. "indentured servant") in Chemistry, I gave a student's test paper a low grade for comprehensibility. He stormed at me. "This isn't an English class!"
I replied "No it isn't. But if I can't understand what you wrote in chemistry, I will either poison myself, or blow myself up."
He didn't take kindly to my taking points off for spelling either. Now, who could possibly think that spelling in chemistry would be important?

Speaking of rules writers, naming no names 🙄, there are those who can't string a comprehensible paragraph together. Nor can they spell. But they will charge money for their work.

This book is similar to what Dal describes. There is a lot of good info and photos that I haven't seen anywhere else, but those repeated sentences and paragraphs are VERY annoying.

The only other book I have that was this bad in that respect was on the Army of Charles XII – at least that one had the excuse of being a translation.

Having worked in journalism and having several family members working in one part of publishing or another I can verify that one of the first things to be cut is editing. News papers don't employ copy editors anymore. The publisher probably ran it through spell check and hit send.

It's one of the reasons I am looking forward to retiring next year. I cannot stand the horrid writing at the grad level. I had a student tell me once "if grammar and punctuation abilities are important at this university I am in the wrong place".

And in the What Could Go Wrong category,
New Jersey recently announced that public school teachers will no longer be required to pass a Literacy test in order to get their teaching certificate.

I started work in the printing industry 50 years ago, but haven't worked in it for 43 years, and bad editing still leaps to my eye immediately, and drives me nuts!

Really, how hard is it? I suppose costs are the issue, but you have to wonder.

Reading Team Yankee I notice a lot of the internal page references are wrong. #SMDH

I hate to say it, but editing will return when bad editing affects sales. As long as we say "it's badly edited, but buy the book anyway" publishers will keep saving money by paying less. Same things is true with binding. I've got some shockingly badly-bound books on my shelves.

Let them save money on both editing and binding--and paper quality, come to that--on politicians' campaign books and memoirs. No one's going to read any of them twice anyway.

virtualscratchbuilder, your student was entirely correct.

It is scary when you get emails like "Professor, I do not think, your reading my paper correctly, and taking off, for grammer should not effect my grade."

"AI" will just learn that poor grammar, spelling and layout are the norm and put it in for us.

I've written and published a lot over the years and I try to be fastidious about proof reading and editing my own work. However I am often alarmed at how badly even academic journals and especially popular magazines can "un-edit" work to introduce problems.

I recall I'd written for a specialists audience one technical article that included several illustrations. Knowing that a more generalist editor may not understand or recognise the academic subject matter I'd made things as easy for them as possible by numbering each image and providing a list of numbered captions to correspond with each illustration. The magazine still managed to remove all the numbers and then randomly allocate incorrect captions and descriptions to each illustration, thereby making me look a right idiot.

On another occasion I'd written an article about subjective judgement of colour applied to scale miniatures. The whole point of the article was about subduing tonal contrasts or adjusting hues for different effects. The person editing my article did an amazing job on condensing my text to fit the space they had. Sadly once the finished edit was passed on to the printer, they thought the colour balance on my photos looked different to everything else in the magazine so wacked up the colour saturation and contrast on everything, completely screwing up the point the images were supposed to be showing.

As a footnote to the above, I had one colleague who was particularly frustrated with the poor editing and proof reading of the magazine he was writing for. In protest he purposely included a direct criticism of the magazine's poor editing in the main body of his own article, along with a request to delete the appropriate paragraph if they noticed it.

Sure enough both the criticism and request to delete the aforesaid criticism went to press unaltered as seemingly nobody at the magazine had noticed or read the extra paragraph in advance to know to remove it!

I hate to say it, but editing will return when bad editing affects sales.

That will only happen while literacy levels are high enough so that people will notice the errors, Robert. Even then the money they save may be greater than any loss of custom, due to poor editing. I was surprised that Pen & Sword, who had a high reputation, would let Aspects… slip through, seemingly without editorial intervention.

I try to be fastidious about proof reading and editing my own work.

That's one weakness I have, Aiden- I can't proofread my own work until some time after it's written. I read what I wanted to write, not the words my fingers tapped into the computer. Fortunately I had some good proof readers, who also understood the technical issues, and I rarely had a unit ring for me explanations of a procedure or instruction. The biggest issue were senior engineers who never saw a term that couldn't be replaced with a paragraph of confusing waffle, and who didn't understand the legal ramifications of the words "will", "shall" and "must" in lawful general orders.

My dad spent some time as a technical writer and illustrator for a DoD contractor. At some point in his employment, the guy in charge told my dad that he wanted it fast and cheap. My dad told him that he didn't work that way, so he was shown the door.

"I can't proofread my own work until some time after it's written. I read what I wanted to write, not the words my fingers tapped into the computer."

A novelist--a good one: a pro--once told me the same thing. I was at one stage her last line of defense against vandals employed by her publisher.

79th, our engineeers used to wear buttons reading "Cheap, Fast, Good--pick two."

told my dad that he wanted it fast and cheap. My dad told him that he didn't work that way, so he was shown the door.

That seems to be the growing trend, 79th- profit before everything. Who needs a good reputation, quality of work, respect of the customer, etc. To quote ABBA- "Money, Money, Money". I was lucky in that my company was interested in quality of work and a good reputation, not in creating a new billionaire tomorrow. The company voluntarily folded lat year. The owners had had a gut-full of "Death By Cost Cutting" (which never seems to affect executive salaries and bonuses) and shady business practices.

I was at one stage her last line of defense against vandals employed by her publisher.

An interesting- and quite apt- way to describe it, Robert. At least that's the impression I get from a couple of authors I know, as well as recent (<five years ago) purchases.

Not money, Dal, or even profit--quick money. Long-term money involves, investment, training, building reputations and such. Quick money is more like eating the seed corn, with no one looking further ahead than the next quarterly statement. Executives trade on a reputation rather than build on one. Within a year, no one will trust the brand, but by then they'll be gone, and have taken a (very short-term) performance bonus with them.

For which we must all accept some of the blame. If we demand immediate returns from mutual funds instead of picking long-term stocks--and the same holds for pension funds--we can hardly be too outraged when managers go for the short term. It's what we're paying them to do, after all.

A real effort to pay more for quality might pay off. I'm making a conscious effort these days to buy better bound books whenever I can, which is something in itself, and I'm pretty sure the people who cheat on the binding aren't usually saving the money up to hire better editors and proof readers.

Not money, Dal, or even profit--quick money.

Agreed, Robert. It's not just restricted to financial considerations, either. These days it seems everyone wants "it" NOW! Not when they have saved up for it, not when it's scheduled, not when it becomes available, not when it's cooked, etc. Attempting to save for my 2019 Euro trip is an example- my son asked why I didn't just take out a loan and go in 2015, as planned? He didn't (probably still doesn't) understand why I insisted on remaining debt free and saving for a later (much less hectic) trip.

Why 2015?

• 200th anniversary of Waterloo,
  
• 150th anniversary of Appomattox,
  
• 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, and
  
• 50th anniversary of Australian combat troops, not just advisors, deploying to VN.
  

I could have attended all of them with careful planning of flights (and no hiccoughs).

Way back in primordial days, I wrote a small article for a Diplomacy or DnD fanzine about figure availability.
I mentioned figures by Britains. The "editor" changed it to "British". He got upset when I chastised him.

But cheer up. We now have autocorrect to mess things up, as well as AI!

As for AI, it can only improve, or what's the point? I see it soon writing a Fifth Gospel (ignoring tie apocryphal ones), an undiscovered Sherlock Holmes novel about the capture of Jack the Ripper, Custer's memoirs regarding the aftermath of Little Big Horn, and his presidential success.
After all, they will be on the Internet, so they have to be true.

Fun Fact or two.
Predictive text/autocorrect knew I wanted to type "the Ripper". 😱🤔
"… to be true" was changed to "venture". 🙄

Back when I used to edit and proofread books, the pay was poor even from major publishers. A manuscript received the time and effort the pay merited: i.e. if it was equivalent to one working day's pay, it received all of one day's attention. I had other work to do once it was out of the way.

I have just proofread a games-related work for a friend. I did it for free, and my work was worth every penny. :-) They were very grateful that I caught so much. But it reminded me why I went off editing: trying to decipher the contents of someone's brain when they haven't written what they meant to say is frustrating.

Anyone interested in a day-to-day study of bad editing should read the BBC's news site. Spelling mistakes, repeated paragraphs, unexplained breaks mid-para

:-)

My favourite BBC news errors are pictorial. Under the headline "Russian tanks poised to roll over Ukraine" a few years back, the BBC used a picture of a JS2 and T34/85 from the WWII anniversary parade. I laughed, and thought if it has come to that, the Russian army is in a bad way. Little did I know that this would become almost true when the T-series tanks came out of mothballs once the turrets started exploding off the modern ones.

Plus the was the time when the BBC ran a story about snow paralysing rail services in the north of England. It used a wintry picture of Goathland station. Goathland is a steam preservation railway station best known as Hogsmeade from Harry Potter…

An editor once changed my reference to to the FFI (French Forces of the Interior=Maquis) to FFL, which didn't make a lot of sense in context, but presumably he was more familiar with the acronym. And it serves me right for not spelling everything out.

OFM, keep an eye out for Lyndsay Faye's "Dust and Shadow"--a pastiche with Holmes and Watson in on the Ripper investigation, and my favorite Holmes novel, a few notches up from Hound of the Baskervilles. Faye does good work on her Holmes pastiches generally, but she did serious research on the Ripper murders too. Mind you, there must be half a dozen "Holmes v Ripper" stories out there. Faye is the one I keep--and in hardcover.

As for AI, when the day comes a computer will sell me an adventure/romance set on the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Leigh Brackett for $50 USD, I'll pay about once a quarter. No one else is going to write that story anymore.

Oh. And along with poor spelling and worse grammar, let's not neglect out of period language. I just finished a mystery nominally set in 1937 Scotland, filled with Scots saying "Okay" "wrapping my head around this" and using "leverage" as a verb. A complete waste of $4.99 USD and two evenings. And again, this is something you could program a computer to catch--probably easier than you could teach writers that Scots in 1937 didn't use the same vocabulary as Americans in 1973.

I read a book by Melvyn Bragg – who should himself have known better – set in the time of William Wordsworth in which a character referred to 'taking some flak'.Amazingly, no editor had spotted it.
I suppose when expressions become commonplace, very few people will realise they have not always existed.

I found this origin of OK on the internet:

"mid 19th century (originally US): probably an abbreviation of orl korrect, humorous form of all correct, popularized as a slogan during President Van Buren's re-election campaign of 1840 in the US; his nickname Old Kinderhook (derived from his birthplace) provided the initials."

So it is not impossible that a Scotsman with American connections might have been familiar with the expression in 1937, but it does seem very unlikely.