Typos



They do things differently in the past. They haven't got computers, which means -- among other things -- that when a typesetter receives the manuscript of a book, he (or much less often she) re-keys the whole thing. If it's far enough in the past, this is done on a huge machine that lines up pieces of lead in a special tray called, I believe, a forme. By means of a judicious application of ink, the set copy is then printed off on long sheets of paper, perhaps two metres long, called galley proofs. These proofs are returned to the editorial office, where they are read carefully to check for the typesetter's inevitable mistakes. The careful reading, at the time I entered the publishing industry and for some years thereafter, is a two person affair. One person reads aloud from the manuscript, while the other reads the galley silently, checking that everything is there. Usually, they alternate roles. This isn't ordinary reading aloud. For example, this passage from Jim McNeill's The Chocolate Frog and The Old Familiar Juice (Currency Press 1973)
SHIRKER: G'day.
KEVIN: (with an uncertain smile) I'm ... my name's Kevin.
TOSSER: Yer ain't Kevin from Heaven, are yer?

is read as:
All caps, Shirker [this would be spelled out the first time it occurred], colon, cap G apostrophe day, stop. New para.
All caps, Kevin, colon, itals, open parentheses, lower case, with an uncertain smile, close parentheses, end itals, I apostrophe m, three dots, lower case my name apostrophe s cap K Kevin, stop. New para. All caps Tosser, colon, cap Y yer, lower case ee ar, ain apostrophe t, cap K Kevin from cap H Heaven, comma, are yer, why ee ar, query, new par.

A woman I worked with way back then told me that she was reading a titbit from the newspaper to her husband over breakfast one morning, when he interrupted her to say, 'You don't have to read me the commas, you know.'

There was at least one further stage of checking, after the copy had been broken up into pages, but the proofread of the galleys was the really intensive one

In my experience, things are no longer done that way. Text is keyed in just the once, and subsequent handlers mainly format it, or correct errors, or move it around. Proofreading, in my experience, has become a one-person chore, though it can be done by a series of people: the designated proofreader, the author, and perhaps one or two other people along the way. At the School Magazine towards the end of my time there, most copy was read carefully and alertly by four or five editors, but only one at a time. Even then, an occasional typo would still make its way through, provoking reprimands from our readership ('Please take more care!').

At least in part because of this change, there tend to be a different kind of typo in books now than in the past; the modern errors mostly have to escape would escape the attention of a spellchecker. (If there are more errors in spelling and syntax, the causes lie elsewhere: I'm just talking about typos). Mostly typos are invisible to the untrained eye -- after all, there's not a lot to be gained from noticing the extra r in referrral or the missing i in beginnng. And if they're not invisible, our minds are adept at filtering them out. I certainly count on the readers of this blog to overlook my copious typos.

Sometimes, though, typos matter. This is particularly so, it seems to me, with poetry. Let me conclude with what prompted this post in the first place, a number of excerpts from John Kinsela's Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, all of which gave me grief -- that is, made me stop and try to puzzle out the meaning before realising there was a typo. At least some of them would not have happened back in the pre-computer day.

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets
Created by OnePlusYou

1. The opening lines of J Le Gay Brereton's 'The Silver Gull' :
With strong slow stroke
Oaring her was against the breeze

2. The final stanza of Christopher Brennan's 'Because She Would Ask Me Why I Love Her:
The seek not, sweet, the If and Why
I love you now until I die:
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.

3. The opening of James Picot's 'To the Rosella in the Poinsettia Tree':
Beautiful bird, in as your wings as vivid
A tree, Rosella! Beautiful bird, I said:

4. From James McCauley's 'Self-portrait, Newcastle 1942':
He goes for long walks at night
Or drinks with peoples he's met.

5. From Nancy Keesing's 'Revelation':
All joy existed for him in smooth surface,
Music was in the purr of a food flywheel,
A satisfactory evening's conversation
Concerned the nice efficiency of steel.

Correct words, in order, are: 1. way; 2. then; 3. no typo as far as I know (but the quote helps me make my point -- I would have decoded it much sooner if I hadn't been distracted by exploring typo possibilities); 4. people; 5. good (though I haven't been able to check this).

I'm not saying it's a crime that the book has typos in it; nor that books in the olden days were typo-free. Typos are a fact of life, and are often (as in when the L drops out of public) a source of innocent merriment. I'm just whingeing that as (some) poetry is hard enough to understand already, it would be a great kindness to us punters if publishers decided, hang the expense, to pull all the stops out for big anthologies like this and hire teams of crack proofreaders.

Posted: Fri - February 20, 2009 at 07:44 AM           |

©