Spelling Mistakes in Published Books

Criticizing spelling mistakes in published books is a fun hobby for some. I, as a fellow author, am more forgiving. I am willing to bet all my money ($1.00) that at least one of my books contains a spelling mistake.

The image above is a great example of how easy it is for a writer to overlook mistakes. I'm a good speller; in fact, I qualified for my county's eighth grade spelling bee, which forced me to play sick so I wouldn't have to attend. (Get up in front of people? Are you crazy?) Be that as it may, I've either forgotten or never knew quite how to spell certain words, because I never used them before. So, annoying as Word's spellcheck can be, I refuse to turn it off. But "fine" versus "fined"? Well, "fine" is spelled correctly, so spellcheck won't catch it. And an author is so used to reading their manuscript over and over, an error like that is easy to breeze past.  

I've had the unfortunate experience of inserting a correctly spelled word into one of my books, only it was the wrong word. I only caught it when I viewed my book's preview on Amazon. There it was—right up front—a guaranteed no sale. Naturally, I had to unpublish and fix it, but I still have no idea how it happened. I chalk it up to "fast fingers"; clearly faster than my brain.

One misspelled word doesn't ruin a book (unless the misspelled word is in the preview). But a book littered with them? Yikes. That, to me, points to pure laziness. The good news is, with today's technology, one doesn't need to be a good speller to write a book. The bad happens when an author skips the editing process. 

Since I obviously can't afford to hire a proofreader, polishing up my manuscripts falls entirely on me. Thus, aware of my fast-finger propensity, I have to be overly cautious. Yes, I do read my manuscript several times (ad nauseam), but I also listen to it. If you don't have Microsoft Word, which requires a yearly subscription fee (!), there are free text-to-speech apps you can use. Natural Reader is one. Another is TTSReader. I can vouch for the first; haven't tried the second. Virtually all browsers have read aloud capabilities, but I believe you would first need to convert your manuscript to a PDF, since this function is only for web-based content.

I know I stress this a lot, but listening to a readback of your manuscript is the very best way to find errors. It had never even crossed my mind at the time I made that stupid error in one of my published books, but once I became aware of that feature, I refuse to edit without it.

Now, ahem, phrases. I'll admit that I find misquoted phrases hilarious, so if there are one or two in your book, I'll likely enjoy the reading experience. But if we want to appear "professional", we really should double-check our phrase usage. No, it's not a "doggy dog world". 

And it's not "for all intensive purposes", unless you're employed in the hospital ICU. Also, you don't take something for "granite"; only rookie geologists might do that.

Those ideas don't "jive"?

 

I guess the one that bugs me the most is, "I could care less". For me, that's not even possible (but I do care about this post). 

If you have any inkling that the phrase you're writing might be incorrect, Google it. 

What I find most intolerable is not knowing (by now) the differences between there, they're, and their. I mean, come on! Hasn't that been drilled into every social media poster's brain by the comments? 

Hearing that read back to you won't make your ears perk up. It's just something you'll need to memorize. Yes, memorization is sometimes necessary.

We authors need to work hard to avoid dumb errors. But if one still manages to sneak past us, be comforted by the fact that traditionally published books have them, too. 

Just don't leave them in your book preview.