Two--and only one to notice that you wrote by instead of my--but I'm borderline OCD, as you've had occasion to notice.
I figured you'd be the one to catch me on that, but I felt like playing the easy to miss typo game too.
I was taken a bit by surprise that I didn't notice the typo in the OP sooner. I've got a lot of training at catching typos because this thing happens when I am typing where the right signals get sent to my hands, so the correct letters are pressed, but if I am typing long enough and come to a word that involves both hands to hit all the necessary letters, my left hand will get to its keys faster and I'll have letters transposed - which used to be very tricky to notice, since our brains do that thing where they recognize the word even though it is partially jumbled (fun note: this post was just long enough that said issue kicked in just in time for my initial typing of jumbled to be "jubmeld").
I figured you'd be the one to catch me on that, but I felt like playing the easy to miss typo game too.
This is what bugs me about people complaining about typos in Xanathar's. You can have five people scanning an entire book a dozen times and still miss stuff. It's just the nature of people.
I figured you'd be the one to catch me on that, but I felt like playing the easy to miss typo game too.
This is what bugs me about people complaining about typos in Xanathar's. You can have five people scanning an entire book a dozen times and still miss stuff. It's just the nature of people.
This is why we need robots to rule us.
I too get kind of short-fused about people acting like it is even possible for a book to be completely typo-free. A book can be written, overlooked by multiple people during the process, have a commercial-grade automated spell-checker run on it, edited and overlooked by multiple people again, then get released as an advanced PDF and looked over by hundreds to thousands of fans before getting set up for print on demand (that being the process that Onyx Path uses to minimize errors), and still never comes out actually flawless.
This is what bugs me about people complaining about typos in Xanathar's. You can have five people scanning an entire book a dozen times and still miss stuff. It's just the nature of people.
This is why we need robots to rule us.
I too get kind of short-fused about people acting like it is even possible for a book to be completely typo-free. A book can be written, overlooked by multiple people during the process, have a commercial-grade automated spell-checker run on it, edited and overlooked by multiple people again, then get released as an advanced PDF and looked over by hundreds to thousands of fans before getting set up for print on demand (that being the process that Onyx Path uses to minimize errors), and still never comes out actually flawless.
I'm a full-time writer irl, and sometimes I also take on freelance proofreading projects for publishers and other writers. So with that perspective in mind: if an error slips past me, it is a professional failure on my part. I try to be gracious when reading others' publications, but when I'm hired for a proofreading gig, I know I'm being paid to catch stuff like this. Which means it should be caught. People don't pay me to find 95 percent of the errors -- they pay me to find them all.
The best strategy is to hire a third-party, outside proofreader to look things over. Someone who's never seen the text before. Having the same people look over the text at multiple stages of development actually makes errors more likely, since the brain subconsciously "corrects" what it sees to match what it knows the text is trying to say. An outside proofreader is less likely to have a working knowledge of the text and therefore is less inclined to skim past errors.
That said, nobody's perfect, including me. But every proofreader should be doing their damnedest to achieve perfection, because that's the true measure of success when it comes to proofreading.
That said, nobody's perfect, including me. But every proofreader should be doing their damnedest to achieve perfection, because that's the true measure of success when it comes to proofreading.
I think you've confused something I said for something else.
I never said that people shouldn't try to catch every error. I said that consumers expecting literally zero typos is unreasonable - specifically because everyone involved in the process of putting the book together do just as you've described, they do their damnedest to make their work flawless, and yet no one ever, not even once has printed a book without typographical errors.
That said, nobody's perfect, including me. But every proofreader should be doing their damnedest to achieve perfection, because that's the true measure of success when it comes to proofreading.
I think you've confused something I said for something else.
I never said that people shouldn't try to catch every error. I said that consumers expecting literally zero typos is unreasonable - specifically because everyone involved in the process of putting the book together do just as you've described, they do their damnedest to make their work flawless, and yet no one ever, not even once has printed a book without typographical errors.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to criticize or rebut you. I was just offering a perspective as someone who sometimes does get paid to proofread manuscripts. I quoted you guys for context around my comment, since my comment wasn't about the Gundpowder Keg from the op. It's all good! :-)
That said, nobody's perfect, including me. But every proofreader should be doing their damnedest to achieve perfection, because that's the true measure of success when it comes to proofreading.
I think you've confused something I said for something else.
I never said that people shouldn't try to catch every error. I said that consumers expecting literally zero typos is unreasonable - specifically because everyone involved in the process of putting the book together do just as you've described, they do their damnedest to make their work flawless, and yet no one ever, not even once has printed a book without typographical errors.
See Spot Run, possibly.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Gundpowder Keg? Whatever could that possibly be? :D
Gundpowder must be a real thing...
...I think it took five times reading this to have by brain stop ignoring that there is a "d" right in the middle of that word.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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Holy jeez, I didn't see what was wrong with that either....
Anywho, that's been deleted.
I am the Inquisitor Imperitus. I am judge, jury, and executioner. Draw your last breath now, as I send you to the Nine Hells.
Haha. OK, I'll admit, I deliberately posted it in an obscure way in order to see if people would notice it. Sorry. I get my kicks from weird things :D
And here I was thinking that exploding gund dolls were a thing.
No robot is going to create THAT fantasy.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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