Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Proofread, Dummy!

Lest anyone get offended by my title post, the only dummy I'm referring to is myself :)

I think my internal proofer died out after the last round of edits on The Boyfriend of the Month Club. For anyone not aware, the very last time an author sees her book before it actually goes into print is the called the "final pass" (or at least that's what it's called at Berkley). This is when you see your manuscript typeset the way it will look in the book and it's your last chance to catch a mistake. You can't change words unless it's an actual factual mistake but this is when you proof for typos and punctuation.

Not sure if I mentioned it, but I found tons of punctuation mistakes in my final pass. I think most of it is my fault because when I did the final copy edits, I made so many changes to the manuscript, some periods (as in final dot at the end of a sentence) were either omitted or doubled (due to inability to see the manuscript clearly with the color markups).

I took extra care with the final proofs, checking my manuscript up to 3 times, reading it over and over and over... until I was pretty sure I had marked everything that needed correcting. Of course, it didn't help that Mike Geraci came up with the statistic that people miss "about 15%" of errors due to whatever. Thanks for that info, Mike Geraci. If you know me then you know I'm a compulsive freak and it will drive me crazy if my book comes out with a typo.

So... imagine my reaction when I got my new note cards in the mail yesterday. Aren't they pretty? Hopefully, no one will notice the back of the card!





(totally my fault for not proofing the spelling carefully enough on the final order!)

7 comments:

The Girl You Used to Know said...

I love a good vist.

*mwah*

FWIW, it took me three read throughs to see the error.

Maria Geraci said...

LOL, yeah, I'm hoping no one will really notice!

Lucy said...

I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been looking for it. (And I wouldn't have been looking for it if you hadn't told us there was an error.) And like Mel, it took a few read throughs to even see it.

Rain Maiden said...

I love a typo now and then..it just reminds me that this was someone's creation and we are all human. My girlfrind lives to find typo...it's like a game to her.

Maria Geraci said...

Lucy, I think I'm going to keep my mouth shut! It will be interesting to see if anyone I send it to, comments.

Rain, I never thought of typos that way, but you're right!

Annette said...

A typo reminds us that we're all human! I love it. Might post that above my computer monitor:-D

Your cards are lovely and I suspect most people are going to be looking at your URL and not the "Vist" They will read visit because that's what they're accustomed to seeing.

Maria Geraci said...

Hi Annette, Isn't the stationary cute? I'm going to stop looking at the typo now:)

 

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