Saturday, January 19, 2013

Errors - Caught in Time

When General Dwight David Eisenhower wrote Crusade in Europe, his memoir about his time as Commander in Chief in WWII, he wanted it to be perfect.  Typing errors annoyed him in his own reading so he wanted to make sure there were none in his own book.  He gave the proofs of the book to his friends and asked them to read the book for mistakes.  They did so and proclaimed it a wonderful book in every way.

The book was published.  There was a typographical error on the first page.

It isn't easy to proof read. If the book is interesting, our minds don't notice errors. A fast reader tends to skip over articles like "a", "an", and "the".

I've been proof reading this book one way or another for years through many edits.  When I put it into the paper back, I thought I had caught everything.  I was wrong.  Today I found eight errors.  Most of them were minor, a missing "a" here, a paragraph indentation there.  I corrected them all.

But one was pretty noticeable and funny, too.  My heroine has "ears running down here cheek".  I put the "t" in.

I can make the corrections but I must be very, very careful to not change the top or bottom of a page because it could throw off the entire book.

It will all be finished tomorrow.  My guess is that the book can be ordered next week.  My copies will be sent ahead to Gary so I can take them with me.  And that, I hope, will be that!

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For some reason, our short story blog has taken off. For months, the most "hits" we had hovered around a hundred.  Now we have caught on.  Almost 600 readers a week are checking us out.  That is very gratifying.

Check out http://blackcoffeefiction.blogpost.com  This week's story is a sample of microfiction.  Wade wrote the story.  I have tried my hand on it, but I need more than 350 words to tell a story.



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