Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Reading Dune (1 of 2): Typos.

When I was reading Dune over the holidays, I came across one typo in the story, something that I can't remember now, where some word had left off its final letter and so another legitimate but inaccurate word was in its place, where the misspelled word was actually a word, but it wasn't the word that needed to appear in that place, you needed another letter for that. But, since I wasn't near a pencil right then, I didn't correct it by making a printer's mark there to insert that needed letter. Then, a few days later, I came across a misspelling of the protagonist's title in a foreign language of the book, where instead of reading "Muad'dib," it read "Maud'dib". So, since I was near a pencil at that time, I made sure to make the little printer's mark there, that shows that the two letters needed to be switched. And, like that day or the next, I also came across a place where they had "your" for "you're," so I marked that, too, since I also was near a pencil then. I remember back in I think middle school I was reading a lot of mystery stories in some series that I had gotten out of my local library that I think was branded with Alfred Hitchcock's name on it, and one of the volumes was super poorly edited and someone had neatly marked every single typo in it, so that you came across just all of these corrections while you were reading it. And, I thought that was the coolest thing, and since then, I've at times emulated it in my life.

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