Coppy editers

David_Lebling · 14 May 1999, 09:14 · from urth-v0026.mbox · original

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From: David_Lebling at avid.com
Subject: (urth) Coppy editers
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 09:14:07
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William Ansley wrote:
> I guess they don't make editors or copy editors like they used to (if at
> all in the case of copy editors)

You can say that again. I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's new
_Cryptonomicon_, a 900+ page behemoth which contains about a typo every oth=
er
page. These days, the normal typo is a spelling checker typo (a correctly
spelled word in the wrong place: "their" for "there") and this book has ple=
nty
of those; but it's also got a whole raft of just plain misspellings. It app=
ears
that no one ever ran a spell check on it. Very sad.

By the way, it's an excellent book (so far).  Not actually SF or Fantasy, i=
ts
tone is more like Stephenson's early book _Zodiac_.  Twenty years ago it wo=
uld
have been pre-cyperpunk hard SF full of incredible extrapolations, of cours=
e.

     Dave Lebling
     (aka vizcacha)

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