Questions about reviewing ARCs and grammar

[amyb]

Hope everyone is having a nice Sunday! I was hoping I could get some advice from the brilliant minds on here.

I am reviewing an ARC at the moment and at a loss as to how to remark on certain aspects of the novel. While I enjoy the story, the writing itself is sometimes confusing and lacks a good flow.

Question #1: I realize that ARCs are not the final draft that will be published, but what I don't know is what is the degree of finality of the novel? Do the authors still have work to do after ARCs are printed? Or is the novel only needing final grammar touches? I have issue with the sentence structure and don't want to comment on that if it's not going to be an issue in the final novel.

Question #2: is it grammatically correct to use parentheses in thought or speech? It didn't seem right to me when reading, but then again I haven't studied grammar since high school.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time out to help! I really appreciate it!

Amy :confused:

[Misfit]

Of the ARC's I've received through Amazon vine, all have had typos, but for the most part very minor and I assumed they would be cleaned up for the final copy. I did have one recently where the typos and poor sentence structure (just to name two) were so over the top in the badness that I did mention it, but I also made note that I did have an ARC. Although I had to wonder if I got a different ARC from most of the other Vine Reviewers who all gave it four and five stars......

**Edited**
I forgot to mention the book I had had already been published the previous year in the UK, which made the typos even more curious - was it published that way the first time around?

[diamondlil]

I would probably mention it, but emphasising that it was an ARC and that it may be better in the finalised product.

Misfit, I always find it curious that when a book has been published in another country, or is being republished that typos etc get through. someon ementioned one day that it could be how the computers read certain text styles and doesn't read it properly but it seems a bit strange really.

[Anna Elliott]

For the most part, only very minor changes are made to an ARC--cleaning up typos, consistency, etc. (When I was going over my own ARC's, my very smart husband caught an instance where a scar had spontaneously migrated from the left side of someone's body to the right--thanks, honey!)

The ARC is considered the final step before publication (usually there have been 3 to 5 rounds of editing and copyediting beforehand). So an author can change, delete, and/or add few words, maybe up to a paragraph here and there, but at least in my experience the book is done save for that final round of correction and polish.

As Diamondlil said, I'd make your review honest but mention that it was an ARC version you read.

[michellemoran]

I echo what everyone else has said. Typos can be fixed after ARCs are printed. A line or two can be added -- but nothing major. If an author has major corrections to be made after the ARC/galley stage, the author could end up footing the bill for having to re-type-set the novel.

[amyb]

Fantastic advice, I thank all of you! It seems to me that this novel needed an extra round of polishing and such. While I dislike being negative in a review, the need for honesty must outweigh that.

[michellemoran]

Misfit, I always find it curious that when a book has been published in another country, or is being republished that typos etc get through. someon ementioned one day that it could be how the computers read certain text styles and doesn't read it properly but it seems a bit strange really.

Sometimes, it's the author's fault. But sometimes it's also the copy-editor's fault. When a manuscript is copy-edited, it's done on paper, not computer. The author gets the handwritten changes from the copy-editor, then adds to them or erases them with a pencil. As the copy-editor is putting them into the computer on his/her end, sometimes an author's last-minute changes can be missed.

Same thing with reprinted books.

[Divia]

This is a really good question. And I want to thank everyone for answering. I have often thought about this myself. Thanks everyone :)

[juleswatson]

I agree. My understanding is that a copyeditor keeps doing the last changes after the ARCS come out. They would only be minor typos though, not bad sentence construction since the author isn't normally making changes after ARC stage and changing a whole sentence is something the copyeditor has to suggest to the author earlier on.

As the copy-editor is putting them into the computer on his/her end, sometimes an author's last-minute changes can be missed.

What is even worse (and I have not worked out why this happens) is that I sign off on the final electronic copy, and magically when I see the galleys there are all these horrible mistakes that were not there when I sent my final in, and certainly were not mentioned by the copywriters. Does the software between the publisher and the printer get scrambled? it's really stupid to have a system that can introduce errors like that, esp when I tried to make it clean.

IS this possibly why there are typos in foreign editions that have already been published elsewhere? Of course some typos always get through, but if there are that many might it be a software issue?

[Carla]

What is even worse (and I have not worked out why this happens) is that I sign off on the final electronic copy, and magically when I see the galleys there are all these horrible mistakes that were not there when I sent my final in, and certainly were not mentioned by the copywriters. Does the software between the publisher and the printer get scrambled? it's really stupid to have a system that can introduce errors like that, esp when I tried to make it clean.

IS this possibly why there are typos in foreign editions that have already been published elsewhere? Of course some typos always get through, but if there are that many might it be a software issue?

I can't speak for book publishing, but I've certainly seen typos appear (and whole lines and paragraphs magically disappear) when a word processor document goes to typesetting. In the dim and distant days of moveable type it used to be because the typesetting was done manually, but now I guess it must be some software glitch between the word processor package and the typesetting/layout package. Hooray for computers (!).

[Suzanne Crowley]

I just finished working with my copyeditor on fixing last minute things for the ARC of my next novel "The Stolen One." We mainly fixed typos, timing problems, consistency, repetition, things like that. Very minor.

[Margaret]

Just because something's a second edition doesn't mean all the corrections made to the first edition will come through. My husband worked very hard to clean up the many typos in the first edition of his book. After it was all corrected, when the publisher went to set up the second edition, they used the uncorrected draft of the first edition instead of the corrected draft, and he had to clean everything up all over again!

[Rowan]

Wellllll since no one's addressed the OP's second question, I guess I will step up to the plate and do so. I don't know of any rules directly addressing whether or not they are allowed in thought or speech, but I did find a copywriter who addresses their use on his website. From his explanation I can understand their use/purpose in speech, but not in thought:

I use them to add the proper intonation and proper flow. This one is less traditional, but comes from my belief that good writing reads like we speak - that’s how people are used to consuming information, and I still think that’s how they consume it best. And if you do you listen to people talk, we say many things below our breath - not everything is spoken with the same power. In short, I use parentheses (just like this), to imitate that kind of speech. It’s not like a set of commas, which emphasizes what lies between them, and it’s not like a hyphen - those strongly mark a new point. It’s just like a set of parentheses (so nice, yet simple), and I think it works.

Source (http://www.brianlburns.com/copywriting-rules-for-correct-use-of-parentheses/)

[amyb]

You are awesome Rowan! Thank you so much for finding the info for me!!

Wellllll since no one's addressed the OP's second question, I guess I will step up to the plate and do so. I don't know of any rules directly addressing whether or not they are allowed in thought or speech, but I did find a copywriter who addresses their use on his website. From his explanation I can understand their use/purpose in speech, but not in thought:



Source (http://www.brianlburns.com/copywriting-rules-for-correct-use-of-parentheses/)

[Rowan]

No problem amy. :)

[rebecca191]

I have a few books where I have both the ARC and the final book. Usually I've only seen typos or small errors (like a sentence twice in a row by accident) get fixed. If the entire sentence structure, in the whole book, is poor, it is unlikely it will get changed. But I would mention it is an ARC in the review just to be on the safe side.

[Misfit]

I am reviving this thread, as I'm currently reading an ARC with some seriously painful typos. Question marks abound where no question marks should be. Periods where they shouldn't be and not where they should be.

Book was originally published in the UK, and I have previously read the UK edition and know it didn't contain typos of that magnitude. My understanding is that the edition I have for US publication has been edited so I'm assuming this version wasn't scanned from the original.

This is the second time I've had an ARC of a book first published in the UK that was OTT in typos.

Can one of our authors explain the scanning process works for new editions of books previously published elsewhere? Should there not be some editing of the scanned editions before being printed into ARC's?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Carla]

I am reviving this thread, as I'm currently reading an ARC with some seriously painful typos. Question marks abound where no question marks should be. Periods where they shouldn't be and not where they should be.

Book was originally published in the UK, and I have previously read the UK edition and know it didn't contain typos of that magnitude. My understanding is that the edition I have for US publication has been edited so I'm assuming this version wasn't scanned from the original.

This is the second time I've had an ARC of a book first published in the UK that was OTT in typos.

Can one of our authors explain the scanning process works for new editions of books previously published elsewhere? Should there not be some editing of the scanned editions before being printed into ARC's?

Any help would be appreciated.

I have an ARC like that on the go at the moment (may even be the same one?).

Last time it happened the publishers told me they had scanned the book from a hard copy of the original edition. When you do that, the optical character recognition (OCR) software often misreads characters or combinations of characters (e.g. "I might be read as T) or misses some out altogether. The publishers said the final edition would be copy-edited to fix all the typos. I suppose they wouldn't have time to do that before the ARC, as copy-editing a file with a lot of typos takes quite a while.

It can be really distracting, and if the typos are too frequent it can be nearly impossible to read.

Seems odd that there would be a lot of OCR typos still in a book that is supposed to have been edited, though. Even if they put the OCR file directly into editing without cleaning it up first, which they may well have done to save time, you'd expect that there wouldn't be typos in the edited text. Maybe only parts of the book were edited/rewritten - particular chapters, say - and the typos are in the parts that weren't?

[Misfit]

I have an ARC like that on the go at the moment (may even be the same one?).

Last time it happened the publishers told me they had scanned the book from a hard copy of the original edition. When you do that, the optical character recognition (OCR) software often misreads characters or combinations of characters (e.g. "I might be read as T) or misses some out altogether. The publishers said the final edition would be copy-edited to fix all the typos. I suppose they wouldn't have time to do that before the ARC, as copy-editing a file with a lot of typos takes quite a while.

It can be really distracting, and if the typos are too frequent it can be nearly impossible to read.

Seems odd that there would be a lot of OCR typos still in a book that is supposed to have been edited, though. Even if they put the OCR file directly into editing without cleaning it up first, which they may well have done to save time, you'd expect that there wouldn't be typos in the edited text. Maybe only parts of the book were edited/rewritten - particular chapters, say - and the typos are in the parts that weren't?


Thanks Carla, and yes we might have the same book. There are sections (small ones) where the typos are almost non-existant and then I'm head on again with typos in every other paragraph. Very distracting and glad I own the original version for my keeper shelf :)

[Madeleine]

I'm just about to finish "The Janus Stone" (a proper, "final" copy) and I dread to think what the ARC/proof was like - there are so many typos in it I don't think it was edited at all! Not enough to be a big distraction, but enough to annoy me.