Report typos

Print-on-demand is different from regular publishing. For one thing, it means that I can correct typos as soon as they’re spotted. If you’ve found a typo in the book, please email it to me and I’ll correct it right away, and add your name to the bottom of the page in a footnote (and yes, I am indeed hoping you’ll buy a(nother) copy to get one with your name it it!). I’ll also give you a credit here — your name in lights!

Typos:
Andrew Crocker: “understandingthe”, The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, P31, Nov 1, 2010.

184 Comments |

184 Responses to Report typos

  1. Ryan Junk says:

    In “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away” there is a sentence:

    “Randy was all tells, no matter how sauve and collected he seemed. He must have been really up to something when they caught him. ”

    “sauve” should be “suave”

    I don’t have a page # as I am reading this in the HTML version…

  2. Ralph Broom says:

    The word “overlayed” should probably be “overlaid” in the paragraph 39 (pdf edition). Here is the paragraph in question:

    From the nearby cubicles, Lawrence heard the ritualized muttering of a thousand brothers 39
    and sisters in the Order of Reflective Analytics, a susurration of harmonized, concentrated
    thought. On his display, he watched an instrument widget track the decibel level over time,
    the graph overlayed on a 3D curve of normal activity over time and space. He noted that
    the level was a little high, the room a little more anxious than usual.

  3. Ralph Broom says:

    “heirarchy” should be “hierarchy” in para 44 (pdf version). Paragraph:

    It’s not like Gerta was in charge — the Order worked in autonomous little units with rotating 44
    leadership, all coordinated by some groupware that let them keep the heirarchy nice and
    flat, the way that they all liked it. Authority sucked.

  4. Ralph Broom says:

    “Analysitcs” should probably be “Analytics” (which matches the rest of the story) in para 212 (PDF version).

    Paragraph:
    “It’s a long story,” he said. “Basically, though: I’m a monk from the Order of Reflective 212
    Analysitcs and one of our guys has disappeared. His sister used to live here — maybe she
    still does — and I wanted to ask her if she knew where I could find him.”

  5. Ralph Broom says:

    “sauve” should be “suave” in para 371 (PDF version).

    Paragraph:
    Randy’s silhouette — now resolving into features, clothes (another sweater, this one with 371
    a high collar and squared-off shoulders) — made a little movement that Lawrence knew
    meant yes. Randy was all tells, no matter how sauve and collected he seemed. He must
    have been really up to something when they caught him.

  6. Ralph Broom says:

    “yarlmulke” I think should be “yarmulke” in para 865 (PDF version).

    Paragraph:
    “Look at you, so modest, you’re blushing!” the Relative said. She reached out to steady a 865
    cut-glass vase as it wobbled in the wake of two small boys playing keep-away with a third’s
    yarlmulke, and Trish realized that this was probably the hostess.

  7. Ralph Broom says:

    “paen” should be “paean” or “pean” in para 927 (PDF version).

    Paragraph:
    They didn’t get home until well after midnight. Parts of LA appeared to be on fire as they 927
    inched their way along the freeway. It was weird to see LA at this speed. They were used
    to clipping along at 60 or 70 — over 80 if the traffic was light — flying over the freeway so fast
    that the scenery was just a blur. Only the year before, the New Yorker had run a 40-page
    paen to LA, a public apology declaring it the most livable city in America, now that it had
    licked its traffic problems. It balanced lots of personal space with thorough urbanization
    and urbanity. It was why they both lived there.

  8. Ralph Broom says:

    Unless there’s a British variation, I think “tassles” should be “tassels” in para 946 (PDF version).

    Paragraph (truncated):
    “Oh, she’s your favorite, isn’t she?” Trish asked, goosing Rainer’s bicep and taking a sip 946
    of his peach ginger-ade. The pundit had been in heavy rotation since the TV went back
    on the air. She was a Norwegian academic mathematician who wrote books of popular
    philosophy. She was a collection of trademark affectations: a jacket with built-up shoulders,
    a monocle, a string tie, nipple tassles, and tattooed cross-hatching on her face that made [...]

  9. Katelyn Eads says:

    I don’t know if you care, or if you’re purposefully not-quite-using-their-brand-name, but even though Walmart has those awful stars in the middle of their signs that imply it’s somehow two words, it’s now officially branded “Walmart,” with only one capital letter, no dash or spacing or anything.

    In the first line of Other Peoples’ Money, you say Greta’s in the parking lot of a “WalMart.” It should be “Walmart” according to their official name.

  10. Katelyn Eads says:

    There’s a quotation mark at the end of paragraph 619 that shouldn’t be there, as the next paragraph is still Gretl speaking, uninterrupted.

  11. Ryan Bernacki says:

    Paragraph 238, I think “playing” should be “played”

    “Gerta had left him with her file on zbigkrot and his activities on the network. He had several known associates on Campus, people he ate with or playing on intramural teams with, or did a little extreme programming with.”

  12. Katelyn Eads says:

    “Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them 577
    to hang him(.)” – Cardinal Richelieu

    Missing a period at the end of the quote at the beginning of Scroogled.

  13. Katelyn Eads says:

    “You pray twice times a day with a quorum of ten men, facing east and singing the Kaddish . . . ”

    Paragraph 824, in Human Readable. It should be either “two times a day” or “twice a day.”

  14. Blake Girardot says:

    Paragraph 2093 of the PDF, Hamilton Beech should be Hamilton Beach unless that was done intentionally for some reason.

  15. Blake Girardot says:

    Paragraph 2105 of the PDF:

    “I put herin the Living Room.”

    Looks like a missing space to me, should be:

    “I put her in the Living Room.”

    no?

    I hate to try and edit you Cory, your writing is a bit too advanced for my limited view of English.

  16. Blake Girardot says:

    Paragraph 2236 of the PDF:

    If he were talking with Carmela, he’s say, “I feel like she wants me to succeed.

    I think it should be: he’d say ?

  17. Blake Girardot says:

    Graph 2360 of the PDF:

    gas cromatograph

    Missing an h ?

    gas chromatograph

    Is there an email address these would be better directed to or is here ok?

  18. OldMiser says:

    A case-insensitive search within the .sst file (using Windows Notepad) turns up five instances of “other peoples’” that should be “other people’s” (four relating to the Forbes story and one within “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away.”

  19. OldMiser says:

    At the very beginning of the .sst file, in the line below the publisher information, “colletion” should be “collection.”

  20. Mike McConnell says:

    In paragraph 8 of the Progress Pilgrims section of Human Readable in the text file it has “…explore all possible routes in realtime and emerge a
    solutions
    to the problem of getting everything…” Should be “emerge at solutions” right?

  21. OldMiser says:

    “non compis” in paragraph 1711 and “non-compis” in paragraph 1999 should both be “non compos”.

  22. Mike McConnell says:

    In Human Readable there is…

    “She looked back and Rainer and saw that he was staring where she had.”

    That and should be an at i think.

  23. Mike McConnell says:

    In the fourth paragraph of Pester Power it says “…she could have given docent tours” which i think should be “decent tours.”

    • Mike McConnell says:

      In the sixth paragraph of Pester Power the text has FfMRI which should be FMRI as, based on the question after it about metal, i assume it is a Functional Magnetic Resonance Image Machine.

      • Mike McConnell says:

        Now Google tells me it might mean Fast Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging – i feel a fool for not Googling first.

        • Mike McConnell says:

          In Pester Power there is a gap between botnet and the ‘s in the sentence that begins “Your botnet ‘s been sending new spam variants…”

          I’m putting these all in the same thread, makes me look like i’m crazy talking to myself, but it keeps things tidy.

          • Mike McConnell says:

            Machine gun is written twice in the text as machinegun. So not sure if that counts as a typo or a stylistic choice/acceptable colloquialism.

          • Mike McConnell says:

            In Chicken Little there is… “It was discipline that made pay every bill as it
            came in.”

            Which i think should be “It was discipline that made him pay every bill as it
            came in.”

          • Mike McConnell says:

            Just noticed the above Chicken Little one is already credited with a correction in the txt/html versions but the text has been corrected.

            Also one of the accreditations has Exta instead of extra.

            That’s all from me today i promise. Tomorrow however…

    • Nope, that’s a tour given by a docent!

  24. Mike McConnell says:

    In Pester Power there is a gap between botnet and the ‘s in the sentence that begins “Your botnet ‘s been sending new spam variants…”

    I’m putting these all in the same thread, makes me look like i’m crazy talking to myself, but it keeps things tidy.

  25. Blake Girardot says:

    Paragraph 2444 of the PDF (most recent version, I just re-downloaded it).

    Missing punctuation:

    …this is so much bullshit That statistically, your chances…

    Something needs to go between bullshit and That, probably a period based on the capitalization.

  26. Blake Girardot says:

    Paragraph 2502 of the PDF.

    The 2nd sentence doesn’t make sense to me:

    Because you just can’t help it. Even she you know you’re doing it, you can’t help it.

    I think the word ‘she’ should be ‘when’.

  27. Blake Girardot says:

    Paragraph 2567 of the PDF:

    … fascinated with the idea that happiness, perceived happiness, and predicted happiness can be completely disjoint.

    I think maybe ‘disjoint’ should be ‘disjointed’ unless you are speaking in the mathematical sense.

  28. Mike McConnell says:

    In Epoch; PEBKAC is introduced as PEBKAC. Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair but is later referred to as PEBCAK twice.

  29. Ryan Bernacki says:

    Paragraph 387 in Weak and Strange in the ePub is

    “There was a bottle of alcohol in it and a lot gauze pads.”

    Should be “a lot of gauze pads

  30. Ryan Bernacki says:

    Paragraph 415 in weak and strange in ePub is

    “It’s very good to hear your voice,” he said. He meant it. He wondered if she knew about the Securitat’s campus snitches. He wondered if she was one. But it was good to hear her voice. His pan let him know what whatever he was doing was making him feel great. He didn’t need his pan to tell him that, though.

    Should be

    His pan let him know that whatever

  31. OldMiser says:

    On the final page of the pdf, the “Filetype” entry (under the “Version Information” heading)contains only a series of “no such file or directory” errors.

  32. OldMiser says:

    In the story “Epoch” (page 222 of pdf), “peoples’” should be “people’s” (at “…important service updates for peoples’ toothbrushes…”).

  33. Johan says:

    On page 47 it says Greta, where I’m assuming it should be Gerta.

  34. Haakon Nilsen says:

    In “Other People’s Money”, I found this:

    “They were like stories, those scratches, each one a momento mori for some long-dead instant in some stranger’s life.”

    The correct term is “memento mori” (“remember your mortality).

  35. bowerbird says:

    so, cory, all these bug reports make a person
    really appreciate the value of copyeditors, eh?

    and “beta-readers” are tremendously important!
    as you’ve surely realized, a pre-release for them,
    before solidifying the print-on-demand version,
    would eliminate the constant re-upload dance…

    meanwhile…

    i’ve updated the version in my z.m.l. format:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walha.zml

    in addition, i’ve auto-generated a .pdf:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walha,odf

    and an .html version too:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walha,html

    these output conversions are a button-click
    operation, which makes it easy for an author.

    the .pdf i created is for a book with 320 pages.
    as i say in notes in the .pdf (pages 3 and 316),
    i believe an author with a pre-existing fan-base,
    like you, cory, should take advance-orders and
    do a regular print-run, to lower the book’s cost.

    and of course, when doing a print-run, one must
    attend to the page-count, so i aimed at a number
    – 320 — which is amenable to print-signatures.
    (basically, you want a number divisible by 16, and
    one divisible by 32 is even better for some printers.)
    i used georgia as the font, setting it up at 11/12.5.

    as might be clear from this, the .pdf that’s generated
    automatically from the z.m.l. “master file” is one that
    is designed to go to a printer. it aims at high quality.
    the object is to _replace_ indesign for self-publishers.

    i’ll be releasing many of these cost-free tools soon…

    if anyone wants to e-mail, i’m bowerbird at aol dot com…

    -bowerbird

    • I hope you don’t think I ever doubted the value of copyeditors and proofers. But for the record, the number of typos found in this book are about par for the course for a book right after publication — not substantially more per page than were fixed between the first and second printings of Little Brother, say.

      As to arranging for an advance print-run at lower costs; I think you’re making unwarranted assumptions about the price of the book. The net cost of the book from Lulu is $11 and change; the $18 pricetag arose after I added ISBNs to the book, which triggered Lulu adding it to its Amazon catalog; once that happened, they automatically raise the minimum price to leave room for a discount to the retail channel. I’m working with Lulu to undo this right now, and plan on bringing the price back down to $15 and to try experiments with lower prices still.

      The pre-orders I’d have to take in order to have someone else produce a perfect-bound book at a cost substantially below $11 would be substantial — about 5,000, based on my work in prepress (which is admittedly far behind me).

      And it would have to be someone else. There is no percentage at all in being my own fulfilment house — I’m certainly not situated to be a mail room for 5,000 books; the opportunity cost represented by that much packing and shipping is a lot more than I would earn from such an order.

      • bowerbird says:

        cory said:
        > I hope you don’t think I ever doubted
        > the value of copyeditors and proofers.

        of course not. but when you’ve had a publisher,
        meaning you didn’t have to do the job yourself,
        it can be hard to know how difficult the task is…
        that’s why many self-publishers underestimate it.

        part of my mission is providing tools that can be
        used to help authors perform this important job.

        ***

        as for book printing prices, here’s some info:
        > http://z-m-l.com/misc/printerpricing.html

        that pricing script — which is on another site –
        was produced in 2004, and i cannot say whether
        the prices are still accurate, but my guess is that
        they are as likely to have dropped as gone up…

        so, with a run of 2000-3000, you’re looking at
        a cost of $2-$4 per book, which leaves a lot of
        wiggle room to hire out a fulfillment process and
        still give a break to fans willing to pay in advance.
        again, i’m not talking about maintaining a stock,
        but merely printing and immediately shipping…

        and just tossing it out as some information that
        might be considered by future self-publishers…

        ***

        what i really care about is any reaction that you
        might have to the z.m.l. system and its output,
        especially since you’re now using a similar tool.

        we met briefly when you lived in los angeles –
        i’m a performance poet who invited you to come
        out to a local venue — and i told you about my
        system then, and you said you’d like to see it, so
        here it is. so if you have a chance to look at it
        – i fully realize you’re a very busy individual –
        and you have some reaction, i’d love to hear it…

        have a good day, eh?

        -bowerbird

  36. bowerbird says:

    ack! sorry, i screwed up those links…

    i’ve updated the version in my z.m.l. format:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walha.zml

    in addition, i’ve auto-generated a .pdf:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walha.pdf

    and an .html version too:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walha.html

    -bowerbird

  37. Sam M-B says:

    On the MP3-CD metadata (at least as read by my player software), Power Punctuation! is missing its exclamation!

  38. Sam M-B says:

    A typo/nit-pick on the table of contents, both on the MP3-CD booklet and printed on the CD itself, and in the MP3 metadata. Compare:

    1. Introduction by Jonathan Couton (Hm… I notice now that this should be Coulton, not Couton — it’s wrong on both the booklet and printed on the CD, fine in the metadata)
    14. I’m Only In It For the Money, by Russell Galen

    The nit-picker in me wonders why the comma in one but not the other.

    • Thanks for the Coulton misspelling!

      As to the comma, no, that’s deliberate: the title of Russ’s afterword is, “I’m Only In it For the Money.” The word “Introduction,” on the other hand, isn’t a title, it’s a description.

  39. Sam M-B says:

    For the MP3-CD metadata, when read by Apple iTunes (Windows) the comments (which I assume should be the narrator information?) show up as hexadecimal line noise:

    00000BC8 00000B11 0000CDA6 0000A439 000499F8 0007F8A8 00007DEB 00007DEB 00085158 0000D7E8

  40. bowerbird says:

    no more changes to the text since the 14th,
    except the 3 from chris pepper on the 17th?

    are you all caught up on error-reports?

    i’m getting ready to go final with a version,
    and would like to know i have got them all.

    -bowerbird

  41. Donald M. Wallace says:

    Hey — I got MAKERS for my new Kindle, and every mention of the word ‘budget’ is rendered as ‘but get’.

  42. Ryan Bernacki says:

    In para 3 of Liberation Spectrum, “astrong” should be “a strong”

    He flipped the windows to transparent and let the sun shine in, provoking groans from the company. MacDiarmid, the angel investor who’d been in since the multinational had been able to fit in a sedan, threw astrong arm around Lee-Daniel’s shoulders.

  43. CKHB says:

    There’s a mistake in your list of WALH podcast titles, I think:

    feed://craphound.com/walh_podcast.xml

    It says Mary Robinette Kowal read Other People’s Money, but I think that’s Mur’s story, isn’t it?

  44. manx says:

    In “Echo” found the following:

    “That hasn’t stopped them from finding it, has it?” He sounded smug. I ulped.”

    should this be “I gulped” ?

  45. Pingback: The Future of Publishing: Cory Doctorow « Garrick Van Buren .com « Web Application Research, Strategy, and Development

  46. steve says:

    Just wanted to echo comment #22, which was:

    In Human Readable there is…

    “She looked back and Rainer and saw that he was staring where she had.”

    Unless you’re trying to fundamentally change the syntax of the English language, something seems to be wrong there. Probably one of the ands should be something else or eliminated entirely.

  47. bowerbird says:

    cory-

    i’ve posted a list of possible changes here:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walh-copy-editing

    some of these you will accept immediately without question.
    others you might well reject out of hand. that’s perfectly ok.
    (some of them are not “errors” per se, but they facilitate the
    convenient re-use and re-mix of the text, as best practice.)

    i found these glitches almost entirely using software tools
    which i have programmed, which i will make freely available
    to people at a website where i’ll offer my publishing system.

    so i’d like it if you’d credit that system for my corrections:
    > bowerbird — jaguarps.com

    if you want to discuss any of the changes, just e-mail me:
    bowerbird at aol dot com.

    here’s wishing you a happy and back-pain-free new year…

    -bowerbird

  48. Eunah Choi says:

    Hello,
    I am a totally blind gril, so I usually listen to an audio version of a book while simultaneously following the text using my Braille display device.
    Today, I listened to the audio version of WALH while reading the txt version of that book and found a missing sentence in “The Introduction” and a typo in “The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange gets Engineered away”.
    Missing Sentence:
    “The Pester Power” tells us how the Internet has been watching us and learning, and how will finally, one day, wake up.”
    The above sentence should be inserted immediately after the following one:
    “And so his stories are especially compelling because they are so relevant to our immediate future.”
    Typo in “The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Gets Engineered Away:
    “the Order worked in autonomous little units with rotating leadership, all coordinated by some groupware that let them keep the heirarchy nice and flat, the way that they all liked it. Authority sucked.”
    “Heirarchy” should be fixed as “Hierarchy”.
    The txt and HTML versions both have those typos.

    • Thank you, Eunah! “Heirarchy” was already fixed in the print edition, but the missing sentence was missing from both the electronic and print texts. I’ve fixed and uploaded all versions now. What an amazing setup for proof-reading you’ve got!

  49. Henk Hesselink says:

    In Epoch in the paragraph explaining PEBKAC there is a sentence “Sysadmins live in the turbulent waters PEBKAC.” I would think this should be “Sysadmins live in the turbulent waters of PEBKAC.”

    Happy new year and love your work!

  50. OldMiser says:

    i. In the Coulton introduction (1/1/11 pdf page 5, paragraph 3, third sentence), “how will finally” should be “how it will finally”.

    ii. As previously noted by Johan,near the end of “Weak and Strange” (page 39 of 1/1/11 pdf) “He called Greta” should probably be “He called Gerta.”

    iii. As of 1/1/11, the “Filetype” entry on the final page of the pdf (under the “Version Information” heading)still contains only a series of “no such file or directory” errors.

  51. Paul Hummer says:

    Page 225 of the PDF version of WALH:

    “Look”, he said, “I’m really sorry…

    It’s a temporary skip from first person to third person.

  52. Tom Johnson says:

    On page 197/259 of the PDF download, in story ‘Chicken Little’, just before the ‘#’ section divider, Leon says ‘Buen suerte’ to the receptionist as he walks out. ‘Suerte’ is feminine, so you have to make the adjective agree: ‘buena suerte’. Unless I’m missing something…

    (forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1369243)

  53. Joe Burch says:

    PDF page 27, footnote page 24:
    “He had several known associates on Campus, people he ate with or playing on intramural teams with…”

    I believe “playing” should be “played”
    That’s all for now. :)
    ~Joe

  54. Joe B. says:

    In “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away,” it says, “He had several known associates on Campus, people he ate with or playing on intramural teams with, or did a little extreme programming with. Gerta had bulk-messaged them all with an oblique query about his personal life and had forwarded the responses to Lawrence.”

    I believe that you meant to say, “played on intramural teams with,” not “playing on intramural teams with.”

    • Joe B. says:

      Sorry, I forgot to mention that this was in the HTML version. I’m not sure about other versions.

    • Hey, Joe! Thanks for this! Sorry to say that someone beat you to it by a couple of days (I was on holidays last week and didn’t get a chance to update the files). I appreciate it, though!

      Cory

  55. SJ says:

    In the paperback, on p31, (“The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange…”) there is a switch to first person.

    “That was clearly my cue to go, and he’d changed into a fresh set of trousers, …..”

  56. Matthew Reames says:

    Not sure if it is a typo or me just reading it incorrectly…

    In Epoch, in paragraph 2583 (it’s the ebook version), the rollover is said to be 19 January, 2038. In paragraph 2588, BIGMAC says ‘…lots of important things go blooie on September 30.’

    Is this a programming thing I’m missing? I’d have thought that if the rollover was in January, they’d know fairly soon if things were going blooie.

    • Hey, Matthew! Thanks for that — it’s a good one and has now been fixed in all editions, print and digital. You’ve got a footnote on page 302 of the paperback, too, in case you want to get a copy with your name in it!

  57. Mike Harris says:

    In “Visit the Sins”, Sean says:

    “You ever been to Universal, Dad? I hear you come here down a lot.”

    I imagine you mean ” … come down here a lot.”

  58. rob alley says:

    the following were noticed in the hardback version:

    In “Power Punctuation”, page 206, the second line of the paragraph beginning “He said, “I don’t…” shows the word “naive” spelled as “na(square root character)(slash O character)ve”

    same story, page 189 paragraph beginning “I moved the boxes…”, 5th line has “time I(comma)(capital A two dots)(little o with a “hat”)d”, instead of “time I’d moved” (note – sorry i don’t know the real names of the characters)

    same page, next paragraph, 4th line “I said, you aren(comma)(capital A two dots)(little o with a “hat”)t” instead of “you aren’t”

    or maybe those are examples of “power punctuation”?

  59. rob alley says:

    in the hardback version:

    In “Visit the Sins”, page 226, paragraph 3, begins “*How’s Grampa” – I think that the asterisk should be omitted

    In “Constitutional Crisis”, page 236, point 4, third line, there is an odd character befofe the pound sign (looks like an L on its back, flipped over)

  60. rob alley says:

    in the hardback version:

    Not sure about this one, but in the story “Chicken Little”, page 255, third paragraph, third line has “Hansel and Gretelprize” – i think it should instead be “Hansel and Gretel prize”

  61. rob alley says:

    again, hardback version:

    In the story “Epoch”, page 349, 4th paragraph, second line. Not sure about this one but it reads “…just sent an init o to…”

    In the fifth paragraph, fourth line, there is an unnecessary close paragraph after “electricity”

    on a separate note – really enjoyed the stories, and the hardback version is wonderfully put together – excellent work, and I hope that this model is very successful!

  62. Vincent Celier says:

    In the paperback edition (I’ve got the Pablo Defendini cover), on page 162, second paragraph, Sûreté, that is spelled correctly on page 160 is printed funny:

    S√ªret√©

    – Vincent

  63. Jeannette says:

    This is more of a grammar thing than a typo (or maybe it’s an intentional part of the narrator’s “voice”), but just in case…

    “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange” pg 21 (pdf).

    “The Securitat treated the Order the way that Lawrence’s old bosses treated the company sysadmins: expendable geeks who no one cared about — so long as nothing went wrong.”

    Should that “who” be a “whom”? It’s a quibble, I know.

  64. Ralph Giles says:

    Hardback edition, “Weak and Strange” page 42, the first paragraph of the message quoted with ‘>’ isn’t indented.

    My copy (#48) also has the ‘backto’ typo in the previous paragraph, but I see that’s been reported an corrected in the electronic version.

  65. Brendan says:

    Is there still time for FTW typos? Or has that ship sailed. Bookmarked several as I read (and enjoyed!) it last week.

  66. Mark Vadnais says:

    I’m checking typos I found in the paperback (dated December 11, 2010 on the last page) against the .pdf version downloaded today, Feb 20, 2011.

    Page 128 of the paperback, page 87 of the .pdf:

    `Come on,“ she said.

    Apostrophe instead of quotation marks.

    Page 271 of the paperback, page 188 of the .pdf:

    I was thinking of you know, how the samurai banned firearms.

    Missing comma between ‘of’ and ‘you.’

    Page 297 of the paperback, p. 206 of the .pdf:

    understood that this is so much bullshit That statistically, your

    Either there should be a period after ‘bullshit’ or ‘That’ shouldn’t be capitalized.

    All the other typos I found have already been fixed.

    • Hey, Mark! Thanks for these, and sorry for the delay — this fell into the moderation queue and I missed it.

      The first typo is a good one, but the second is deliberate (the speaker is drunk and the lack of punctuation is meant to indicate the meter of his dialog); and the third had been fixed in print but not online. So you’ve got a typo credit on P128 of the Lulu editions and a second credit for the formatting error in the ebooks. Thanks again!

      Cory

  67. Tim G says:

    The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away
    page 32

    ‘They wouldn’t make it so easy if they didn’t expect everyone to do it — and once everyone’s done it, we’re ttttt.’

    I’m sure that would have been caught already but it’s still in lulu’s downloaded pdf, yet not in the version on craphound. According to that the sentence ends ‘we’re all guilty’.

  68. In the story “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away”, there is a typo in the following sentence:

    Anja Krotoski had lived on “23d Street” in a co-op near Lexington.

    That should be “23rd Street”, as in third I think.

    - Kris

  69. Helen Hokanson says:

    Scroogled pg 82
    “Greg turned rotated his head this way and that.”

    Liberation Spectrum pg 172
    “…who ran a little to fat…” should be too, right?

    I’m kinda creeped out by how excited I am to find these errors missed by all the smart people!

  70. Helen Hokanson says:

    This is such a cool project and it’s really exciting to be a part of the process. Take a look at these:

    Visit the Sins
    Pg 209 …a way of delivering (an) argument…

    Pg 212 Visit the Sins
    “That’s not (a) coping mechanism…”

    Pg 226 I hear you *come here* down a lot

    Pg 228 Grampa spread (his) hands on the table.

    Chicken Little
    Pg 256 The corner stores sold blunt-skins to trustafarian hipsters with a bag of something *gengineered”…

    Pg 303 “Sound(s) pretty good to me”

    Chicken Little Afterword
    Pg 306 …predicted happiness can be completely disjoint(ed).

    Epoch (my favorite from the collection)
    Pg 316 Those boxe(s) are huge energy-sinks.

    Pg 317 …crumbs down the cleavage of the salarylady… should there be a space?

    Thanks!

    • Thanks, Helen! “delivering argument”, “come down here”, “gengineered”, “disjoint” “boxen” and “salarylady” are all deliberate, but “coping mechanism” “spread hands” and “sounds pretty good” are all valid typos! I’ve fixed ‘em and uploaded the changes. You can get Lulu editions with credits for you on pages 212, 228 and 303!

  71. Great ideas and insights. Just landed here today on my path to self publishing my mystery novel. Found this on your website at http://craphound.com/?cat=4
    referring to your Compl Idiot’s guide:

    espeically the pieces on how to write

  72. bowerbird says:

    cory-

    as noted above, i reported many errors in december:
    > http://z-m-l.com/walha/walh-copy-editing

    but i wasn’t credited or thanked for the corrections,
    which were made much later. not a big deal, i guess,
    but i put a good deal of work into the process, and i
    would have expected you to uphold that honorably…

    maybe there is something that i’m missing?

    -bowerbird

    • Sorry, Bowerbird — I misunderstood your comment. I thought you were adding a link to a reformatted version, I didn’t understand you to be reporting typos as well (comments here are a lot less reliable than using the report typos email address that’s given above). I’ll have a look at these and see if there are any I missed.

  73. Matt Craig says:

    In the story “Liberation Spectrum” I think there is a mistake on page 108 of the PDF (page 9 of the story in the ePub version):

    The roadhouse was the kind of TAZ that got less entertaining at the square of the amount of time spent within its animated walls.

    Shouldn’t that be “as” instead of “at”?

    I also just noticed the pain in that section doesn’t really increase as the square of the amount of time :) Right now it goes:

    first minute = “painful”
    second minute = “twice as horrible as the first” (should be 4x if increasing as the square)
    third minute = “twice as horrible as the first two minutes”, which would be 2×3=6, but should be 9 if increasing as the square, so that the third minute is 1.8 times as horrible as the first two, since the first two should add up to 5.

    Not that it matters at all, and I didn’t notice it while reading the story, just noticed now while reporting the typo.

    I enjoyed this book quite a bit; looking forward to your next one!

    Matt

    • Thanks, Matt! “At the square” is correct here — it’s a colloquialism! Thanks for the technical analysis, you’re right, but again, it’s a figure of speech. Much appreciated!

  74. Andrew Klossner says:

    It’s not a typo but it’s jarring. In The Things That Make Me Weak, when Lawrence leaves the campus, the guard explains that the doors in the vestibule open inward (so the 10 atmospheres make them impossible to force.) But once he’s inside, the outer door “swung away.”

  75. Andrew Klossner says:

    “The roadhouse was the kind of TAZ that got less entertaining at the square of the amount of time spent within its animated walls.” at should be as.

    • Andrew Klossner says:

      Never mind — I see that you’ve already addressed this. (Where’s the “delete comment” key?)

  76. Jim Crocker-Lakness says:

    In ‘Epoch’, ‘Sysadmins live in the turbulent waters PEBKAC’ should probably be ‘Sysadmins live in the turbulent waters of PEBKAC’.

    I enjoyed the read!

  77. Mahima Hada says:

    Mobi format of the book:

    1. Para 2243 – It should be “smiled AND stopped him”. “And” is missing.

    2. Para 2444: “immediately understood that this is so much bullshit That statistically”… there should either be a “.”, or a “;”. I like the semi-colon. :)

    3. Para 2502: “Even she you know you’re doing it, you can’t help it”. Should be “Even IF you know…”

  78. Ken VanBree says:

    Cory,

    I read the piece about With a Little Help in the WSJ a while back and was glad to learn about a new Science Fiction author. I bought a paperback with the Rick Lieder cover and just finished the book which I enjoyed thoroughly. Living in Mountain View and knowing a number of people at Google I particularly enjoyed Scroogled.

    I did see one typo in Scroogled on page 92. The paragraph about half way down the page reads: “Good, OK. Yes. I did spy on their email. Of course I did. Everyone does it, now and again, and for a lot worse reasons that this.

    I think you meant “and for a lot worse reasons THAN this.

    I don’t know if someone has already caught this one but after reading your blog about the cost of correcting a typo I’d say if it is a valid typo, queue it up with a bunch of other edits and do them all at once.

    Good luck with the book, I am intrigued by the business model and hope that you and Russell Galen both make money on it.

  79. Pete S says:

    DUH!

    With a little help… Liberation Spectrum

    page 119 “omnidirectional yagi antennae”!!?

    A Yagi antenna is _directional_. That is what it does, what it is designed to do. It works better in one direction (has gain) and works worse in others (has loss.) This is useful:
    * to receive a wanted signal better (in the preferrred direction.)
    * to discriminate against an intefering signal or other noise (in non-preferred directions).

    That is what I know. For your convenience I quote Wikipedia (my emphasis) “A Yagi-Uda array, commonly known simply as a Yagi antenna, is a _directional_ antenna consisting of (etc)”.

    BTW, there aint no such thing as a practical ommnidirectional antenna. The nearest practical antenna I can think of is a vertical monopole – but that is directional in the vertical direction. And that ain’t a YAGI!

    The theoretical ommnidirectional antenna is a short dipole (asymptotic to zero length). Good luck getting one of those babies to radiate with any practical transmitter!

    Regards

    Pete S

    • Thanks, fixed! The correction on P175 has been footnoted for “Pete S” and also corrected in the digital editions. You’ll be able to get a Lulu edition with your name in it in about 10 minutes.

  80. joe says:

    I feel a bit silly mentioning this, but the link to the ogg file of part 2 of the book is busted.

  81. carl says:

    I think there’s a punct. typo in “Visit the Sins,” before or after (I suspect before) “Sean said.”: “They’re going to move my grandfather to the zero-function ward, I think. If he doesn’t spend more time switched on, they will.” Sean said. “I want to get his story before they do it.”

    There should probably be a comma instead of a period after “they will.”

    Love your work–using at least a couple stories–and maybe “Little Brother” (too Y.A?–I don’t think so)–in a U. class I’m teaching this coming semester. Thank you!

  82. carl says:

    oops, I meant *Little Brother*.

  83. carl says:

    “Visit the Sins,” p. 151 of pdf: “Dad” in “Your Dad has nothing to complain about” should probably be lower case (not being used as proper name).

  84. David Zilk says:

    In “Liberation Spectrum”, pg. 176 of the print edition.

    “…the Series B man said, from the across the little table.”

  85. Pingback: Accelerando Manfred Macx generation review

  86. Pingback: Planet10Tech » Blog Archive » Can Lawyers Market Using Fremium Models?

  87. Bob Thompson says:

    In the first page or so of “Chicken Little”: “115 years after Mary Shelley first started
    humanity’s hands wringing over the possibility that we would create a machine
    as smart as us but out of our control, Dr Shannon did it, and it turned out to
    be incredibly, utterly boring.”

    I was a little fuzzy on the story’s chronology, but 115 years would put BIGMAC’s creation in the 1930s as opposed to the 2030s.

  88. Andy Peake says:

    In “Epoch,” on page 317 of the Amazon edition I have, there is a line that reads ‘”You a funny robot,” I said.’ It seems like it should read, ‘”You‘re a funny robot,” I said.’ I suppose it could be intentional, though.

  89. Pingback: yyjworks.com » Epilogue – Last words on ‘platform’ (well, for the moment)

  90. Loren says:

    I don’t know if you’re still monitoring this thread, but I just finished reading (this morning) via DailyLit. Many interesting stories and such. I noticed various typos, but it looks like they’ve probably all been recorded already. (I suspect the DailyLit copy is old.)

    I still have a significant question, though. In Epoch you made a couple references to BIGMAC’s architecture:

    … Those old Intel eight-cores are freaky. …

    … Intel 8-cores, that’s what he ran on. …

    … Those 8-ways were —   “You’re a 32-bit machine!” I said.

    So, what Intel processor did you have in mind that had eight cores, but is only 32-bit? To my knowledge, Intel only went up to dual-core in its 32-bit days. I know there exist other 32-bit multi-core processors (e.g. the Parallax Propeller) but I don’t know of anything by Intel (or by any others that someone would have built an AI on, especially in the future).

    Is my “google foo” failing me, or was this situation manufactored to motivate the plot?

  91. Tim Bartlett says:

    In the “Epoch”, on p.231 of the PDF version, the is a sentence: “Sysadmins live in the turbulent waters PEBKAC.”

    Perhaps this should be “the turbulent waters *of* PEBKAC”? At any rate, it doesn’t seem to parse quite right as it is.

  92. Kim Hayes says:

    Just finished reading For the Win and Little Brother. Fantastic! I appreciate your accuracy and the insightful way you handled technology and gaming culture. You must be a gamer or you could have fooled me – FTW!!1

    In the Little Brother PDF, page 70, paragraph 5:

    “Then I let out a gasp of air I hadn’t know I’d been holding in.”

    Here the “know” should be known?

    In the For the Win PDF, page 170, 1st paragraph, 2nd column:

    “Wei-Dong bit his tongue to hold in the squeak and
    pushed back even more, the fear on him know, a live
    thing in his chest.”

    And here the “know” should be now?

    Thanks for these great books. I’ll be reading more of your stuff.

    • Thanks, Kim! All fixed. I’m a minor gamer, but my wife is a pro — literally. She used to play Quake for England!

      • Kim Hayes says:

        Really? Nice! I cut my teeth on Everquest back in the day and have loved MMORPGs ever since. For the Win was just too accurate not to have an insiders perspective. As an IT professional, I die a little on the inside at the way most authors handle technology, geeks, and gamers. It’s a real culture that’s impossible to fake. Great job!

  93. Joe says:

    I was just reading “Content”.(electronic) You refer to Heinlein’s “Man Who Sold the Moon” when I am sure you meant “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. I am sure I am not the first person to tell you this. It occurred to me that making a mistake like this could be done on purpose. You probably get many comments of this type. And, this could be used to get a rough estimate of how many people are reading your paper vs. electronic versions. Either by actually asking them in the dialog, or making slightly different errors in the two versions. Just a thought.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
http://craphound.com/walh/contribute/report-typos
craphound.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-41
264444
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:RZGIJYQBY3T7QW6CM6VIIZPF4OSMMCLL
<urn:uuid:144e4193-ed7b-4848-aa7d-05ef3364dbee>
2014-09-21T16:08:48Z
204.11.50.137
sha1:R23FFXXXJ2FRJSFKJHTECLSTB2N2Z5HX
<urn:uuid:1026c531-ba5b-4849-8573-267e47eeee74>
http://craphound.com/walh/contribute/report-typos
response
<urn:uuid:f6f84027-0620-48aa-aa08-6c785d4a23e0>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-41
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for September 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf