Copy editing

Possibly in another life, I should have been a proof reader/copy editor as I read many books and often find mistakes. I've mentioned the series of books about DCI Warlow¹ written by Rhys Dylan, and over the past few weeks I've reread all the books. In doing so, I found several mistakes that I pointed out to the author; some of these arise because apparently I have been reading early or library editions, where the errors have been corrected in the final published version. But in one book, 'A word with the dead', I found several errors as noted below.

• In chapter 5, it is written "Warlow took the mountain road back to the town. And though he'd heard of the hospital ... and over the river to an easy to miss easy-to-miss sharp right."
• Chapter 16 ends with the words "I think most couples can say if their honest".
• Chapter 17: "Detective Constable Craig Peters stood in the kitchen" - since when is Craig a DC?

I wonder whether I am wearing out my welcome chez Dylan, but this is what he wrote in response: All good catches that everyone else has missed. Keep polishing that eagle eye! I wonder whether he will send me pre-publication drafts of future books so that I can proof read them.

A few days ago, I watched on TV the film 'Patriot Games' with Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan, so of course I had to return to reading books set in the Ryanverse². I didn't fancy reading 'Patriot Games' so I went to one book that I have read only a few times, "Debt of honor"³ (DOH). I hadn't got very far into the book (the first chapter is confusingly titled 'Acknowlegements', at least in my epub copy) when I came across this sentence: Sally and little Jack were doing well at school  and Kathleen would turn two in another month. There's nothing wrong with that sentence, I hear you say, and indeed there isn't. But the possibility of continuity errors exists if one is writing a series, and the more books there are, the higher is the possibility of continuity errors (eg the example that I quoted above about Detective Constable Craig Peters).

What did I write the last time⁴ that I wrote about Jack Ryan and his books? In the much earlier book "Locked on", Jack Ryan decides to run for president for the second time. His third child, Katie, is reported as being 10 years old and his fourth, Kyle, is aged 8. "Locked on" was written several years after DOH, so that sentence is congruent with DOH - Kyle has yet to be born. Yet in "Act of defiance", Katie and Kyle are now twins (they've been referred to as twins in other books as well). Continuity error.

Internal links
[1] 2117
[2] 1710
[3] 473
[4] 2005

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206	09/10/2009	Firebird triggers and autoincrements	Programming, Delphi, Firebird
763	09/10/2014	Literature review: getting down to business	DBA
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