[Rant] Do editing/proofreading errors drive you mad, too?

[sniffles]

I find it immensely frustrating to see all the editing and proofreading errors in various WotC books. I don't use 3rd-party materials much, so I don't know if those suffer from the same problems.

For example, I was just reading up on Sharn, particularly on dwarves in Sharn. Page 54 of Sharn - City of Towers describes a dwarven district labeled Highhold in the description heading. But throughout the description text this district is referred to as Holdfast. There's no errata that I can find defining which name is correct.

In the Magic Item Compendium there is an item called a druid's vestment, IIRC. The item table states its cost as 3,750 gp. But in the description text the item is said to cost 10,000 gp. Quite a significant difference.

The spell beget bogun originally appeared in Masters of the Wild. The druid spell list in that volume placed it as a 4th-level spell, I believe, yet in the spell description it was 1st level.

And of course there are all the sample characters for various prestige classes. Often when you read their stats, these characters don't fulfill the prerequisites for the prestige classes they are supposed to exemplify. :\

And just as an ancillary complaint, why don't the books contain glossaries for the invented names and terms they use? How the heck are you supposed to guess how to pronounce "destrachan" or "Iggwilv", for example?

Does this stuff annoy other people as much as it does me?

 

[kibbitz]

I find it immensely frustrating to see all the editing and proofreading errors in various WotC books. I don't use 3rd-party materials much, so I don't know if those suffer from the same problems.

For example, I was just reading up on Sharn, particularly on dwarves in Sharn. Page 54 of Sharn - City of Towers describes a dwarven district labeled Highhold in the description heading. But throughout the description text this district is referred to as Holdfast. There's no errata that I can find defining which name is correct.

In the Magic Item Compendium there is an item called a druid's vestment, IIRC. The item table states its cost as 3,750 gp. But in the description text the item is said to cost 10,000 gp. Quite a significant difference.

The spell beget bogun originally appeared in Masters of the Wild. The druid spell list in that volume placed it as a 4th-level spell, I believe, yet in the spell description it was 1st level.

And of course there are all the sample characters for various prestige classes. Often when you read their stats, these characters don't fulfill the prerequisites for the prestige classes they are supposed to exemplify. :\

And just as an ancillary complaint, why don't the books contain glossaries for the invented names and terms they use? How the heck are you supposed to guess how to pronounce "destrachan" or "Iggwilv", for example?

Does this stuff annoy other people as much as it does me?

Yes, it does immensely.

 

[Voadam]

There are more than one way to pronounce Iggwilv?

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Nope, not enough for me to flip out over it.
Not saying that's what youre doing but I've seen some people on these boards get really bent out of shape about this subject.

As long as the mistake doesnt physically stop me from using the material I'm fine.

 

[Fishbone]

Just minor typos drive me up the wall, much less errors that impact the game mechanically.
The premier driver in the d20 market, WOTC, that puts out the market's flagship game, can't even spell correctly. The books are also riddled with proofreading errors and most likely have grammatical errors out the wazoo. For a company that puts out books under 200 pages in excess of 30 dollars the quality of the editing is absolutely inexcusable.
Edit: As a community college student my papers would not even be graded if they had as many errors as the typical role-playing product. It blows my mind that editing is treated so cavalierly.

 

[diaglo]

Yes, it does immensely.

ditto.

wotc's book of bad latin nearly caused me to seize

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Do I wish the errors weren't there? Yes, I do.

Am I bothered by them? Not really.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

It's not just WotC, it's an industry-wide thing. Even in White Wolf's latest book, Lunars, a sneaky "see pg. XX" snuck in.

Does it bother me? Nah. I'm pretty easy-going like that. However, there was one book I used to own, the first edition of CJ Carella's Armageddon, that was so poorly edited and proofread that even I couldn't read it without getting a headache.

 

[Peni Griffin]

It's not just the gaming industry. Copyediting standards have dropped throughout publishing over the last 20 years as publishers cut costs by cutting staff. This is false economy, but false economy is one of the few places the industry has kept up with the rest of its corporate fellow.

One of the few exceptions is in juvenile lines, which is still reasonably well-copyedited; probably because the school library market is such a big part of the income stream. Nobody wants School Library Journal to say: "This book is riddled with grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors" in the review. Even there standards have slipped in some cases, though it probably isn't fair of me to rip into Harry Potter for these purposes when they plainly aren't even being edited in the normal fashion. (Editing and copyediting are not the same thing. Very roughtly, editing is for iintellectual content; copyediting is for language and grammar; proofreading is for mechanics such as punctuation.) Basically, if a corporation can make money on a poorly-produced book, it'll relax its production standards.

Aesthetic considerations aside, is primarily a problem in game books when they are rendered difficult to use due to contradictory and inaccurate information. Theoretically, bad word-of-mouth ought to adjust the profitability of books with poor copyediting; however, unless the company understands the reason the book wasn't profitable, the wrong problem is likely to be addressed.

All that said, remember that no product is ever going to be perfect. Everybody nods once in awhile, and the most embarrassing errors can make it into print. It's only a consistent pattern of carelessness that ought to really upset us.

 

[Andor]

Yes,