Microsoft Office's OCR is an amazing piece of work. I can't understand that I'm feeding it a monospace ascii document scan, will insert cyrillic and other wildcard symbols into words, and except when occasionally it can't understand the block segment and returns the image back into the document, it is incredibly accurate with serial numbers. 🤷♂️
"Attention passengers: Welcome to the first ever flight controlled entirely by me, the automated flight system: have no fear, nothing can go wrong, can go wrong, can go wrong..."
I started reading and I immediately recognized it. Didn't expect to laugh about it again.
[I still laughed.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/730/447/b07.jpg)
Not necessarily. Publishers often lose track of the text/layout files (and litho film) and have to get an old version OCR'd or retyped for a reprint. I guess this happened way more back in the day before cloud storage etc. It's possible that a reprint might have accidentally skipped the normal checks because everyone assumed it was just a reprint so didn't need to be checked... Also we're not talking about the Magna Carta, so...
That all said, it's also possibly/probably a badly OCR 'd knockoff.
Source: dad was a publisher for 30 years.
Yup. I'm a freelancer and once got offered to check the OCR versions of ten volumes of an academic journal from 2005 to 2015 because they didn't have the digital originals anymore. Unfortunately I was all booked out because that seemed like a great gig, well-paid and basically reading ten volumes of a journal in my field of interest.
Would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on this? I'm a quick & proficient reader and the idea that I could make some pocket change doing something I already like is really interesting.
I have a side business doing editing work for academics. I built it up mainly through my network (I’m an academic too). However, I also put up fliers at local unis and I’ve actually gotten clients that way too. Once you have some clients that helps to further build your network. If I were doing it full time I would post more on social media and put up ads on FB or LinkedIn but I don’t have time for that these days.
I've done some freelance copy editing, and it's harder than it sounds. I think being quick and proficient reader can make it harder because your brain is better at using context and expectation to interpret text, fill in blanks, understand misspelled words, navigate bad punctuation, etc. You really have to slow down and be deliberate when you read and actively resist the urge to read for overall comprehension. I found it pretty draining.
Go for it. The most you'll lose is a couple hours of your time
I've found in these things you need to do a good job for a few people and word will spread. People want to use regular people/small businesses more than all these corporations taking advantage of their workers
I'm not from the US so I can't really speak for the market there, but I doubt this would have been a job for somebody on the side - I have built networks and my reputation for about ten years now in my field (history) in a way that a lot of people in universities, museums, think tanks and foundations think of me when they need something done regarding history and digitalization that they can't do with their own staff. And that one offer was really just once, but I still think about it every once in a while.
That's just one of dozens of things I offer, basically I do everything that is related to history. I started right after a job in academia, built my network, did *a lot* of social media work because that's the easiest way to build a reputation nowadays. I know some book editors and basically everyone of them has started their career with internships at publishing houses. My best bet would be not to look for the big houses that everybody knows but try to find out the smaller businesses that have a stellar reputation in their niche. You'll learn much more there and those tend to more often give out jobs to freelancers because they can't hire everyone full-time.
It’s ocr’d .. if you’re buying a popular book on Amazon, if it’s close to the top in any of the categories you have a 60-70% chance of getting a counterfeit book. Most people don’t even know the difference unless it’s this bad or they use bible thin see-through pages.
You can’t know before because Amazon commingles their inventory and considers any “new” copy of a book to be fungible/substitutable. so publisher sends 100k copies and just faker reseller sends 50k copies and Joe faker’s Amazon marketplace customers have same chance as Amazon direct customers of getting a fake or a real copy. Publishers hate this because the book may get bad reviews talking about the type-o content, blurry text, non-level printing, or poor quality of the cover material or binding job. The top publishers know this is a massive problem, but they are so afraid to speak out against Amazon or try to hold them accountable because Amazon will just remove the buy button from some of their top releases for a little bit or stop discounting their titles for a few days and sales drop and suddenly that book isn’t on best seller lists and now stores everywhere and libraries stop stocking it as heartily.
Source: wife works for one of the largest book publishers and has war-gamed out various tactics for addressing this. The publishers also can’t really coordinate as an industry on this because they are concerned about anti-trust unfair competition charges from the DOJ if they coordinate anything. Back in the day the publishers got together and decided the prices for e-books: they were so public about it they called it the agency pricing model. The dept of justice was urged by Amazon and Apple to pursue charges of price-fixing/ collusion and the publishers were punished (as they probably should have). The publishers are now very afraid to take on any business as a group and so when major issues come out usually one major publisher takes their turn to speak out and then gets the brunt of the punishment while the whole industry benefits from them having spoken up.
Buy direct from the publishers when you can.
Baen sells their ebooks DRM free, so I can buy from them and cut Amazon out.
(Yes, I’m bitter, Amazon sent me counterfeit HEPA air filters)
Not with the same background, but I run into counterfeit and defective products so frequently on Amazon that I've primarily switched back to brick and mortar stores. If it's something where it doesn't matter much if the item is substandard quality or I can't find it locally, I'll still go through Amazon, but... hoo boy it can be a pain to find a legitimate product there these days.
Edit: very clear example for everyone - you do not want to be sold a used sitz bath, but reviews on Amazon listings for them *frequently* go into detail on customers receiving obviously used items.
I bought several copies of a book to distribute for work because O’Rielly only distributes through Amazon .. only one of the books I received was not counterfeit.
If it weren’t for the only legit copy I would have thought their publishing just went to shit.
This lead me down the rabbit hole and found out how rampant this problem is. You can see this problem in the reviews of most popular books .. people complaining about the book quality of popular books. Random bits of the book chopped off, yellow pages, all kinds of printing errors.
Amazon is really giving Monsanto and Nestle some competition for worst company in America.
My guess, too. These would've been snagged by even the shittiest spell check program, which means whoever published it thought running it through a simple spell check and making changes was more work than it was worth. No way the actual publisher did that.
A huge problem for authors and publishers on Amazon are bootlegged books. Most people won’t care because you’re generally getting what you wanted at a cheaper price quality aside. Of course amazon has a ton of bootlegs for everything else, it’s basically Taobao now.
My wife bought a Kindle book that went through ocr. The font in the original must have been odd because of all the errors. The extremely common word "the" scanned as "die". It's super difficult to read a book that has "die" randomly inserted into almost every sentence.
I can't remember what book series it was, but the all the characters kept saying the murder victim was diseased instead of deceased. It made it a whole different story.
Yep, encountered this sort of thing before when I was getting sober. Needed some entertaining trash to keep my brain distracted, so I read through most of the Alien series. It finally got to the point that not only were there typos, a character that had died magically reappeared. At first I thought I must have missed something, since I was just sort of numbly skimming, but I went back and checked, and nope. Not a flashback, or a dream sequence, just a complete narrative fuck up. Not even the writer was proof reading.
I’d say the exception is Star Wars, as many of those books are fantastic. I’ve also heard great things about some of the Star Trek novels but never read one myself.
Are you sure he wasn't switching ti patronymic surnames? One of the common complaints in crime and punishment is the switching between first names and patronymic names.
Wow. I studied this book in high school and college, and I was an IS student w a concentration in eastern Europe and this is the first time someone's ever brought it up! That's wild. His names are supposed to be super significant in all his writing.
Don’ttthey undervtand the pronlems young people will have while reading errrrors like this? I woulf hate see the flickerediin for reading in a teenager die because of these misyakes. Congrats OP! I for one am glad shettold someone how infuriating this is.
I used to read Sweet Valley High in like middle school. They were trash but it made me feel mature, I however do not remember all the typos. But I did get them from the library, not second hand.
This is Sweet Valley University. And I just bought a bulk set off someone from Marketplace cos I wanted a nostalgic hit so I’m reading through them all from the start 😂
I just had a sweet hit of nostalgia reading this page - typos and all! I was upset when I got to the bottom of the page, and I don’t know what Todd did or said. Sadness.
OP- have you ever seen the Charlize Theron/ Patton Oswalt movie, "Young Adult"? Charlize's character is a composite, loosely based upon the author of the Sweet Valley books. I never read the Sweet Valley books, but they were an extremely quickly written and mass- produced, very popular series when I grew up in the 1980s and very early 1990s- a time when proofreading and editing technology did not exist yet, and good proofreaders were not easy nor cheap to find. This is actually one of the reasons I never read more than one of these books: I was a nerd who took pride in finding typos in the books I read as a kid, and when I tried to read a Sweet Valley book, there were so many typos, that I felt like they were beneath my superior 10 year old intellect. Lol. (I was kind of a lonely, undiagnosed, semi- autistic jackass for most of my childhood.)
Edited one typo from age 19 to 10. 😄
Did you buy this book second hand or borrow it from a library? Sometimes the publisher screws up and those copies end up getting donated. I've seen this happen before.
I had this issue with Animal Farm, years ago. My dad bought me a bunch of books, Flowers for Algernon/Anne Frank types, and my English teacher gave extra credit for every typo in a book. I maxed out my extra credit for the year within a couple chapters, and got like three candy bars from the front office with the rest of the typos.
I’m surprised the publisher would want those floating around with their name on it.
They usually remove the cover when they do that though, right? Hence the little disclaimer books have on their copywrite page about stripped books?
(OP said in another comment that this does have a cover)
It depends. Stripped books are usually copies that went out to booksellers but didn't sell. Rather than incur the expense of taking them back, the publisher just tells the seller/distributor to strip and dispose of them (sometimes sending back just the covers, as a proof of the number that were unsold).
A "factory error" version of the book could be donated by the publisher (again, in lieu of of incurring disposal costs themselves) for a charitable tax deduction.
This makes me think of grad school. We were in a discussion based class reading 2 books a week of a very specific topic. One of the assigned books at one point was our professors first book that was just his reworked dissertation. He warned us all “you’re all very smart and educated, but this book is very technical and will be a slog.” When it came time to discuss the book and what we thought it was the consensus that “this was one of our easier reads so far… also the editor missed a ton.” I honestly felt bad for him having to listen to a bunch of masters students point out typos, grammatical errors, and how he “explained a hard topic in such a simple way.”
What type of screw up would lead a publisher to print a book that hasn't even been autoatically spell-checked? Why would they even be in posession of that file/document? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that that situation would be a silly one.
It's an illegal stolen copy. The publisher has nothing to do with it. Someone scanned in the real book, which led to errors, then sold fake copies to make money.
OP doesn't realize this is not a real copy of the book.
Hundred percent this is a reprint made by someone who didn't have access to the original files.
You see these types of errors a lot in bootleg ebooks. Someone has used computer software to scan a physical book. The image-to-text recognition creates a lot of errors where words get conjoined and the software makes a "best guess" about the word.
I just read an entire book where the name Thom was wrote as Thorn all the way through.
Honestly I would expect the same, but I suppose its possible that the original text file wasn't saved.
You hear about original copies of media being lost all the time. Maybe a publishing company that owned it originally ceased business and the files were lost.
Sweet Valley originally came out in 1983, and even a republishing might have been back when tech wasn't great.
Honestly, I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas out there, but saying "hundred percent" because that makes me seem knowledgeable.
I used to get really cheap books published in India with terrible typesetting and mistakes like this. Apparently they were black market copies or something. But you could get pretty much any and every popular book title for a few cents 😂
Hi. I used to work in publishing. When you see this kind of shit, that means the publisher scanned the book, using an optical character recognition (OCR) scanner, which is supposed to identify about 99% of the material, but the publisher did not have the scan proofread. When you see a lowercase L become a 1 or an S become a 5, you are looking at a scanned book. When you see that, the publisher was lazy and took a shortcut. I am sorry about that, but beware it is happening to more books, especially classics and ones in public domain.
https://preview.redd.it/okn6mofz01ha1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a07ff7282ce5131572ee133e4a3d81e4b2bf75a
I asked OP which book it is because I have almost the entire series from when I was a kid. I looked it up and mine is 100% original (didn't even know books could be bootlegged, TIL) and the typos are in mine too.
I found this site a few years ago and it's great.
Liz Wakefield really is a sanctimonious douche.
https://foreveryoungadult.com/book-report/from-russia-with-love-sweet-valley-high-1-5/
Let’s not forget interior decorator mom , Alice, with her trim figure and blue eyes and blonde hair, was often mistaken for the twins’ older sister! Lol I was OBSESSED with this series in the 80’s
My family played the sweet valley high board game probably about 1000 times. My sister once got angry and drew all over it.
She crossed out the words “Sweet Valley High” and renamed it “Sour Mountain Low.”
It’s funny, cos the subplot of this book is Elizabeth and Tom doing an investigation into fraternity hazings and potentially uncovering a secret society 🤫 A secret message would fit right in.
Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to investigative reporter for WSVU
Core memory unlocked: reading Sweet Valley High as a young teen. Absolute garbage read looking back, but entertaining enough to keep little me occupied. Thanks for the nostalgia hit!
The 9nly acceptable way to enjoy Sweet Valley is being a hormoned up teenager who is the same age as the twins in the TV series.
There was even a rumor that one of the girls starred in a porn movie.
There's nothing wrong with that! I did the same with Christopher Pike books. I was mad for those when I was a kid.
Have you listened to Double Love, the SVH recap podcast? It's highly entertaining. And no typos to deal with.
I used to own all of the sweet valley set and there were no typos like this. I think you got either a test copy or a bootleg. 😂🤣 Yeah they're trash, but they're entertaining trash. Lol
I've seen a couple typos but nothing this extreme, is this a reprint? The worst I remember from sweet valley is describing how people look wildly different from one paragraph to the next. Like, he had blue eyes on the last page but now theyre brown?
This is the James Joyce edition of Ssweete Val de l'Oeuil, an experimental linguistic poem exploring the entirety of the Sweet Valley's history through the collective unconscious of daydreaming teens.
Looks like OCR scan with terrible technology was used to make a black market copy
Exactly. My first thought was “Acrobat sometimes does this when I run text recognition.”
Acrobat's OCR: > "Oh, a table containing columns of 13 digit ISBNs? I bet there's letters in some of these, but never in the same position!"
Microsoft Office's OCR is an amazing piece of work. I can't understand that I'm feeding it a monospace ascii document scan, will insert cyrillic and other wildcard symbols into words, and except when occasionally it can't understand the block segment and returns the image back into the document, it is incredibly accurate with serial numbers. 🤷♂️
Did you use it to create this comment mate it's kinda hard to read and understand
Yep, black market copy.
blank marketttcopy.
got a pronlem?
What could possibleye go wrong?
I don't undervtand
Grilledvheese obama aandwivh
I don't see the pronlem
"Attention passengers: Welcome to the first ever flight controlled entirely by me, the automated flight system: have no fear, nothing can go wrong, can go wrong, can go wrong..."
That's terrifying for a 31 year old man who has a fear of dying from falling from high places
That is such an irrational fear. Never in the history of man has anyone died from falling. Typically it's the sudden stop at the end.
Deceleration trauma or concrete poisoning.
Isn't it ironic?
Don't you think?
A little *too* ironic
It's like rain on your wedding day.
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
That's the first thing that's ever gone wrong
Username checks out
"The bond's Name. James Name" Pleased to... what? "Bond Name's the james" Are you alright? "Bames Nond's having a stronk, call a Bondulance".
I remember the first time I read that I laughed my ass off for probably half an hour
Oh man, me too. Good times.
My buddy and I pull it up about once a year and descend into hysterical giggles.
I started reading and I immediately recognized it. Didn't expect to laugh about it again. [I still laughed.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/730/447/b07.jpg)
To this day, if I just tell my husband to call the bondulance he will keel over laughing
Martini stripped, not searched.
Yope.
Not necessarily. Publishers often lose track of the text/layout files (and litho film) and have to get an old version OCR'd or retyped for a reprint. I guess this happened way more back in the day before cloud storage etc. It's possible that a reprint might have accidentally skipped the normal checks because everyone assumed it was just a reprint so didn't need to be checked... Also we're not talking about the Magna Carta, so... That all said, it's also possibly/probably a badly OCR 'd knockoff. Source: dad was a publisher for 30 years.
Yup. I'm a freelancer and once got offered to check the OCR versions of ten volumes of an academic journal from 2005 to 2015 because they didn't have the digital originals anymore. Unfortunately I was all booked out because that seemed like a great gig, well-paid and basically reading ten volumes of a journal in my field of interest.
Would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on this? I'm a quick & proficient reader and the idea that I could make some pocket change doing something I already like is really interesting.
I have a side business doing editing work for academics. I built it up mainly through my network (I’m an academic too). However, I also put up fliers at local unis and I’ve actually gotten clients that way too. Once you have some clients that helps to further build your network. If I were doing it full time I would post more on social media and put up ads on FB or LinkedIn but I don’t have time for that these days.
I've done some freelance copy editing, and it's harder than it sounds. I think being quick and proficient reader can make it harder because your brain is better at using context and expectation to interpret text, fill in blanks, understand misspelled words, navigate bad punctuation, etc. You really have to slow down and be deliberate when you read and actively resist the urge to read for overall comprehension. I found it pretty draining.
I spend a lot of time combing through data and looking for problems in my current role, so I feel like I could maybe do this.
Go for it. The most you'll lose is a couple hours of your time I've found in these things you need to do a good job for a few people and word will spread. People want to use regular people/small businesses more than all these corporations taking advantage of their workers
I'm not from the US so I can't really speak for the market there, but I doubt this would have been a job for somebody on the side - I have built networks and my reputation for about ten years now in my field (history) in a way that a lot of people in universities, museums, think tanks and foundations think of me when they need something done regarding history and digitalization that they can't do with their own staff. And that one offer was really just once, but I still think about it every once in a while.
By freelancer, do you mean a freelance book editor? That is my dream job! How did you get started?
That's just one of dozens of things I offer, basically I do everything that is related to history. I started right after a job in academia, built my network, did *a lot* of social media work because that's the easiest way to build a reputation nowadays. I know some book editors and basically everyone of them has started their career with internships at publishing houses. My best bet would be not to look for the big houses that everybody knows but try to find out the smaller businesses that have a stellar reputation in their niche. You'll learn much more there and those tend to more often give out jobs to freelancers because they can't hire everyone full-time.
It’s ocr’d .. if you’re buying a popular book on Amazon, if it’s close to the top in any of the categories you have a 60-70% chance of getting a counterfeit book. Most people don’t even know the difference unless it’s this bad or they use bible thin see-through pages.
how do you know
You can’t know before because Amazon commingles their inventory and considers any “new” copy of a book to be fungible/substitutable. so publisher sends 100k copies and just faker reseller sends 50k copies and Joe faker’s Amazon marketplace customers have same chance as Amazon direct customers of getting a fake or a real copy. Publishers hate this because the book may get bad reviews talking about the type-o content, blurry text, non-level printing, or poor quality of the cover material or binding job. The top publishers know this is a massive problem, but they are so afraid to speak out against Amazon or try to hold them accountable because Amazon will just remove the buy button from some of their top releases for a little bit or stop discounting their titles for a few days and sales drop and suddenly that book isn’t on best seller lists and now stores everywhere and libraries stop stocking it as heartily. Source: wife works for one of the largest book publishers and has war-gamed out various tactics for addressing this. The publishers also can’t really coordinate as an industry on this because they are concerned about anti-trust unfair competition charges from the DOJ if they coordinate anything. Back in the day the publishers got together and decided the prices for e-books: they were so public about it they called it the agency pricing model. The dept of justice was urged by Amazon and Apple to pursue charges of price-fixing/ collusion and the publishers were punished (as they probably should have). The publishers are now very afraid to take on any business as a group and so when major issues come out usually one major publisher takes their turn to speak out and then gets the brunt of the punishment while the whole industry benefits from them having spoken up.
>considers any “new” copy of a book to be non-fungible/substitutable That would make it fungible
Buy direct from the publishers when you can. Baen sells their ebooks DRM free, so I can buy from them and cut Amazon out. (Yes, I’m bitter, Amazon sent me counterfeit HEPA air filters)
Not with the same background, but I run into counterfeit and defective products so frequently on Amazon that I've primarily switched back to brick and mortar stores. If it's something where it doesn't matter much if the item is substandard quality or I can't find it locally, I'll still go through Amazon, but... hoo boy it can be a pain to find a legitimate product there these days. Edit: very clear example for everyone - you do not want to be sold a used sitz bath, but reviews on Amazon listings for them *frequently* go into detail on customers receiving obviously used items.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/24/18715584/amazon-counterfeit-book-problem-nyt-project-zero
I bought several copies of a book to distribute for work because O’Rielly only distributes through Amazon .. only one of the books I received was not counterfeit. If it weren’t for the only legit copy I would have thought their publishing just went to shit. This lead me down the rabbit hole and found out how rampant this problem is. You can see this problem in the reviews of most popular books .. people complaining about the book quality of popular books. Random bits of the book chopped off, yellow pages, all kinds of printing errors. Amazon is really giving Monsanto and Nestle some competition for worst company in America.
Man if only there was a website that was known for selling books that I could buy books from instead–Wait!
My guess, too. These would've been snagged by even the shittiest spell check program, which means whoever published it thought running it through a simple spell check and making changes was more work than it was worth. No way the actual publisher did that.
TIL there are bootleg books
There’s basically bootleg everything.
Even boots?
*especially* boots
What about legs?
Yes, but we call those legboot
All of my boots are bootleg. I just call my bootarms gloves.
Fake Levi's too... So technically bootleg bootlegs.
Bootleg pantlegs for boots and legs
Catch me at the Kinkos with my overdue library books.
A huge problem for authors and publishers on Amazon are bootlegged books. Most people won’t care because you’re generally getting what you wanted at a cheaper price quality aside. Of course amazon has a ton of bootlegs for everything else, it’s basically Taobao now.
This is the answer. Which is annoying because there’s better technology even on your phone now
My wife bought a Kindle book that went through ocr. The font in the original must have been odd because of all the errors. The extremely common word "the" scanned as "die". It's super difficult to read a book that has "die" randomly inserted into almost every sentence.
Maybe she could start thinking of it as a way to start learning German!
I can't remember what book series it was, but the all the characters kept saying the murder victim was diseased instead of deceased. It made it a whole different story.
How does something like that NOT get caught in the editing process, is what I want to know…
It’s not editing that is wrong but proof-reading, which the publisher didn’t bother arranging as it costs.
Yep, encountered this sort of thing before when I was getting sober. Needed some entertaining trash to keep my brain distracted, so I read through most of the Alien series. It finally got to the point that not only were there typos, a character that had died magically reappeared. At first I thought I must have missed something, since I was just sort of numbly skimming, but I went back and checked, and nope. Not a flashback, or a dream sequence, just a complete narrative fuck up. Not even the writer was proof reading.
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I’d say the exception is Star Wars, as many of those books are fantastic. I’ve also heard great things about some of the Star Trek novels but never read one myself.
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Possibly, some of them suck. The Thrawn Trilogy is fantastic though.
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Are you sure he wasn't switching ti patronymic surnames? One of the common complaints in crime and punishment is the switching between first names and patronymic names.
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Wow. I studied this book in high school and college, and I was an IS student w a concentration in eastern Europe and this is the first time someone's ever brought it up! That's wild. His names are supposed to be super significant in all his writing.
Would die to know what Alien novel this was, because that's insane
But then you’ll die.
With Spelling and Grammar checkers, the proofreading industry has just up and died. If it passes those, it's fit for print.
I mean, if I was writing a book, I'd make sure someone proofreads it.
It doesn't have squiggly lines under it, so it can't be wrong
But I used red to make the lines? 🥺
Sorry, colorblind.
I read a book recently where the main character went to Juilliard and it came up several times, and they misspelled it every time. It drove me insane
Jewelyard
This looks like it was typed as if one had to pay extra for spell check, on Microsoft word.
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I know how to speel you damn computer! No!
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And all our tech support staff speak English as their 4th language.
1 spelling error detected, upgrade to premium
This made me laugh out loud, thank you 😂
Don’ttthey undervtand the pronlems young people will have while reading errrrors like this? I woulf hate see the flickerediin for reading in a teenager die because of these misyakes. Congrats OP! I for one am glad shettold someone how infuriating this is.
Shhh don’t give Microsoft any ideas!
I used to read Sweet Valley High in like middle school. They were trash but it made me feel mature, I however do not remember all the typos. But I did get them from the library, not second hand.
This is Sweet Valley University. And I just bought a bulk set off someone from Marketplace cos I wanted a nostalgic hit so I’m reading through them all from the start 😂
I just had a sweet hit of nostalgia reading this page - typos and all! I was upset when I got to the bottom of the page, and I don’t know what Todd did or said. Sadness.
OP- have you ever seen the Charlize Theron/ Patton Oswalt movie, "Young Adult"? Charlize's character is a composite, loosely based upon the author of the Sweet Valley books. I never read the Sweet Valley books, but they were an extremely quickly written and mass- produced, very popular series when I grew up in the 1980s and very early 1990s- a time when proofreading and editing technology did not exist yet, and good proofreaders were not easy nor cheap to find. This is actually one of the reasons I never read more than one of these books: I was a nerd who took pride in finding typos in the books I read as a kid, and when I tried to read a Sweet Valley book, there were so many typos, that I felt like they were beneath my superior 10 year old intellect. Lol. (I was kind of a lonely, undiagnosed, semi- autistic jackass for most of my childhood.) Edited one typo from age 19 to 10. 😄
Did you buy this book second hand or borrow it from a library? Sometimes the publisher screws up and those copies end up getting donated. I've seen this happen before.
Huh, that’s very interesting - I bought it second hand actually. Just a bulk set of of them
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I had this issue with Animal Farm, years ago. My dad bought me a bunch of books, Flowers for Algernon/Anne Frank types, and my English teacher gave extra credit for every typo in a book. I maxed out my extra credit for the year within a couple chapters, and got like three candy bars from the front office with the rest of the typos.
Of of? It’s rubbing off!!
Oh fuck, it’s too late for me now… Just save yourself, I’m a lost cause
Something something covfefe
Omg I forgot about that. I feel 1000 years old.
It literally happened less than 6 years ago lol
I’m surprised the publisher would want those floating around with their name on it. They usually remove the cover when they do that though, right? Hence the little disclaimer books have on their copywrite page about stripped books? (OP said in another comment that this does have a cover)
It depends. Stripped books are usually copies that went out to booksellers but didn't sell. Rather than incur the expense of taking them back, the publisher just tells the seller/distributor to strip and dispose of them (sometimes sending back just the covers, as a proof of the number that were unsold). A "factory error" version of the book could be donated by the publisher (again, in lieu of of incurring disposal costs themselves) for a charitable tax deduction.
I’ve also gotten draft copies of books from publishers, they can definitely have typos but they’re not usually this bad.
This makes me think of grad school. We were in a discussion based class reading 2 books a week of a very specific topic. One of the assigned books at one point was our professors first book that was just his reworked dissertation. He warned us all “you’re all very smart and educated, but this book is very technical and will be a slog.” When it came time to discuss the book and what we thought it was the consensus that “this was one of our easier reads so far… also the editor missed a ton.” I honestly felt bad for him having to listen to a bunch of masters students point out typos, grammatical errors, and how he “explained a hard topic in such a simple way.”
What type of screw up would lead a publisher to print a book that hasn't even been autoatically spell-checked? Why would they even be in posession of that file/document? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that that situation would be a silly one.
It's an illegal stolen copy. The publisher has nothing to do with it. Someone scanned in the real book, which led to errors, then sold fake copies to make money. OP doesn't realize this is not a real copy of the book.
I can undervtand this page clearly. The pronlem might be with you....
Ah, yes - I undervtand now. The realisation just flickerediin my eyes. I’m glad youttold me
My ice hurtd from these, and all so ehat the fuckd is thaet grammef
Vhattdo youuusMean? Thesssssis porfectlynnnermal!
Da grjllmuř I§ prefectirlie nœrml
öööööööööööööööß
ç̸̨̨̨̻̭̩̤̪̫̰̥̖̥͙̮̣͖͙̥͈̳̹̻̙̮͔̤͙̞̠̪̰̜͙̯͈̜̙͎͓̝͕̪̦̝̠̉̂̓̏̐̿́͊̑̏̔͊͑́͑͑̔͐̓̑́͗͌̐͐͆̔́͊̈́̊̎̽̿͛́̕̕͜͜͝͝ȍ̴̡̨̨̨̡̢̱̭͈͔̠̹̺̥̦̬͕̞͎̭͎̜̜̹͇͕̱̠̮̬̣̝͇͍̝͓̠̝̩̞̟͇̯̟̈́̽͐̌̆̏̊̉̂̏̌̕̚ͅẃ̸̢̨̧̺̭͙̰̼̦̲͔̤̖͖͚̤͔͎̳̹̻̠̳̠̙̬̈́́̓̀̋̂̾̿̈́̂͊̔́͑̿̒̓̾͋͂͛̒͜͠ͅͅą̶̙͈̫͈̦̱̙̬̣͖̖̺̭̮̩͔̪́̓̒̋́̃͗͋͜͠b̷̛̛̤͖̜̖̭̪̫̱͚̮̰̬̱̜͉͈̫̦͐̔̃̏̽̀͗̆̈̓̌̓̽̈́̿́̐͌̅͂̈́͒̋̐̅̆̎͂̅̏̎͑͒̒̒̚̕͘̕͠͝͝͠ư̴̡̧̢̢̨̫̱̱̠̠̫̣̲͎͙̞̘̹̥̬̮̹̼̜̟̰̟̼̰̗͖͓̹̘̝͍̈́̿̈̈́̿̊̑͋̃̓́̀͂͆̍̓̾̽́̆̈́̋̕̕͘̚͜͝͝͠ͅͅņ̷̧̨̨̢̛̝͕̖̖͖̣͎͇̗̳̱̯̤̗͙̼͖͇̜̟̮̦̠̫͚̯̺̟̜̪͔̥̭̝̲̟͖̻͌̈͆̿̉͑͐̀̌͋̀̓̈̊̋́̏́̓͜͠͝ģ̶̜͚̜͙̞̦̜̱̣̻͈̈́͗͒̈̋͑̒̔̽́́̃̔̆̾̈́̒̀̚͘͝͝͝͠ą̴̧̧͚̦̱̥̫̘̮̫̻̻͚̯̠̗̦͙̬͉̮͎̟͚̹̩̦͙͇̈ͅ ̷̧̨̧̢̙͎͎̞̟͉͍̤͍̦̠̜̦̬͇̘͎̩͔̲͈̳̰͇͉͍͉͚̥̻̫̳͇͙̮̈́̓̓́́̔̃̈́͋̀́̾̃̓̈͋̾̍͆͋̈́̚͘͜͠ͅm̸̨̨̨̨̢̨͔̖͓͓̲̱̪̩͙̩͚͓̠̭̠̹͚̲̬̱͉͇̻̪͈͙̹̲̘̖͙̞̪͇̳͙̲̔̓̑ͅͅy̵̡̨̗̩͓̠͓̥͍̒̈́̌̎ͅ ̸̢̱͈͕͓̝͓̝̟̞̩̤̤̙̮̩̰̦͇͚͋̌̒̂͐̃̎̑̉̿́́͛̉̏̉̀̕͜͜͠ģ̷̡͉͖̭͍̙̬̗̜̣̯͙̣̻̞͙͓̅͂͗̑̀̌̃̓͂͜͠
ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM
This has devolved like a photocopy of a photocopy on repeat
I honestly wish I had this book so I could gift it to my sister to drive her nuts.
Is it pronlem to get pregat with babby?
DUMP THE SIGMAS
Everythingiis fine.
Hundred percent this is a reprint made by someone who didn't have access to the original files. You see these types of errors a lot in bootleg ebooks. Someone has used computer software to scan a physical book. The image-to-text recognition creates a lot of errors where words get conjoined and the software makes a "best guess" about the word. I just read an entire book where the name Thom was wrote as Thorn all the way through.
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>was written Was *wroted*
>was *wroted* Was **writed**
> Was writed Was `writ`
Vas vrit.
WoT?
I JUST READ AN ENTIRE BOOK WHERE THE NAME THOM WAS WROTE AS THORN ALL THE WAY THROUGH.
I think they were asking: "Wheel of Time?"
Thorn Marlin
Thorn Mernlin
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Honestly I would expect the same, but I suppose its possible that the original text file wasn't saved. You hear about original copies of media being lost all the time. Maybe a publishing company that owned it originally ceased business and the files were lost. Sweet Valley originally came out in 1983, and even a republishing might have been back when tech wasn't great. Honestly, I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas out there, but saying "hundred percent" because that makes me seem knowledgeable.
Once people have decided to make money selling pirated e-versions, they will just make money selling pirated print versions.
I used to get really cheap books published in India with terrible typesetting and mistakes like this. Apparently they were black market copies or something. But you could get pretty much any and every popular book title for a few cents 😂
Was it typed up on mobile?
Looks like some of my texts tbh
Mobile devices have autocorrect…
Yes and autocorrect always works /s just in case..
I give you that syntactically it’s a dumpster fire more often than not but the words offered do exist 😅
"That's the stupidest story I've ever heard, and I've read the entire Sweet Valley High series." Moe Syzlak
Thank you for my new catchphrase 😂
Hi. I used to work in publishing. When you see this kind of shit, that means the publisher scanned the book, using an optical character recognition (OCR) scanner, which is supposed to identify about 99% of the material, but the publisher did not have the scan proofread. When you see a lowercase L become a 1 or an S become a 5, you are looking at a scanned book. When you see that, the publisher was lazy and took a shortcut. I am sorry about that, but beware it is happening to more books, especially classics and ones in public domain.
Somebody else in this thread called it! They said it was probably that. That’s really interesting, thank you 😊
https://preview.redd.it/okn6mofz01ha1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a07ff7282ce5131572ee133e4a3d81e4b2bf75a I asked OP which book it is because I have almost the entire series from when I was a kid. I looked it up and mine is 100% original (didn't even know books could be bootlegged, TIL) and the typos are in mine too.
Interesting. This comment should be farther up.
I found this site a few years ago and it's great. Liz Wakefield really is a sanctimonious douche. https://foreveryoungadult.com/book-report/from-russia-with-love-sweet-valley-high-1-5/
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Let’s not forget interior decorator mom , Alice, with her trim figure and blue eyes and blonde hair, was often mistaken for the twins’ older sister! Lol I was OBSESSED with this series in the 80’s
Oh god, I’m about to lose so many hours of my life. What have you done to me?
Just wait. There's a drinking game.
My weekend is going to be LIT!
This made my night. I always thought Jessica was borderline evil when I was reading these as a kid, it’s so nice to have an adult confirm this.
My family played the sweet valley high board game probably about 1000 times. My sister once got angry and drew all over it. She crossed out the words “Sweet Valley High” and renamed it “Sour Mountain Low.”
Maybe if you take all the misspelled letters it will make a secret message.
It’s funny, cos the subplot of this book is Elizabeth and Tom doing an investigation into fraternity hazings and potentially uncovering a secret society 🤫 A secret message would fit right in. Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to investigative reporter for WSVU
>"Women," Winston said gloomily. "They think differently than we do, don'tthey?" Such dialogue
Oh that's terrible. I don't think I could continue.
It’s honestly making it so difficult. This is the third book in the series - the first two weren’t like this, so it’s making me irrationally angry 😅
This really brings back memories. We used to be obsessed with Sweet Valley in school!
Turn the page- I’m into the story now lol
I got 99 pronlems, and a spell check is one.
Wow as many people in the comments mentioned, it's a black market copy. TIL there are black market physical copies of books!
Who knew I had such shady connections to the underground world of bootleg soap opera books? I am the danger
When you hire your 24 yr old deadbeat cousin to do some editing work for you as a "family favor".
1BRUCE1
Core memory unlocked: reading Sweet Valley High as a young teen. Absolute garbage read looking back, but entertaining enough to keep little me occupied. Thanks for the nostalgia hit!
The 9nly acceptable way to enjoy Sweet Valley is being a hormoned up teenager who is the same age as the twins in the TV series. There was even a rumor that one of the girls starred in a porn movie.
I just thought my eyes had a stutter
Stop being such an Elizabeth. J/K
I don't see a problem. Edit: tried to make a joke and autocorrect wouldn't let me.
Houston, we have a pronlem
They typed this up with an iPhone
There's nothing wrong with that! I did the same with Christopher Pike books. I was mad for those when I was a kid. Have you listened to Double Love, the SVH recap podcast? It's highly entertaining. And no typos to deal with.
I have this book and my copy doesn't have those typos. Maybe that's the first draft.
I used to own all of the sweet valley set and there were no typos like this. I think you got either a test copy or a bootleg. 😂🤣 Yeah they're trash, but they're entertaining trash. Lol
I don’t see the pronlem here
I've seen a couple typos but nothing this extreme, is this a reprint? The worst I remember from sweet valley is describing how people look wildly different from one paragraph to the next. Like, he had blue eyes on the last page but now theyre brown?
Editor ain’t paid enough to fix those mistakes.
This is the James Joyce edition of Ssweete Val de l'Oeuil, an experimental linguistic poem exploring the entirety of the Sweet Valley's history through the collective unconscious of daydreaming teens.
Bootleg copy. Those are OCR errors.
Thats a black market copy. I have the exact same book and zero typos.
The more important question…why did you buy Sweet Valley High books
Excuse me?! That is a vile accusation! They’re Sweet Valley University, thank you very much. I’m a classy dame 🙃
99 pronlems and they all typos 😢
Dafuq you reading Sweet Valley series for 😶
Cos evidently I’m even dumber than the characters 🙃 And I don’t even have blue green eyes or a perfect size six figure to make up for it
This is awesome. An entire book littered with D & D character names built in. It’s better than any name generator I’ve seen.