Typos? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Typos!

"A typo on a lit mag’s primary web pages is not a good thing."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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Recently stewing in the leftovers pot of Lit Twitter was a discussion about whether a typo on a lit mag’s website should preclude a writer from submitting work. The consensus leaned toward the forgive-and-forget approach. That it’s not preferred, certainly, but that it’s only one consideration involved in a submission decision.

A typo on a lit mag’s primary web pages is not a good thing. But it’s safe to assume that to most, it matters less than if the site is current and well-designed. One’s dismay might vary in intensity depending on where a typo is; for example, having it within the text of the submission guidelines is troubling. So is finding one in an editor’s masthead bio.

I’m one of those who will hesitate to submit to your lit mag if there’s a typo on your website. As in—probably won’t send you anything. Because you’re a literary magazine editor, not a plumber, or a wedding caterer. I’ll let slide an extra space between sentences, or a missed paragraph indent, or a vacancy where an end quote should be. Maybe even a comma outside of quotation marks, if I’m in a forgiving mood that day. Those are typos in a minor key. But is it a typo if somebody puts FAQ’s instead of FAQs? Do they know the difference? Does it matter?

Uh, yeah. Most of you are calling yourself “Editor,” a few of you even claim to be that rare bird, “Editor-in-Chief.” Or is it “Cheif”? If that’s you, Boss, what are the odds of me finding a typo or two in the work you publish as well? What’s the likelihood that in the piece of mine you accepted for publication you’re going to miss—like I unfortunately did—that spot where there’s a left-out word that for a reasonably attentive reader stalls a sentence dead?  

I’m hard-wired against typos, from both nature and nurture. My maternal grandmother was an elementary school teacher and I thought “Grandma” and “Grammar” were essentially the same thing—based on her attitude about proper English, she was the one who invented it. Every time I see a “their” instead of “there,” or an “it’s” where it should be “its,” or a hand-printed restaurant sign advertising “Wendsdays Specials,” I think fondly of her. I get giddy imagining how pissed off she would have gotten.

It wasn’t just Grandma Chamberlain who whipped me into grammatical shape. The first for-pay writing job I had was with a resume-writing service. Back then having any typo in your resume would likely eliminate you from consideration, especially if you were competing against dozens, maybe hundreds, of others. One of the selling points of us doing your resume was that we would guarantee no typos, or yes, “your money back.” Since we also tried to sell you as many copies as we could of it on fancy stationary—if I screwed up, any refunds were going to be taken out of my already-woeful pay.

Further along my so-called career path, I worked for a consulting company that did corporate documentation and training. One soul-deadening slog had us creating a user manual for new accounting software. Near the end of the project, after we had sent out the final draft, our account manager relayed the message that the client contact was displeased, and as lead editor I had to deal with her. Among the problems she’d found, the one that disappointed her most? That the font of the text in the footer was sometimes in nine point—not the ten point THAT WE HAD AGREED TO.     

With that and other jobs behind me, a few years ago I resumed writing and trying to publish short fiction. One inspiration to pick it up again was the increased number of publications I discovered, especially online. What I learned early on is that for some of these places, the attention to detail, including sometimes any desire to even, you know, edit, is less than ideal.

A flash fiction piece that I sent to a new magazine got accepted immediately. When I’d submitted it, I saw that in the mission statement (or perhaps they called it manifesto) they were proudly stating, for some reason I forget, that they wouldn’t make any changes to any of their contributors’ work. It would be more authentic to the intention and work of the creator or some such shit; they would just make a pdf and post it.

After the issue came online, I looked at some of the other stories. The one that followed mine had the name of the main character spelled two different ways, alternating back and forth. They had at least a half dozen editors. Forget about their dubious stance about not editing. Not one of them suggested to at least run the accepted pieces through a spell-check?

More recently, I had short stories accepted for three different fiction anthologies. One was a reprinted story, but the other two, each climbing close to 10,000 words, were among the newest that I had written. Because of their length, I felt fortunate to have them accepted so quickly.

One of the anthologies was from a press run by a group of writers. The contract they sent me was fair and straightforward; they promptly paid the modest amount they offered for the piece. They sent a pre-publication proof when they promised they would. But it wasn’t just my story they sent. It was the entire book, all 18 stories.

The cover letter suggested that after proofing my own story, I was welcome to go through the rest, and let them know if I found anything; it was a way to improve overall quality. I was tempted to take a look through the other stories, but didn’t have the time or inclination. I mean, I actually like doing copy-editing. But not for free. I assumed there would be a basic edit and proofread beyond what every individual writer did for their own work.

The book came out pretty much on the promised publication date. It’s got a great cover. At least a third of the stories have enough typos and grammatical mistakes to make reading them frustrating. Missing words, missing quotation marks, and fucked-up punctuation. My first thought was that I should have gone through the whole thing when I had the chance. I could have made it better. I could at least have made it so I wouldn’t be reluctant to invite friends and family to buy a copy of the book, because I don’t think it’s worth the cover price.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d been given advance warning, sort of, that these writer-editors might not have the desire or wherewithal to try to do a perfect proofing. But I thought, especially because at least one of them has a story in the anthology, that it wouldn’t be this bad.  

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, because these days, there’s more of a lax attitude to such things. I guess one could blame what the rushed call-and-response of texting and other online back and forth have done to us. I know more than one person, more than one person who is a college professor in fact, who has a disclaimer at the end of their message or emails, apologizing for any typos, blaming their phone.

And it’s not just the small, independent press with this problem. It’s typos in almost every article in the weekly newspaper in my town. It’s typos in new books published by major houses; a friend of mine was going to pass along a copy of the most recent novel by a writer we both like, but after seeing all the typos, he told me he threw it out instead.

Aren’t we better than this? What’s the point of publishing something, or publishing the work of others, if it’s not as good as we can make it? Not just because of its inherent ideas and creativity, but with the best adherence to the craft, and to the basics.

When seeing typos, the admonitions of Grandma Chamberlain, and the reprimands from the client I came to think of as The Font Lady, are the pillars rigidly holding up my response. 

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