Finding errors in books
Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2013 6:31 pm
IMX, the toughest to find errors for an author or the proofreaders are typos of the kind "is / in", "or / of / on", "is is", "the / he", missing plural-s etc. As a rule, these typos are noticed while the book is already being printed;) Every book has a few such typos. If it has many, then a spellchecker was not used and proofreading was maybe absent. Of course, what matters is not typos but is contents.
Some books have awful errors, such as wrong diagrams, and everybody would notice this. Of the remaining errors of the contents, a part is easy to find by every reader, because the context is easy.
Other errors are hard to find if the contents is advanced and detecting the errors requires a pretty advanced understanding. Although stronger players can detect such errors more easily on average, there can be errors that remain hidden to the reader or even to everybody for many years. Possibly even to the author. From my own experience as a reader, Counting Liberties and Whole Board Thinking are examples of books, for which I started to discover mistake(s) in the contents only several years after reading. I could discover errors only after I studied related topics for myself carefully and systematically. So, to find (preferably all) important errors in a book, the reader's strength or experience as a player alone might not be enough.
As an author, I proceed pragmatically: the first proofreading reveals many errors, the second one or two dozens, the third a handful to a dozen and the fourth about 2 or 3. During the process, too difficult contents is dropped entirely, so that I am not confronted with contents above my own understanding within reasonable time. Excluding even the last error is necessary only for books with declared 100% correct contents. Otherwise, it can be tolerated that a book has 0 or 1 remaining errors in the contents. Now, which errors should the readers detect at all? Those that do not exist? Whole Board Thinking is such a book by another author, which might have exactly 1 error of the contents.
As a reader, I find many errors quickly, if a book has many errors, and I am already very familiar with the topics, such as The Theory and Practice of Analysis. As a 10 kyu, I would have overlooked (almost) all of the errors.
So my preliminary conclusion is: finding errors is the easier the more errors a book contains, the more prior understanding the reader has already had about the topics, the stronger the reader is and the less advanced the theory or concept of the book is. Are there further important factors?
Some books have awful errors, such as wrong diagrams, and everybody would notice this. Of the remaining errors of the contents, a part is easy to find by every reader, because the context is easy.
Other errors are hard to find if the contents is advanced and detecting the errors requires a pretty advanced understanding. Although stronger players can detect such errors more easily on average, there can be errors that remain hidden to the reader or even to everybody for many years. Possibly even to the author. From my own experience as a reader, Counting Liberties and Whole Board Thinking are examples of books, for which I started to discover mistake(s) in the contents only several years after reading. I could discover errors only after I studied related topics for myself carefully and systematically. So, to find (preferably all) important errors in a book, the reader's strength or experience as a player alone might not be enough.
As an author, I proceed pragmatically: the first proofreading reveals many errors, the second one or two dozens, the third a handful to a dozen and the fourth about 2 or 3. During the process, too difficult contents is dropped entirely, so that I am not confronted with contents above my own understanding within reasonable time. Excluding even the last error is necessary only for books with declared 100% correct contents. Otherwise, it can be tolerated that a book has 0 or 1 remaining errors in the contents. Now, which errors should the readers detect at all? Those that do not exist? Whole Board Thinking is such a book by another author, which might have exactly 1 error of the contents.
As a reader, I find many errors quickly, if a book has many errors, and I am already very familiar with the topics, such as The Theory and Practice of Analysis. As a 10 kyu, I would have overlooked (almost) all of the errors.
So my preliminary conclusion is: finding errors is the easier the more errors a book contains, the more prior understanding the reader has already had about the topics, the stronger the reader is and the less advanced the theory or concept of the book is. Are there further important factors?