In my copy from Ballantine books, on page 156, the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, there is this sentence:

Montage turned and glanced back.

was it supposed to be spelled with an 'e' on the end just this once or is it a typo? I looked in other copies in the store i bought it at, and they have it as so as well.

Please advise.

Scorpionwingz

Typo, young man (or girl). Typo! If you went thru an entire book, any book, you'd probably find many instances.

I tried to find it in my '40th' anniversary edition, but could not locate that exact sentence.

Here, for instance, is a little test you can take to judge your sensibilities. I like to look at this as how one can read scripture and not get it. It just goes, whooosh, over one's head.

So here's what you do: Count every "F" in the following text.

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

_______________________
Be honest and see how many you find in the first couple readings.

Here's the scoring chart for the little text above:

If you found:
3.......75% of all people see 3 'F's

4..... Your above the average. Not bad

5..... Whoa! Hey. Now you just reached 5% of those who read the text

6......Look Out! You are a genius.

7.... Now you're fibbing!! Go to the end of the line.

I got 5 F's. well, the section of the book I am talking about is like one of the last pages.

what confuses me is that on the very next line, they spell Montag without the e. Every copy by ballantine that I have found has the same mistake or whatever.

I thought that is what editors and editorial assistants were for...

Well, I'd say you can be their freelance editor/proofreader.

Go write them a letter, explaining the mistake. Make a xerox of the page. Send it to the attention of the editor. You may be surprised that they will correct it in future issues. And you can say it was because of YOU! No kidding.

Look, you missed one 'F' on the text above. There are '6' F's. How would you like to just proof-read all day ? I did that once, long time ago, at Poole Graphics in Chicago. I would get copy on something that looked like giant ticker- tape spools, ran it thru the computer, and had to 2nd correct any mistakes the first proof-reader missed. I bet I missed one or two along the way as well.

I've always enjoyed this sort of thing.
Being an habitual proofreader (a natural manifestation of my spititual gift of fault-finding), I counted 6 F's first time!
There are several fun things like this that involve either drawing or actually speaking, so can't post them here. If I think of one I can just type, I'll do it.

I have an old, beat up Ballantine "Special Book Club Edition." I found that sentence, and it does not have the e on Montag. I'm sure it was just a typo.

If you enjoy finding typos, or plan to read outloud and want to be forewarned, I've a post somewhere in which I point out typos in "Cat's Pajamas". (If memory serves, one typo didn't make any sense and I never did get clarification...mayhaps I'll investigate anew...)

Well, I found it it the Archives.
Here 'tis:


I "just finished reading the feline quadruped's nocturnal habiliment (Cat's Pajamas!) and believe I've found a few typos:
p.107 "chance" should be "chances"
p.116 "she can" should be "can she"
p.192 "rustled" should be "rusted"
p.210 "have go" should be "have gone" or just "go"
A question I have is, in "Triangle" on the last page he writes "They let the cat die."
Did I miss something? Perhaps it's a colloquialism with which I am unfamiliar?

As for the quality of the stories, well, I can only say after reading these I feel like a man must feel who, starving, not only gets fed, but with his favourite foods perfectly prepared...
I'll read these again anon and then perhaps we can discuss some of the stories?"

Being in advertising I am constantly proofreading, and in looking at an ad this morning that is renewing there were two errors that I nor the client noticed. We always email or fax the ad to the client for their final approval and it is amazing how many of them don't catch a mistake that has gone by me.

Also, I am a constant reader and it is amazing, in major works by well known publishers, the errors that slip through.

Also, years ago when I was in college, I ran a mono-type machine in a print shop which differed from a linotype machine in that each letter and each spacer were all individually cast. If you dropped a galley you had big problems with the pieces spilling all over the floor, whereas with a galley of linotype you simply rearranged the slugs.

I wrote a book there at the print shop. It was a business name, a bunch of........and a dollar amount. The whole book was just that. Can we say boring? But anyway, I had to take the galley over, ink the lead real well, place a piece of newsprint over it, roll the roller over it and then proof-read it, making corrections as needed. It was very interesting though and good training.

I am just so glad that we have a capability to go back and edit what we have written here at the site.

[This message has been edited by biplane1 (edited 02-25-2005).]

So I guess this means we can all do without even spelling out the connective words, eh? Since we read them as being there anyway? This is a lot like the example I have seen of using only the first and last letters of a series of words and anything in between and the mind just knows what is meant to be there. Interesting. Could save time in writing a novel, eh?

That little text-test I did above....if you print it out...instead of reading it on the screen, the notion is...the mind doesn't seem to see the words 'OF'...instead sort of automatically says the word without actually seeing it...and therefore, misses the 3 'F's that are there in the text, from the 3 'OF's.

The worst case scenario I ever saw (having been in the printing business) of a typo...was an Annual Report by a major food supplement and diet company in Los Angeles, ''Herbalife''. On the top line of this very, very expensive report...is a misspelling. In large type as well! No one caught it. There was no time to rip off those tens of thousands of 6 color, high gloss covers. So they printed the 'entire' Annual Report again. That mistake was in the neighborhood of $40,000.00 + (After all those proof-readers, art directors, editors, and general readers at the print shop.)

What a story Nard!

My wife and I exhaustively proofed a typescript against the 50th anniversary edition (and others) for the recent Graham Press illustrated edition. There are a number of typos and errors which somehow migrated into the book from one edition to the next. I don't remember the exact page, but there is one place where the word "linen" appears as "lines." And I seem to recall another place, during a discussion between Montag and Clarisse, where a "he" should be a "she" or maybe the other way around. (It's been almost a year since we read the book out loud to each other, including punctuation, poised with our red markers. It was kind of fun.)

It's not the only one: http://www.raybradbury.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001296.html