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| Oct-07-08 | | wolfmaster: <sneaky pete> Yeah, well, look at the 15 some errors Winter pointed out for Encyclopedia of Chess Wisdom! Misspellings, wrong diagrams, lame diagrams, wrong moves, impossible moves, dead people talking... I guess Cardoza publishing has no proofreaders, or all their proofreaders are blind or dyslexic! |
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Oct-08-08
 | | ray keene: i suggest you try writing a chess book with hundreds of pages and gazillions of characters and see how many errors you let through-15 typos in one book doesnt sound excessive to me -i can assure you that authors are enraged by typos even more than the readers-we strive to get things right but circumstances frequently conspire against us-i know of one case where the author corrected the typescript and then the publisher issued the uncorrected version! and you shd also ask youself whether the typos actually harm comprehension-i have also seen cases where biased critics have lambasted chess writing for typos which actually made no difference, eg a comma out of place or a check sign missed-have you actually read dr schillers book or are you just copying winters opinion? another scenario occurs when the author corrects a typo but it never seems to register with the publishers or printers-i had proofs to correct once where a white pawn had been replaced by a black pawn-however hard i tried i cd not get the correction to register with the publishers-and i eventually just gave up.as i said-try writing something yourself and you will begin to realise the problems! |
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Oct-08-08
| | ray keene: <wolfmaster> btw -and i know we are not being tested for grammar -but in the first post you made here you committed one serious grammatical error in just a few lines of text.in a book this wd count as an uncorrected typo! do you now begin to see how difficult it is to get what you want onto the page with 100% accuracy? |
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Oct-08-08
| | ray keene: one more thing-i just noticed in my own previous post that i seem to have started various sentences with lower case characters. however i typed them in upper case. here is another example of the problems trying to get what you want said absolutely right! |
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| Oct-08-08 | | whiskeyrebel: For that matter, I've studied under writing professors who would attack the "bad book!" phrase in the above wolfmaster post for its excess of a's and exclamation marks. As a part time published author I've had to deal with enough lengthy back and forth edits that I vote to cut prolific chess writers like Schiller and Keene (and others of course) some slack. The intellectual content is what's important. |
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Oct-08-08
| | ray keene: <whiskeyrebel> thanks very much-i can assure everyone that if a typo occurs in my daily chess columns-espcially one i have let through myself-it spoils my whole day-one thing i find very hard to check is something i "know" is right-thus when i pose a puzzle and its white to win-what i see is the position and if a typesetter has mistakenly substituted "black to win" instead i find this very hard to spot!! |
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Oct-08-08
| | ray keene: whoops-typo-shd have been "especially"-i am sure <wolfmaster> will be after my blood now! |
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| Oct-12-08 | | Flicflac: Then why are there so many scathing reviews of Schiller's books? Surely all of the reviewers are not total dumbasses? Or are people just being biased and unfair to works such as The Frankenstein-Dracula variation of the vienna game and Learn from Bobby Fischers Greatest games? |
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| Oct-14-08 | | wolfmaster: <Flicflac> Yes! Take that Keene! |
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| Oct-14-08 | | HannibalSchlecter: Yes we all like our chess books to be perfect, but a few typos here and there do not tarnish a good one. If typos are the main fixation of the critics and that's the worst they can say, then I would call the book a success. The implication that because there are typos that the book had to be quickly thrown together and is therefore of low quality is a fallacious one. I have "Killer Chess Tactics" which is one of favorite chess books. It combines entertaining writing with instructive tactics that are likely to come up in chess games. If you showed me 10 typos from that book, I wouldn't love it any less. |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Jim Bartle: "If typos are the main fixation of the critics and that's the worst they can say, then I would call the book a success." I agree, Hannibal. |
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Oct-14-08
| | ray keene: why does dr eric schiller get bad reviews? this is the question asked-one might also enquire-how many good ones does he get and -if his stuff is-as alleged- so poor- how come publishers have been willing to invest in him to the tune of his having written and published around 100 books? i think the reason is resentment-eric is a universal chess person-he has arbited at world championship level-he has run world championship press rooms-he has been a friend of world champions- he teaches at a high level-he organises tournaments-he is a master chess player--and on top of that he has published around 100 books on chess, may with gm or world champion co-authors some people in our world are inclined to envy-they can point at arbiter x or player y and say to themselves--oh he may be an arbiter but i can beat him easily at chess--or he may have a higher rating than i do but i have organised more tournaments etc etc with eric these arguments tend to collapse because of his universal activities-he can trump most people in any area of chess you care to mention now what about typos? a recent book by a distinguished mathematician called david rudel has just landed on my desk-its about some new ideas in the zukertort and its called ZUKE EM-or words to that effect-i have looked at the book, its got some very handy new ideas especially in the line 1d4 d5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 e3 g6--this book will undoubtedly help many players to win lots of games-and i have also looked at the reviews published so far--i may not have found all of them but i have found a lot-and they are all very positive indeed- however , this book is absolutely riddled with typos-they are all over the place-however the meaning is stil usually clear--but nobody in the reviews i have seen has raised one whisper against these typos--now if dr eric schiller produces a book with a few typos there is a witch hunt and hue and cry! how to explain that apart from terminal envy on the part of the small minority who like to persecute him and in some extreme cases even ban his books from sale ?? |
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| Oct-14-08 | | boz: Typos are annoying but it's the job of the editor to correct them, not the author. A book that is riddled with typos is an indiacation that the author has signed on with a miserable publishing house. |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Jim Bartle: "...riddled with typos is an indiacation..."
Who's your eidtor, boz? |
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| Oct-14-08 | | boz: Seems to be you, Jim. Thanks. I knew I should have reread that post! I assume you typed "eidtor" as a courtesy. |
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Oct-14-08
 | | moronovich: ncie covresaoitn wiht ouy tow gyus :) |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Jim Bartle: ih suht up. |
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| Oct-14-08 | | boz: <moronovich> is an editor's dream. |
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Oct-14-08
 | | Eric Schiller: I haven't jumped in because I think others are making the necessary points. I would just add that I know some people who think that anyone who doesn't have GM next to their name can't say anything useful about chess. This is absurd. Chess understanding and chess results are not directly related. Chess is a sport and flaws of temperament and lack of a good memory can stand in the way of progress. I beat GMs and lose to 1800 players, so I fall in-between. I do the best I can with books and would have given anything for good editors and proofers over the years. So would many authors. The responsibility, of course, always rests with the authors. But like many, I tend to see what I intended to write and don't notice typos or dictation errors until too late. I demand that my tombstone contain at least typos. That should make some people happy! |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Jim Bartle: Well, it's impossible doing a good job of proofreading your own material... There's a lot more to publishing than avoiding typos. High on my list is the quality of the binding and the paper, plus a clean, clear layout. In a chess book I like explanations of the ideas behind variations, not just reams and reams of variations printed out. Plus lots of diagrams. |
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| Oct-14-08 | | whiskeyrebel: Books are works of art and therefore subject to either criticism and/or praise from individual readers that should leave other readers scratching their heads in wonder. That's a healthy, good thing. Veteran chess book reviewers are fine to consult, but I believe we should beware of allowing ourselves to sink into the "am I supposed to like this?" mindset. The chess world is amazingly catty and cliquish. You can bet your fanny many reviewers "of note" don't even bother to read some of the books they lavish praise upon or rake over the coals, or else they see what other reviewers they politically (chess wise of course)agree or disagree with are saying about it before making up their own mind. |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Jim Bartle: On the other hand, if you want to read an amazingly detailed, scathing takedown of a chess book, try this one of Hans Berliner's "The System": http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_re... |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Red October: well if the chess ideas are explained and come accross clearly, helping my game thats what I want from a book on chess if it is a book on chess personalities or on chess from a historical point of view then the cosmetic aspects matter more but are not everything thats my $0.02 |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Shams: <Eric Schiller><I demand that my tombstone contain at least typos. That should make some people happy!> Not good enough, sir-- you need a clarihew!
Here lies Schiller,
A cool hand at the tiller.*
He took out the Tarrasch,
And gave Arganian a rash:
D Arganian vs E Schiller, 1983
ok, it kind of sucks. sue me.
*heh. A huffpo contributor should appreciate this. :) |
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| Oct-14-08 | | Jim Bartle: Gotta have some reference to Gore and green in there. |
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