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July 18, 2007
Splleing errors or just tpyos?
Guest blogger Mark Van Dyke (when does he get promoted to a regular?) writes about typo reporting in Logos Bible Software.
Dr. Daniel Wallace's lecture about preserving the Word of God was a good reminder about the importance of textual accuracy. Just like the ancient manuscripts that are studied in Middle Eastern monasteries, Logos book files have an occasional misspelled word. That's why Libronix has a nice little feature for reporting typographical errors and grammatical glitches. It only takes a moment but helps us out immensely!
You can report a typo by following these three simple steps.
| Step One Highlight the error.  |
| Step Two On the top task bar select Help | Report Typo.  |
| Step Three Fill out the form with the typo correction and your email address. Then click "Submit".  |
Please note that if you are reporting an error with Logos' syntax database you might need to send an email to syntax@logos.com rather than using the internal 'Report Typo' dialog.
When you let us know that there is a misspelled word in one of our book files, that word is put on a list so the next time we update that book file we can fix the problem. This means that the typos aren't always fixed the next day after you tell us, but your message will definitely be read and acted upon.
As always, we love getting feedback. Even in the case where we need to change something about a book. That's because the textual accuracy of every book we create is of the utmost importance – whether it's the Bible itself or the Scripture Alphabet of Animals.
Thanks for helping!
Posted by Daniel Foster at July 18, 2007 06:00 AM
Comments
Since most typos and their corrections are pretty straight forward, do I need to fill out the comment section to report a typo?
Jonely
Posted by: Anonymous at July 18, 2007 06:38 AM
What about author names. I've got A W Pink a couple of ways (Pink A W, Pink Aurthur W,Authur W Pink)
Posted by: Nigel at July 18, 2007 07:37 AM
What about the textual accuracy of Bibles? On the newsgroups I have noted that the ESV and ESV-Reverse Interlinear NT have different texts but no announcement has been made. Nor have we been told when the revision will be coming to our ESV and ESV-RI OT texts. I imagine that pastors who use the ESV-RI to prepare their lessons will be quite surprised when they start preaching and realise that the version they are preaching/reading from is different from what is in everyone's ESV Bible (And they will have no idea why).
Posted by: Tom Reynolds at July 18, 2007 10:27 AM
Is there some kind of list we could check to make sure we aren't reporting what many have reported before? Perhaps and errata page would be useful which could be updated.
Posted by: Michael Stover at July 18, 2007 01:34 PM
Jonely, that's often sufficient. Thanks for asking!
Nigel, author names match whatever was used on the printed edition. The same thing is true in library catalogs. Sometimes, authors intentionally use different names for different audiences, as Tom Wright (popular books) vs. N.T. Wright (scholarly books), or different names during different parts of their career.
Posted by: Daniel Foster at July 18, 2007 02:16 PM
Daniel, I regularly report typos in the way you outline but I have not found a way to report typos in footnotes. When the relevant text is highlighted in the footnote window and 'Report Typos' selected from the help menu then the footnote window disappears and a message comes up saying that some text needs to be selected.
Is there any way round this?
I notice in your screen shot above that you have only highlighted the two words affected. I have been highlighting a sentence or phrase so that the context can be found more easily. Is this unnecessary?
Posted by: Gavin at July 18, 2007 04:45 PM
A very excellent feature. Thanks for letting me know about it, will keep it in mind as I read.
Posted by: David Mackey at July 18, 2007 07:42 PM
I often find typos, but don't always report them. It would be a real incentive to now when my reports have been acted upon. I've reported typos on some books years ago, and the book STILL has not been updated. If a webpage could be put up which listed my typos, the date they were submitted and any action taken, it might persuade me to get reporting again.
Posted by: Mark Barnes at July 23, 2007 01:08 PM