Does anyone proofread these days???

I can understand people's typos in text messages and emails. We are all in such a rush to get our thoughts across, that spell checking is on the back-burner. But when you are submitting your work, it needs to be checked, double-checked, triple-checked, then all of that, all over again, by someone else, someone like a proofreader. For those seeking a definition, proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to detect and correct production errors of text or art (thank you, Wikipedia).

I am so unbelievable sick to the back teeth of incessant misspellings in books. Not only is it sloppy and careless, it is incredibly distracting. In Along the Way, Emilio Estevez wrote his father's full name incorrectly ("Ramon Antonio Gerard Estevez."). He switched the order of Martin Sheen's middle names. There were two other mistakes, such as a period in the middle of a sentence ("The script followed eight students over the course of their four high school years, with the. working title Hot Lunch.") and a typographical error ("What later became known between us at the Paris Sidewalk Incident was..."). It may seem nit-picky, but shouldn't someone who read the final draft have caught these mistakes? Maybe not Martin's names, but the others, at least. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but those incidental mistakes are actually monumental to the reader, once they are found. It's worse when it's a novel. A grammatical error in a novel is a mood killer. I'll be into a story, following behind the characters, watching every move they make, eavesdropping on their conversations when all of a sudden a word that should be "abroad" is printed as "aboard". That small error made me pause in my reading. It made me think, "Oh, wait. It's supposed to be abroad, okay, where was I..." I lose my place in the scene that was unfolding in my mind and I have to rewind a bit to catch up with the characters. I almost want to contact the publishing house and request a partial refund. I mean, I take full ownership when I buy a book that it is a risk. I may have shelled out up to twenty-five bucks for something I may loathe, but that's the risk. However, upon purchasing said book, I fully expect it to be properly bound and covered and printed and spelled correctly. Every word. Every punctuation on every single page. Holler if ya hear me.

(ps - I am lucky that my mother used to be a proofreader and will text me when she sees errors on this blog, so I can go back and make the corrections!)