I've been reading a lot of the books again over the holiday period, and every so often I run across something that slipped by the editors. For example, I noticed last night while reading "Making Money" a passage on page 320 of the US paperback edition (pertaining to the transport of the late Professor Flead outside of Unseen University) where it said: "Floating on the sea of heads, as it were, was a circular canvas about ten feet across, of the sort that gets used to catch people who very wisely jump from burning buildings. The four people carrying it were Dr. Hicks and four other wizards, and it was at this point you would notice the chalked circle and the magic symbols." A pretty minor error. I knew what was meant, but it was a tiny bit jarring to see the error of calling five people four people. I seem to remember one in Going Postal as well, where in a scene Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip are mixed up, in one sentence Mr Pin is described as doing something and then in the next sentence it was said of the person who just did it that he was Mr. Tulip. Not a very good explanation, but I don't have my copy of Going Postal right in front of me to quote the offending passage. There have been others that I can't recall at the moment, but I'll keep an eye out for them. Anyway, just an observation. In a body of work so big as the Discworld series, some errors are bound to slip by. I wonder as well if some of these are unique to the US versions, which have apparently been edited to Americanize spelling and other things. (That is, the editions I have here in the states say "color" instead of "colour", etc. The editors don't seem to change entire phrases, though. It took me a few times seeing the phrase "eat his tea" before I realized that In England "tea" could refer to a small meal at teatime and not just the hot drink itself. We here in the States don't have a good grasp on the concept of teatime.:smile I also seem to remember Carrot described in one book as nearly 2 meters tall (between 6 feet 6 inches and 6 feet 7 inches, but depending on your definition of "nearly", I'd say a minimum would be 6 feet 5 inches) and in another book as 6 feet 3 inches tall. Do any of you have others that come to mind?
Speaking of errors, Ba thinks Psychic might mean The Truth, rather than Going Postal. So far as Ba is aware, Mr Pin and Mr Tulip never appeared after their encounters with Death. Once, Harper Collins had little puzzles and things at the end of the Discworld paperbacks. One of these was a little quiz. Ba noticed that it referred to Mr. Pin when it meant Mr. Tulip. He e-mailed PTerry's publisher about the error, and received a signed copy of The Thief of Time for his trouble. And 6'3 translates to 1.9 meters, roughly. Ba would call that a fair approximation of "nearly two meters."
Yep. I thought of that later, that it was The Truth and not Going Postal. That's what I get for posting at nearly 4 AM. The passage I meant is on page 281 of the US paperback edition. "'Ah, our writer man' said Mr. Pin, stepping forward. 'Shut the door, Mr. Tulip.' Mr Pin slammed the door with one hand. The other was clamped over Sacharissa's mouth. She rolled her eyes at William." It goes on for about half a page, with Pin holding a crossbow and talking to William, and then at the bottom of the page says: "Mr Tulip let go of Sacharissa to help his colleague..." I noticed the error in the little quiz question about things that Mr. Pin snorted as well. I assume many did, since Mr. Tulip was the one constantly sniffing things up his nose. As far as the height of Carrot, I personally would not consider 1.9 meters as nearly 2 meters when referring to a person, but I'm sure many would. A matter of interpretation, I suppose. I tend to think in terms of basketball. At 6' 3", Carrot would probably be a guard (in more ways than one...), and at 6' 7", he'd probably be a forward. I'd have to look for the references in the various books to get the precise wording when his height is described. It struck me that it seemed to fluctuate.
I got a new hardback edition of Good Omens for Christmas (to replace the signed tatty copy I lost) but it has more typos than my old version... For example: re-entry is spelt e-entry and so forth. You;d figure that the newer editions would fix the mistakes in the older editions but alas this is not the case instead they seem to add to the pool of typos.
