I'm more than halfway through reading The Godfather and it's a GREAT novel, but I have one question: why are their so many spelling mistakes?! I have the softcover version and I have never seen so many spelling mistakes in a book in my life! It's still a great book though!

I dunno, I'm Dutch I don't notice such mistakes.

Hi,
Probably the publisher didn't check for spelling errors and just printed the book. Which edition is it?

It's the 30th Anniversary Edition.

Hi,
In that case they should have ran it through Microsoft's spell checker.

There are a lot of errors in the book. I guess it's because it is pre=word processing, but I still thought publishers paid proofreaders. Of course, I always seem to have mistakes in my posts on this forum.

Well, I've read a few Tom Clancy books and those are like 900 pages, yet have no typos...it's just interesting to me how these proofreaders could miss so much...I'm read about 300 pages and I have seen like 20-30 typos! It's comical when I read them, but they are quite unnecessary.

Could you share some specific typos you've found?
The best explanation for mistakes in The Godfather is that the publisher went ahead and published the first draft Puzo gave them without letting him proof it.

This isn't a typo, but it's a rather awkward anomaly:
On p. 15, at the beginning of the Connie wedding scene, Don Corleone is described thus: "And the guests so exclaimed at how well he looked in his tux that an inexperienced observer might easily have thought the Don himself was the lucky groom."
But by pp. 45-56, when the Don and his family are at the hospital to be with Genco on his deathbed, Dr. Kennedy "...was surprised when the wife and daughters [of Genco] turned to the short, heavy man dressed in an awkwardly fitted tuxedo..." Musta been a long day for the Don.

I also read the 30th ann. edition and there are LOTS of typos. I don't remember any offhand except I remember once they refer to Al Neri as "Al Nerl"

Funny, too, how several of my English teachers pounded it into my brain how syntactically abhorrent it is to begin a sentence with a conjunction (here, "And..."); yet nearly every popular author employs that. Of course, my math teachers were wrong about algebra, too: I never use it! Personally, I didn't noticed that many typographical errors, but then again, I was really into the book. I also overlooked discrepancies such as the one pointed out by Turnbull. Guess I'd be a lousy proof-reader!

Snake, if fiction authors wrote in 100% formal English, no one would read the books. It's style, and I like it Typos, tho, are simply embarrassing...

JG

Oh yeah, I definitely agree, Geoff. And I like it when they use conjunctions to begin a sentence . You're quite right. I still recall the hours I snoozed...er, studied those textbooks in college. Zzzzz...

I think if you click on the link where it says Mario Puzo's library and click on The Godfather it explains it. Puzo went to Europe with his family or by himself and they published the book before he could come back to re-edit, so they published the unedited version.

Guineapig.

I think all these typos are only in the "30th anniversary edition" I read the book when it first came out, and if there were this many typos, I would have remembered that.

I'm re-reading the 30th anniversary edition now, and there are TONS of typos. It is embarassing.