poof

I make my living as a proofreader and copy editor. Sometimes I think of my profession as being a Professional Nitpicker. This has the virtue of expressing my affection for the work as well as many other people's (account managers, copy writers) resentment of it.
People often ask me if I am always finding typos in newspapers, magazines, books. Yes.
I don't fuss much over typos in newspapers, given their time constraints and that they seem to be doing a better job now (at least in the online editions that are the only ones I see) than they did during the pre-computer and transitional days. Some of my colleagues, including the one who has dubbed herself Conanne the Grammarian, are less forgiving.
The magazines I read dedicate more time and money to the prose they publish, with accordingly better results. When I occasionally see a bit of copy that needs a fix, it will stick in my mind, esp if it's a deluxe pub like the New Yorker (hint - don't assume human skin only comes in pink and white).
What I do find unforgivable is typos and solecisms in books from major or minimally respectable publishers. No excuse. We nitpickers don't cost much compared to salaries on the business side.
An example that sticks in mind: the Booker-shortlisted Breakfast on Pluto, by Patrick McCabe. Harper (owned by the regrettable Rupert Murdoch) published the edition I read, and clearly they felt running spellcheck was proofreading enough. Chalk-fool of typos, it was. I stopped keeping track after the protagonist mentions her "brass earnings," meaning not a mineral investment but adornment for the ears. Shameful. Any author deserves better, but McCabe is esp a novelist of voice - how insulting to broadcast his labor in such a shoddy manner.
The occasion for today's complaint is Michael Bierut's book, Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, published by Princeton Architectural Press. I enjoy Bierut's straightforward and interesting writing. As you would expect, the book is carefully designed, and well made... except for the proofreading. By essay 7 I had already found three typos, including "and" with a word space in the middle of it and a misspelling of Gutenberg's name, of all things.
As a copy editor, you would note my use of "had already found" rather than "have already found" in the para above, because while confirming how far I have read in the book, I found yet another corrigendum. Bierut expresses admiration of an essay by a certain Susan, but whether she is Susan Sellers or Susan Sellars you could not distinguish by reading page 34. So much for the copy editing.
Proofreading is an aspect of a book as surely as any physical element. Integrity is as compromised by sloppiness as it is by a blot, whether on a page or an escutcheon.