Fair point Melvyn Hiscock and 25deg South. The late Ronnie Harker, though did hail from a relevent aeronautical background, with 40-odd years of service to Rolls-Royce as an engineer, test pilot and senior company rep.
Maybe someone at his publishers (Oxford Illustrated Press) was in awe of him – I just don’t know. Remember the book was published in 1976, before the era of word processors, so many (but not all) of the errors could be put down to careless typesetting.
The typesetting and desk-top publishing revolution of the last 20 or so years has made it a lot easier and more economical to produce books (and newspapers and magazines), but the primary responsibility for quality control has been pushed firmly up the line to the writer – which is the point that the two last contributors have been making, if I understand them rightly.
Nobody’s perfect, and in an ideal world author and proof-reader should be pulling together in the interests of making the end product as good as it possibly can be. This depends, though, on a similar level of knowledge from both parties.
If there is an imbalance, then things can go badly wrong. If a writer will not accept valid questions (Are you sure this is an An-24 and not an An-26? Of course I do. How dare you ask!! (Slipped that one in ‘cos an An-24 flew over the house yesterday!)) then the whole thing breaks down, alas.
William
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