About fifteen women from my church and I have been working through (and thoroughly enjoying) a Bible study which uses, besides the Bible itself, a study guide written by a very passionate author. (I’ll call her Jane Jones.) Jane writes in a very exciting, engaging way, which I think is awesome.

There’s just one tiny problem.

Her study guide is full of typos!

Sometimes I am working through the study and an egregious error glares at me. For example, this past week one thing we participants were supposed to do was to “Read Matthew 29:16-24.”

Ummm…this is impossible to do, because the Gospel of Matthew only has 28 chapters. Oopsy-daisy.

I am 99 percent certain that Jane Jones knows well that there are only 28 chapters in Matthew. What I’m guessing happened is that someone’s finger hit the 9 instead of the 8 on the keyboard. At least, I want to give Jane the benefit of the doubt.

Jane’s study guide contains other errors as well, but I will not list them all. Although I continue to enjoy the reading, I have to say that errors in a published work are highly distracting. In fact, I am not the only woman in my church group who has noticed them.

I recall being on the beach one summer while savoring a novel written by a bestselling author. The book contained a character named Spencer, who was one of the “bad guys” and quite intriguing. Imagine how my reading flow was disrupted when I stumbled across a single instance of the villain’s name being written as “Spenser.”

“How did that get by quality control?” I asked myself as I snickered.

I have to admit that I have sometimes been tempted to contact publishers whose books contain a great deal of typos and beg for a job offer my services. I have not done this, and I have been advised against doing it. After all, how would you like it if a stranger contacted you and told you that your job performance stinks and that you could do the job better?

Do you find a lot of typos in books you read?