Help talk:How to record a variant title

Checking that a variation is real - typo?

Part 2 of the help says

Next, do whatever you can to be sure that the variation is real. For example, you might notice that the original Ballantine paperback of "Night's Black Agents" is listed as being by "Fritz Lieber", which is a mis-spelling of "Fritz Leiber". Is this really how the book was published? Or is it a typographical error on the part of the person entering the data? If it's the latter, you don't want to record it as a variant title. The publication should have a note against it saying why the spelling is different. You can also look on the "Bibliographic Comments" page for that publication to see whether there's been any discussion of the error. There may be bibliographic resources you can check which will tell you about misprints and pseudonyms and retitlings.

I had to reread this several times to see if I really understood it. What confused me on the first reading is when I read “If it's the latter, you don't want to record it as a variant title” I then assumed the rest of the paragraph was what you do want to do if it was the latter and thus an error in isfdb. I suspect the next sentence should start out with “If it's the former, and an error or variation printed in a book, then ...” Marc Kupper 11:10, 18 Nov 2006 (CST)

Good point; I cleaned it up as you suggested. Mike Christie 11:22, 18 Nov 2006 (CST)