I'm in a Funeral Service Education program in preparation for becoming an embalmer and funeral director. I'm in the middle of my third semester and I've noticed an alarming trend in my textbooks. The books that are specifically about funeral service are often poorly written.
My business and sociology textbooks have been fine, but I'd say over half of my funeral textbooks have contained typos and bad grammar. One of the most distressing problems is the use of the wrong homophones (there instead of their, etc.). I think this problem stems from the fact that these books are usually written by funeral professionals rather than professors or professional writers.
It's really discouraging that these wonderful resources are marred with amateurish mistakes. But it comes down to poor editing. If someone other than the author took the time to read through the text, a lot of these problems could be caught before publication. The worst is when the book has already been through several editions. Some of these mistakes have probably been there since the book was first published.
