How are .PDF books made?

Question

This is a really strange question, but I recently downloaded some .pdf versions of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books, and I've noticed a lot of typos that seem to be computer mistakes (like "tom" being replaced with "torn", as if the computer misinterpreted.) Obviously this is not an official version of the novel, but for some reason I *have* to know why these errors are there-- is it because the novel is scanned by a computer or what? Or do people purposely insert errors to avoid legal issues?

I'm so curious. Haha. Thanks!

Answer 1

Adobe Acrobat.

And no, some errors are just there because people can't be arsed to check it.

I have this 'edition' of Breaking Dawn where it goes into something about Windows XP.

Answer 2

Could just be typos.  PDF files can be files converted from any kind of word processor file.  I use a software program to convert my word documents and the only change I find is paragraph placement on the pages - and that's only because I don't know how to make paragraphs "stick" to the page.

Answer 3

The OCR scanner used for reading the book into the computer sometimes misinterprets 'm' for 'rn' and other letters. It just misses the details. People don't bother to proofread it afterwards.

Answer 4

PDFs are created using abode acrobat. However, I don't think this is the issue here.

With your unofficial copies what is probably happening is someone scanned the pages of the book and then used a software that converts the scanned image to text.  This step isn't an exact science and some software is better than others.  If the person who scanned your copy didn't edit the information they scanned then the software probably "saw" the m as rn.