October 17, 2022
Living with Typos and Errors in Writing
As it’s often said, if you want to discover a typo in your text, simply publish it; it will make itself visible immediately. The truth is, typos and other errors in writing are inevitable. They are a necessary evil. Should we fix them? Yes. Should we worry? No.
I see this with many processes. In photography, you get people agonizing over the sharpness of their lenses – going as far as wasting their time photographing diagrams. The miracle that is language – a living organism – has produced a fantastic word for such people: measurebator.
Also in music, there are people who worry over the most minute details – their strings, their pickups, and whether the fretboard is of this or that wood.
Do these matter?
Allow me to reply with my standard example: Slash sounds better with a Gibson Les Paul and a proper amp than with a Hello Kitty guitar and a toy amp. But not having a Gibson Les Paul is not the reason why I don’t sound like Slash.
Again: Yes, we should fix typos when we see them. But there are far more important things to worry about.
Typos and Errors in Writing Are Inevitable
Writing and editing are technically imperfect processes. In other words, no matter how careful you are, it’s really difficult to catch all typos and other errors. Of course, the more times something is read (and by the more people), the higher the chance to catch these errors.
Still, errors are virtually inevitable. I’m not surprised to spot several even in novels published by important publishing houses, spending good money on editing. My first and only traditionally published novel had a typo (a missing preposition) on the back-cover blurb, from all places, and back then I was young and naive enough to feel everything was ruined because of that.
Of course, I often find errors in my own novels and texts, though I’ve not only written them (duh), but also reread them many times. Heck, what better example than my doctoral dissertation. It has been read and reread, edited and reedited literally hundreds of times, scrutinized and reviewed by a dozen academics with the express purpose of pointing out errors (including typos), and it still contains plenty of them.
So, what does all this mean?
That you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself when you spot such errors in your text.
Where Typos and Errors Come From
There are many reasons for typos and other errors in writing. Off the top of my head:
- Typing allows us to produce text fast, but also makes it likelier to mistype something.
- Our brains rely on Word and similar software for spotting errors, but Word doesn’t see anything wrong with “There were two men. One mean was tall, the other short.” The Google Docs interface is a bit better, but also has more false positives.
- This is something I’ve noticed in my own writing, it may or may not apply to you. Many of us speak at least two languages and might be influenced by multiple cultures. Depending on how dominant some of them are, when you’re focused on your text (perhaps being “in the zone” or writing in a stream-of-consciousness manner), you might introduce so-called transfer mistakes. I’m sure I’ve written “Her hair were blonde” quite a few times, because my brain temporarily switched to Greek or Finnish, where “hair” is plural. Fun fact: “hair” in ancient Greek is, indeed, singular: κόμη (kómē).
- What is erroneous in one context isn’t in another, which affects your brain’s mental image of “what feels right.” For instance, “code” as in “the secret code” has a plural (“codes”), but “code” as in “JavaScript code” is a so-called mass noun. We say “pieces of JavaScript code” but not “JavaScript codes”.
- Language is a living thing, as I said earlier. It evolves and changes all the time, and – believe it or not – correctness is not always a binary, on-off process. It can have degrees. Editing professionally, it’s almost daily I correct a native speaker’s misuse of things like less/fewer, inside/inside of, or (notoriously) who/whom. In spoken language – and even casual texts – these are far less of a mistake than, say, in an academic dissertation.
- This is a big one: You become accustomed to your own text. When you’ve written it (and reread, reedited, and rewritten several drafts), your brain learns to absorb errors it soon doesn’t notice. It’s really insidious, and the number one reason why editing your own text isn’t as efficient as hiring a fresh pair of Mark IV eyeballs (and the associated brain).
Why It’s not the End of the World
Still, it’s important to remember that tiny typos or inconsistencies aren’t the end of the world, when you have a solid narrative.
Something attributed to Beethoven (who might or might not have said it, but that’s irrelevant) is “To play the wrong note is insignificant, but to play without passion is inexcusable.”
In other words (no pun intended), I’d take any day a technically imperfect text with something to say, a text that inspires me or affects me, rather than a technically flawless text that leaves me cold.
4 Comments
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The compromise? Store typos and errors in a file as you find them; periodically issue an update it it’s worth the effort, which it often is NOT.
You don’t even get that option most of the time in traditional publishing; indies have to decide how best to spend their time: new novels or slowly perfected old ones. And nobody give point for the latter.
That’s what I do, too. Funny how 20 (or even 10) years ago, I’d be horrified to know my novels are out there with typos. I’d want to correct them yesterday. Ah, time brings some perspective here as well!
I admit I’m a wee bit anal when it comes to typos, but I’ve discovered that reading my text out loud is a great way of disengaging the part of my mind that sees what it expects to see. I recently created a video with a very short reading – three paragraphs or so – and I discovered that I had to change the text to make it easier to say. And hear. And this was not dialogue. It now reads better as well.
Imho, switching from visual to verbal is a great weapon against typos. 🙂
This must be very efficient, offering entirely new insights when it comes to pace and rhythm. But gosh, it must be a lot of work!