By Karin Ciano
BridgeTower Media Newswires
My Dear readers:
We’ve known each other awhile now, and I hope I’ve earned your trust. You’ve graciously listened to me muse on writing; I delight in hearing your thoughts and comments.
Well, it’s time for me to make a confession. My writing suffers from persistent typographical errors. Recently I had occasion to glance at something I wrote months ago — indeed, something I’d had reviewed by friends and then had professionally printed. A document of which I was (and mostly still am) very proud.
It turns out to have a typo. An obvious one, not even arguably a word nor a quirk attributable to spell-check. (For those of you who have heard me declaim how much a typo on the first page hurts a writer’s credibility — guess where it is.) Yes, this is a mistake that merits turning in my grammar police badge and red pencil.
But guess what else: hundreds of people have seen it, and so far, no one has said anything. Are people that polite? That conflict-averse? Am I surrounded by people who just don’t care?
Or could it be that typos are really that hard to spot?
Maybe I’m rationalizing. But I’m not alone: researchers have spent time figuring out why the typo is such challenging quarry.
One theory is that our brains prioritize meaning over appearance. When we read unfamiliar text, we’re not really looking closely at the letters — we’re looking at other cues (word order, length, and the first and last letters of words) to figure out the meaning. Although the theory itself is something of an urban legend (search for “typoglycemia”), science has subsequently confirmed that our ability to read scrambled words appears to be a form of “chunking.” Our minds recognize and comprehend individual words as a whole, even if the letters within them are scrambled or misplaced. This cognitive shortcut creates fertile ground in which typos can sprout unseen.
But wait, it gets worse. When we read text we’ve read before or have written ourselves, whole phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs can be “recognized” by our minds, even if they’re not actually on the page—simply because we expect them to be there. We know the map, so we’re not forced to rely on what’s in front of our eyes. Because the “chunks” of information get larger the more we know the text, familiar terrain just creates better camouflage. This is one reason why it’s really hard to proofread your own work.
Finally there’s the social element. Recall my errant typo that languished before the eyes of readers for months, apparently unseen? I’m betting someone — heck, maybe even one of you — may have noticed it.
Volunteer proofreaders find themselves in an awkward spot. Correcting a stranger’s writing mistake feels oddly intimate — like pointing out a missing button or a splash of soup on a chin. I correct writing all the time, and yet I rarely find the right tone. Will someone else point it out? Maybe if I leave it alone they will figure it out themselves? “Pardon me, I just happened to notice — would you like some feedback? Yes, over there, the letter e should be an a. It’s very subtle, probably no one else would have seen it, but I wanted to let you know ...” and so on. From a colleague the request can be socially scarier: “will you just look this over” can sound like “are these jeans too tight?”
With all these challenges, how do we find and slay our typos?
Hunt them at dawn. Mine reveal themselves to me, if at all, first thing in the morning — never at the last minute before a deadline. So give your mind a rest, find a quiet and unpressured moment free of distractions, and pursue them when your attention is fresh.
Flush your quarry by disabling your mental shortcuts. Change things up. Dean Raths and Mary Trevor advise us to proofread differently: if you normally sit, stand. If you normally read on the screen, try printing. Pick a different color or font for your proof copy. Go somewhere else. (The egregious typo mentioned above became apparent when I was reading the document while visiting a new location.) I’ve been known to read aloud and pace with a draft in my hand, not only to annoy my colleagues but also because my ears often hear a problem before my eyes see it.
Leverage technology. Machines are not necessarily better; my frenemy spell-check not only giveth but also taketh away (consider find-and-replace bloopers such as substituting inseminator for indemnitor). But just as we’d never consider research complete without doing an internet search, we should never consider a document proofread until we’ve considered (and possibly rejected) each of Word’s lovely red squiggles. The squiggles are trying to call our focused attention to something; let’s let them.
Give others permission to tell you about your typos — with luck, they will take you up on it. (To one and all: if you find one of my typos, please let me know. You will receive my undying gratitude plus coffee.)
Good hunting!
I am convinced I saw mention of a study in which people’s ability to spot grammatical errors depended on whether they agreed or disagreed with the meaning of a sentence. It could be that I simply expected it to exist, and it doesn’t really. But if anyone finds it, send it on — there’s a coffee in it for you.
