Bruce Beckham's Blog - Posts Tagged "proof-checking"
Drinking in pubic
Ah – typos!
Like literary no-see-ums they lull you into a false sense of security – no matter how many rounds of eagle-eyed editing – and then, just when you think you’re safe… ow! – they were lurking all along.
A career in copywriting has proved to me their invisibility. When you read though a piece of text, you can’t help being carried along by its meaning. Your brain gets the message and isn’t too fussy about the messenger. (Did you spot the missing ‘r’ back there?)
Some professional proof-checkers read backwards just to avoid this pitfall.
But it can’t be much fun – and it only really helps with spelling mistakes. When I omitted ‘r’ from ‘through’ above, I doubt a backwards-checker, not following the gist, would spot the error. Though, after all, is a perfectly good word.
Which makes Amazon’s system for finding these flaws all the more impressive.
Just this morning I received an email to ask, did I intend to write, “drinking in the public bar” rather than the published version, “drinking in the pubic bar”?
Given that this particular phrase referred to a group of underage schoolboys enjoying an illicit visit to a hostelry, I did waver for a moment. But only a moment!
Like literary no-see-ums they lull you into a false sense of security – no matter how many rounds of eagle-eyed editing – and then, just when you think you’re safe… ow! – they were lurking all along.
A career in copywriting has proved to me their invisibility. When you read though a piece of text, you can’t help being carried along by its meaning. Your brain gets the message and isn’t too fussy about the messenger. (Did you spot the missing ‘r’ back there?)
Some professional proof-checkers read backwards just to avoid this pitfall.
But it can’t be much fun – and it only really helps with spelling mistakes. When I omitted ‘r’ from ‘through’ above, I doubt a backwards-checker, not following the gist, would spot the error. Though, after all, is a perfectly good word.
Which makes Amazon’s system for finding these flaws all the more impressive.
Just this morning I received an email to ask, did I intend to write, “drinking in the public bar” rather than the published version, “drinking in the pubic bar”?
Given that this particular phrase referred to a group of underage schoolboys enjoying an illicit visit to a hostelry, I did waver for a moment. But only a moment!
