Tag Archives: editing

Thank your for you support!

Posted on by under About writing, Generic Rant, Movies

Typos are everywhere. I can’t think of a single book that didn’t have at least one. And I read a lot of books. In fact, a recent novel by one of my favorite authors had at least two. Heck, my books (You know, the ones listed here. 🙂 Ironically, a typo in one of those titles caused Amazon to list it twice! Can you find it?) barely have that many. One of my favorite examples is in the written word in the middle of a movie. You can read about that one in this post.

Sometimes, it’s not clear whether an error is a typo or whether it’s just ignorance of the English language. Here’s a prime example from an article about a local community, which bragged that it…

…is infamous for its support of our local artists, writers, and musicians.

In a world where literally and metaphorically have become synonyms, why not famous and infamous? (I know those two aren’t antonyms or even mutually exclusive, e.g. Trump, but hopefully you get the point. They’re way different.)

The most common typo, however, the grandaddy of them all (and as a grandaddy, I assure you I know what I’m talking about) is the substitution of “you” for “your”. This mistake is virtually (not literally) omnipresent in cyberspace. I swear I don’t read an email, blogpost or even legitimate article that doesn’t have this failure. The most recent I can remember is this comment I saw on an article I read not too long ago:

Thanks for writing you article.

I don’t recall if the article itself had the error. I hope so.

A blessing and a curse

Posted on by under About writing

I’ve been told I have a “critical spirit” due to the fact that I find and readily announce flaws in ideas, people, events, places, creative works, and just about everything else. Yes, it’s a curse, mostly to the people around me who must endure my endless bellyaching.†

As with so many other personality defects, this one comes with an upside. My eye for error makes me a ruthless and fastidious editor. It’s a rare book I’ve read that doesn’t have at least one heinous error, typos more often than not. I’m about one-third of the way through a book now and I’ve found two glaring errors already. Other writers sometimes ask me to review their work-in-progress and—whether to their relief or dismay, I can’t be sure—I never fail to come up with plenty of real problems along with a long list of equivocal suggestions based on my personal biases, of which there are many. (My latent OCD tendencies don’t help matters.)

When it comes to my own writing, I’m not so good. I still find plenty of problems after the first, second, and third drafts. That’s another good news/bad news thing. People, including me, tend to be poor editors of their own work, whether it’s the blindness of familiarity or the moral refusal to “kill all our darlings”.

I’ve had no one point out problems in “A Slippery Land” yet, though the little buggers are no doubt in there. We’ll see how it all works out with the next book I’m dangerously close to putting out there. That should happen in just a few weeks. Meanwhile, I have to dive back in and do another fine-tooth-comb review. The proof is in the publishing.

†It’s actually not that bad. But it feels that way. Especially to others.

NB: Don’t forget to come to the 8th Annual Trivia and Silent Auction for Servants for Haiti.Â