Proofreading. It’s not my specialty.

Hello there friends,

I’ve done it again, my last blog I misspelled the title (it’s fixed now!). I kind of feel jinxed because I’d like everyone to know that I really do know how to spell correctly. Honst I do.

I’m a published writer, a professional blogger, and spend a lot of time in fromt of a keyboard working on my websites and blogs. Why is it that after I write a page or two, read it 3 times, I can still may typo mistaks?

According to an atricle I read on “Wired”:

The reason typos get through isn’t because we’re stupid or careless, it’s because what we’re doing is actually very smart, explains psychologist Tom Stafford, who studies typos of the University of Sheffield in the UK. “When you’re writing, you’re trying to convey meaning. It’s a very high level task,” he said.

As with all high level tasks, your brain generalizes simple, component parts (like turning letters into words and words into sentences) so it can focus on more complex tasks (like combining sentences into complex ideas). “We don’t catch every detail, we’re not like computers or NSA databases,” said Stafford. “Rather, we take in sensory information and combine it with what we expect, and we extract meaning.” When we’re reading other peoples’ work, this helps us arrive at meaning faster by using less brain power. When we’re proof reading our own work, we know the meaning we want to convey. Because we expect that meaning to be there, it’s easier for us to miss when parts (or all) of it are absent. The reason we don’t see our own typos is because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads.”

So please give me a break. When I missepll something it’s a commonly known “problem” that writers can have. I only humon!

All kidding aside, I’ll try to do a better job a proofreading my own work. You’d think that after thousands of blogs, thousands of written pages, hundreds of articles, a million or so emails, press releases, and a WHOLE book, I’d have a better grip on my ability to see typos. Nope, this is still just regular old Ryan clopping away at the keyboard. Only time will tell.

Have a great day…how many typos did you see in this blog? The answer is 8. Well, that’s how many I can see 😉

Ryan