10.30.2009

In Which I Shock You

I have a confession to make. And it is shocking news. I only beg that you will try not to think any less of me for my mistake. Just a few days ago, Mikaela discovered an atrocity on our blog. I’m ashamed even to tell you about it—I can’t bear to look at the keys as I type. On second thought, though, I probably should look at the keys, because the atrocity came in the despicable form of a typo. OK—now it’s out there. I can breathe a little easier.
However, this is no laughing matter—an extra “y” in our header. Our HEADER! I am shocked, first of all, that I never noticed it in the gazillion times I read the header and second of all that you, my faithful readers, failed to alert me to it in the hundred gazillion times you have read it. You have to understand how difficult this is for me since I abide by a strict no-typos-allowed policy. I spot them on other people’s blogs, in books, in magazines, and on signs. But never before have I spotted a typo on my own blog that had sequestered itself in such an obvious place for so long.
Let's face it--a typographical error is a giant neon sign that declares to the world, “Oh—I need to proofreed?” The aggravating thing is that, for me anyways, this implication is simply not true. I read a page over and over only to come back to it later and see the giant, neon, misspelled word. I’m doomed.
The most pernicious typos are those that masquerade as a real word. They duck under the radar of the spell check, thus avoiding the death sentence. The typo that infiltrated our blog was of just that sneaky ilk. I am relieved to tell you, however, that I have since taken care of the error, so you can feel free to start sleeping through the night again now that your conscience has been relieved.
With that problem in my past (soon to be distant, distant past, I hope), I am considering how to avoid future massacres of the English language. I could always go back to the method the scribes used for copying out the Bible. They found that a good motivation helped—after all, the belief that you would go to Hell if you made a single error tends to inspire. But then again, copying out three million characters in poor light from a copy of a copy is quite the daunting task. I’m grateful, then, that God was the proofreader for that work, for I can verify that the breathtaking accuracy of the Bible is certainly not due to any human spelling genius! I mean, Hebrew and Greek…who came up with those languages?
And now, whith that exercise in humility, I’m off to reed the dictionary. A girl’s got too have fun, you know. [sic]

9 comments:

  1. What a great way to handle a typo - with humor! Thanks, Lauren, for the good dose. : ) BTW, it's ironic that you would write on this topic, because The Chief made a rather obvious error in this week's issue. In a front page photo caption we reminded our readers to turn their clocks back at 2 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 25, when it should have read Nov. 1. It was rather embarrassing, especially since it had to be brought to our attention. But, those mistakes keep us humble. : )
    Oh, and awhile back I did notice a typo under your welcome message. "Embodies" is misspelled in the third sentence. Feel free to proofread my blog, too. : )
    BTW, I am curious as to what word was incorrect in the header.
    Thanks again for the good post. : )

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  2. Don't take it too hard, dear! :) You should see what I did in a post one time - it was awful! Instead of posting "my dear Dad", I said "my dead Dad" - horrifying mistake! But, at least you took your typo in humor. :) That's the best way to! I, honestly, did not notice it...but, it also depends in where on the header was the typo. If it was on the bottom (where the writing is smaller), it was probably less noticeable. Well...at least you got it fixed, right? :) Good job, dear!

    Blessings and love,
    ~Raquel

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  3. Well, let's just say I shouldn't quit my day job to be an editor...I didn't even notice! :p If you weren't so painstakingly honest, you even could've slipped by with a quiet change...but fixing your mistakes that way doesn't give everyone a smile! :)
    Love you!

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  4. You guys are sweet! I know you maybe didn't notice (it was "every" instead of "ever," but still, a typo's a typo and the fact that it was right there where I read it every day...
    And Ruthie and Raquel--those both sound like horrible typos! Especially the newspaper one would be quite embarassing! Love you all!

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  5. I am assuming that you meant "A girl's got [i]to[/i] have fun you know." 'Too' imply's extra, 'To' is a prepostition linking an indirect object to a verb, such as "A girl" to "fun". Right?

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  6. Thanks Tyler! It's great to hear from you, and I definitely need more proofreaders like you! However, I am happy to report that the last two sentences were tongue-in-cheek--I was attempting to make light of the situation by purposely inserting some typos. I know it is dreadfully hard for those English lovers among us to read that, but I put the [sic] in there to hopefully help us deal with it better. (-:

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  7. I thought so. But I had to hope for bragging rights. But I made a mistake in my comment as well. The 'to' in the second sentence is missing a ('). Go figure.

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  8. You have a beautiful blog. The mind is a very complex organ. It sort of "understands" and correctly interprets even words that are spelled incorrectly without letting us know about it. Funny, huh? It is also funny how we can easily see others' typos but miss ours. I know I often do that. Since you said that your readers did not point out the typo on your previous blog post, I will be silly and point out one tiny typo you made with this post. You spelled proof-read incorrectly (proof-reed). See what I meant about our brain? :)
    Esther.

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  9. Esther--thanks for your comment and compliment--I love hearing from people! Yes, I know what you mean about the brain--have you seen the paragraphs where every word has the correct first and last letters, but the middle ones are jumbled up? Amazingly, your brain can still read and understand the words!
    Thanks for your silly proof-reading help--it was a purposeful mistake to make a point, and I'm glad you were on top of it! (-;

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