Okay, I’ll sacrifice myself on the altar of editing. I’m amazed by the amount of typos in this anthology. Of the 15 essays we’ve read, I’ve noticed at least five typos – mostly SpellCheck-type errors like the one on page 228 “chanced” versus “changed.” It doesn’t make me question the validity of the content, just the expertise of the copyeditor. Still, why would it horrify me if I was one of the contributors to see a typo in my essay? When I was advising a student newspaper at a college in Michigan, an administrator member had a hissy because a typo appeared in an article she authored and was published in the paper. It was the editor's error and we noted that in our next edition and corrected it on the online version of the paper, but she insisted the article was "ruined" for use in her vitae. Why do we take typos in our work so personally? Is it just a social construction that typos or other mechanical errors make the writer look unprofessional, sloppy or stupid? Or is that just an anal attitude of some people? I've often told my students that mechanical errors can get in the way of their meaning because some readers will hold the mistakes against them, but I wonder if I'm just propagating that attitude.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The editor in me notices typos
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2 comments:
I too have noticed all those typos and have been bothered. One of the professors at Taylor University won't grade a paper that has more than 3 typos per page. It seems to me to be a lack of effort. When I see errors that could have been caught by just a read through, I think that the student didn't care. More likely, however, s/he ran out of time to proofread. I have certainly been in that position lately.
I mentioned the prolific editorial oversights to Carolyn on Friday because they make reading the text more difficult to read. That, while not the only possible reason for attending to them, seems to me the most straightforward one.
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