Writing without typos is totally outdated
Will everyone please shut up about the typos on blogs? Show me someone who is blogging every day and also complains about someone’s typos. Just try. See? You can’t. Because anyone who is trying to come up with fresh ideas, and convey them in an intelligent, organized way, on a daily basis, has way too many things on their plate to complain about other peoples’ typos.
There is a new economy for writing. The focus has shifted toward taking risks with conversation and ideas, and away from hierarchical input (the editorial process) and perfection.
As the world of content and writing shifts, the spelling tyrants will be left behind. Here are five reasons why complaining about typos is totally stupid and outdated.
1. Spellchecker isn’t perfect.
Everyone knows that Spellchecker misses some words. And everyone knows that sometimes we think we are making a stylistic choice when we have actually made a grammar error.
And anyway, it’s nearly impossible for us to catch the errors that Spellchecker misses. If it were tenable to proofread one’s own stuff, then there would never have been a copy editor to begin with. And there is research to show that if the first and last letter of a word are correct then our brain adjusts for all the letters in between. (My personal favorite of all Spellchecker problems: form and from. Try it—there are so many cases when both words will get past Spellchecker.)
So don’t bitch to me that I should use Spellchecker.
2. Spelling has nothing to do with intelligence.
Usually the person who is bitching about spelling errors also has to make some comment about how the blogger in question is a moron—but you might want to rethink the idea that a spelling error is a sign of incompetence.
Many people with dyslexia are very smart. Most kids who win spelling bees have many signs of Asperger’s syndrome (see the documentary on this, which I love). This means that many amazing spellers actually have brains that are developing intellectual skills (in this case, spelling skills) at the expense of social skills.
So people who have spelling problems might be super intelligent with great social skills—if you’d just take the time to notice.
3. You don’t have unlimited time, so spend it on ideas, not hyphens.
I am extremely knowledgeable about grammar. I can parse any sentence. I can sign the preposition song in my sleep. So I feel fine telling you that there are great writers who don’t know grammar.
Real grammarians, by the way, have memorized the AP Stylebook. Newspapers and magazines have people who are paid to enforce these rules. There is no way a blogger could hire for this, and few bloggers can justify spending the years it takes to memorize The AP Stylebook. So you could spend your life reading the AP Stylebook, or you could spend your life spouting ideas.
So what if your ideas have hyphens in the wrong places and you turn an adverb into a noun? People can almost always figure out what you’re saying anyway, but they won’t care enough to try without a great idea lurking there to attract their effort. And there’s a reason that people who have amazing ideas get paid twenty times more than people who have amazing grammar: Ideas are worth a lot more to us.
4. Perfectionism is a disease.
If errors bother you a lot, consider that you might be a perfectionist, which is a disorder. Perfectionists are more likely to be depressed than other people because no amount of work seems like enough. They are more likely to be unhappy with their work because delegating is nearly impossible if you are a perfectionist. And they are more likely to have social problems because people mired in details cannot look up and notice the nuances of what matters to other people.
5. Use the comments section for what matters: Intelligent discourse.
The comments section of a blog is a place for people to exchange ideas. The best comments sections, of which I think mine is one, is full of smart, curious people who don’t spend as much time finding perfect answers (are there any?) as finding good questions. The best comments sections are full of people helping each other to sharpen the questions we ask.
So blogging is not an homage to perfectionism but rather an homage to the art of being curious. And while old journalism was hell-bent on being Right and being The Authority, new journalism understands that news is a commodity and opinion-makers are the layer that goes on top of the news to make it resonate. So stop wasting your time in the comments section parsing grammar and start contributing to the discussion.
it irks me to death when people email me to tell me i have a typo. get over it.
Love this post. I love it not because I think typos are OK. (I cringe when I make one on one of my blogs, and my husband is always happy to point them out.)
But I agree with you that content is more important than an occasional typo — especially a typo that does nothing to change the meaning of something.
So I type “feelings” when I meant “feeling,” and spell check doesn’t catch it. So what. Sure, I’d love a copy editor to check all that — but that’s not viable.
If I read a blog that consistently had multiple typos, it might make me think the person is a bit too hasty. But once in a while, no way. That’s human.
Another fun set of words spellchecker misses is public/pubic. That has potential to create some “interesting” stories…
Penelope —
I do have a concern: Why should readers trust anything that’s full of typos and grammar errors? Proper spelling and grammar breeds a sense of credibility in a writer’s work. If a writer can’t accurately spell, how can a reader trust that they’re accurately reporting/writing about a given topic?
This is really disturbing. Don’t you care enough to give your readers your very best? Of course the comments section isn’t meant for proofreading notes. But I am horrified that a career professional is suggesting that it’s okay to have a typo in your resume. Come on people, at least AIM for perfection. If you don’t have time to read your blog post for errors, then I certainly shouldn’t be taking my time to read it.
http://dcgrrl.blogspot.com
Agree with dcgrrl. We don’t have to have perfect posts, but at least take the time to proofread it once. Please.
And don’t get me started on the importance of using correct grammar!
You definitely have a point – there is no need to be anal about spelling or grammar, and everybody makes mistakes. I certainly do, all the time. However, I think there is a difference between making the odd mistake and outright sloppiness. It is a matter of making a good appearance, just like shaving, washing, or wearing nice clothes as opposed to rags. Someone with greasy hair, dirty fingernails and a shirt they haven’t washed in 50 days can be a very nice person, but the first impression they make won’t be very good.
Also, making an effort regarding spelling and grammar is not a new requirement unique to blogging – it already applied back in the days when we wrote personal letters to people, on paper.
Poor spelling and grammar on any website is much like showing up to an interview with an untucked shirt or dishevelled hair. The person receiving you (or in this case reading what you have to say) need not necessarily tell you, but there’s a certain expectation that hasn’t been met. Perhaps an even more poignant matter to point out since your tagline is “brazen careerist.”
Hello. I saw your post about typos and was struck by this sentence: “Because anyone who is trying to come up with fresh ideas, and convey them in an intelligent, organized way, on a daily basis, has way too many things on their plate to complain about other peoples’ typos.”
Well, I do actually blog about other people’s errors: sentencesleuth.blogspot.com!
Every day I comment on a Criminal Sentence. I take these bad sentences from books I read or anywhere else public (sometimes from my copyediting clients).
(May I complain about a typo in the sentence I took from your post? It should be people’s typos, not peoples’!) Yes, I can be annoying but informative at the same time!
Thanks, Bonnie Trenga
sentencesleuth.blogspot.com
Author of “The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier”
in my opinion, typos should be completely obliviated….the more we get used to them the more we become unable to tell what is right and what is wrong
Penelope –
As you say, perfectionism is a mental illness (I am a long-time sufferer). Nevertheless, there remain four good reasons why bloggers should use spellcheckers. This could apply under any circumstances, including chat-type blogs dashed off in a hurry, but especially for any lengthy blog that is more of a short essay than a quick response:
1. Typos can convey a meaning other than the one intended.
2. Repeated misspellings of the same word reflect on the author’s fundamental ability to spell.
3. Typos create the impression that the author’s thinking is as hurried and disorganized as his or her spelling.
4. The blog entry might be read by a potential employer or funder that is turned off by careless spelling and grammar and the disrespect shown to the reader by not bothering to proofread one’s own language.
Ben Goodman
the link to this april 2008 blog was forwarded to me by someone I emailed- pointing his attention to a few misspelled words in a webinar i was taking that was offered by his company. he was grateful for the oversight, which led us to the discussion of the paradigm shift related to, according to your blog, the decrease in the importance of spelling and grammar spawned by the new economy of communication and social networking. i care not when i read a blog, a tweet or text that has basic misspellings or an occasional incorrect noun to verb singular or plural correlation. my choice to be an accurate speller and grammarian is simply that. here is where i take you to the mat (no contentiousness implied) on a few of your conclusions: first, that good spellers are uptight control-freaks. second, that bad spelling is an organic side effect (my words, not yours) of the popularity of social networking. as a fellow writer i am fully aware of the importance of substance over form, and the advantage of the stream-of-consciousness writing process for spawning creative thoughts. there is no debate there. however, i am not aware of any social networking requirement to hit the ‘send’ key, whether on a cell phone or a laptop, without thought or notion to editing anything beyond spell check (if even that). hitting send to share your thoughts with the world without some kind of editing is one of the most short sighted, undisciplined actions any career minded person can take, even in today’s anything goes world. leaving the responsibility of editing for one’s sloppy writing to the recipient is dangerous,and worse, a lame excuse for laziness. it is not difficult to overlook the forms and froms typos, as you point out. however no social networking ‘new way of doing business’ should ever be held out to justify laziness or lack of discipline on mistakes like “there way of thinking”, or, “her palet is trained to taste the suttlties”. i agree to disagree with your opinion, and have also chosen to offer further food for thought on the issue of what kind of message we are giving our kids when we send them to school to ‘learn’ spelling and grammar, yet model for them that they simply are no longer relevant in today’s society.
Great advices trunk… but, how to decide what typo of writing we wanna make? any easier ways for it?
There’s a big problem with evidence here. You sight sources making connections between intelligence and typos, and essentially suggest that bad spelling is linked to intelligence. (No, you don’t say that, but the insinuation is clearly there.) This is simply not true. A person’s language ability in their (<-grammatically correct, look it up) native language is one of the surest and fastest means of measuring someone's intelligence, and spelling is part of that. That's the reason standardized tests have language sections. It's also the reason we associate the two so strongly. We're simply used to seeing the connection in our everyday lives. You may not want it to be so, and comments on people's typos are tiresome, but it's a fact of life. For my part, I use a poster's language as a quick litmus test to decide if they're worth listening to. I think most people do.
Wow, I meant ‘cite’. I’ll try not to be a hypocrite at least.
I won’t bug you about your blog typos–I’ll just make judgments about you, based on your typos. Because although I do understand that it’s difficult to check every little grammatical and spelling choice, and that not everyone finds spelling and grammar easy, I also wonder what else you are skipping because it’s difficult or tedious–maybe that little statistic there, or the correct name here? I think, based on your frequency of typos, that you are basically intelligent and articulate, but write in an informal style (not as informal as the norm for, say, Facebook, but pretty informal), and are moderately lazy about details you feel you can get away with ignoring.
Paula, try writing your own content-rich blog and see how it goes.
it’s called proof reading
Amen Paula!
Oh come on! Are you seriously trying to defend those who either choose not to make an effort, or are incapable of proper grammar and/or spelling? Give me a break. The world has enough mediochre performers. Those of you who believe it’s acceptable to forward/send/publish these errors have a number of problems. One of them is me. I shall not hire you nor give you career opportunities if you can not spell. Until I (and many of my generation) die, you will have a problem. Get over it and make an effort.
Vern:
Your Flesch Kinkaid level is a 6.4 and there is no such word as mediochre. We all make mistakes, including you.
LOVE IT! I write day and night on passionate topics, educaiton, chidlren, health and policies that are related to the issues. It is about the quality, the concepts put forth and the ideas and initiatives that will have a far greater impact than my typing skills and proofreading. When I do get “business” about non-issues- I get rather agitated that a peer or colleague has nothing to offer but technical challenges. Thank you for your article!! I’m printing it and hanging it up on my wall- LG
To be honest with you, I understand what you’re saying: more often than not, the message is more important than the medium. And add on top of that the number of people who have learning disabilities like dyslexia that can make spelling a challenge.
No matter how hard you try, typos will crop up and be missed. Generally speaking, typos don’t inhibit comprehension unless the word is so badly misspelled that it’s unrecognizable. And also generally speaking, most grammatical errors are minor formatting mistakes (a la hyphenation example). Both of these types of errors are understandable, given the English language’s ridiculous rules and exceptions to those rules and it’s propensity for appropriating other languages’ words (and occasional idiosyncracy).
On the other hand, gross grammatical errors have can a huge impact on comprehension, which can lead to misinterpretation. When you considee the fact that the whole point of language is to communicate, errors that obstruct comprehention and enable misinterpretation render language to just noise.
I think that if you’re going to take the time to formulate a thought, develop it with intent to express it in written word, giving the thought enough care and attention to ensuring that it is properly spelled and formatted with proper grammar won’t do anything but make you a better writer, increase your attention to detail, increase the quality of your work overall, and lend credibility to your argument.
If you can spell well and know your grammar then you owe it to yourself to make your work of the highest quality that you can acheive. If your capacity with the written word is limited, it doesn’t mean that what you have to say is irrelevant, though. Maybe try youtube instead?
Hello from a clique of post-modern English professors on Facebook debating whether to laugh at you or… uh… with you…?
I love this post! I also agree that those that take out the time to point out the typos are usually not the ones putting in the time or effort to give their readers any content.
Corect! Speling is overraited anyweigh. Cids dund kendad teoo spel to abe undstrdue!
Yay!!!! I love this post. I know that I should try my best to spell correctly and use proper writing styles, but honestly I just want to share my thoughts, ideas, reviews, and whatever else on my blog. Unless there are oodles and oodles of errors in a post I think no less of the blogger for a little typo here and there.
I understand that errors happen, but I still appreciate people who take the time and effort to put forward good work — including checking for errors. Good spelling and grammar indicate a blog I’ll likely want to read; frequent errors resemble whiny kids’ Facebook status complaints about homework.
No writer in their right mind who wanted to be taken seriously would ever dream of using spellchecker in the first place.
This is a controversial topic. I agree with what Paula is saying, if you put out content with spelling errors then I may question your legitimacy. For example, if you read a scholarly article and they spell a word wrong, everyone questions that. However, I agree with the article. Spelling errors happen to everyone – we’re human! I make them, you make them, everyone does! When they do happen, most times people can figure out what you meant to say. If you are commenting on a blog, you shouldn’t be motivated to comment due to the spelling error, you should be motivated based on the content.
Why should a reader waste his or her time slogging through something that’s poorly written in the hope that it’s wildly rich in ideas? If those ideas are as exciting and thought provoking as you believe, they deserve a forum that’s grammatically correct and attractive to the reader. Your five points are an effort to excuse sloppiness.
I rather dislike the premise behind this blog entry, which is that quality of form and content are somehow mutually exclusive. If high-volume babbling prevents you from checking your work for basic errors, then you need to slow down a bit and ensure that your work is passably clean.
Self-publishing a blog on the web does allow for greater latitude and I, for one, do not expect a general blog to be flawless in grammar and punctuation. There is a small amount of grace I’ll extend to a writer. It is understood that this is a more fast-paced, conversational medium, so the occasional miss or flub is easily forgiven.
But the errors in question should be just that: occasional – not rife. If you test the reader’s patience overmuch, you’ll soon have one fewer reader. Keep it up, you’ll lose them in droves. Because the fact is, there are a great many blogs that are not riddled with basic mistakes. As a reader, I will gravitate to quality writing, and quality writing is generally not seriously flawed in structure and form. Good writers do manage to use the language well and produce clean, readable copy.
I am ok about that. That is very hard for the bloggers like us. English is our second language. That is very hard to pick up the grammar and typo for us.
This post (and the rampant commenting) is so interesting – because it raises a far deeper issue than spelling!
Everyone is ready to support substance over form. If our conversations are about what really matters – then spelling is much less important.
Love your provocative statements and encouragement to curiosity and questions Penelope.
Here are another few:
What really matters? – Peter Block
What is the real challenge here? – Michael Bungay Stanier
So spelling is not important? This implies that ‘cat’ is the same as ‘dog’; after all, both are animals and both words are nouns which have three letters. While some typos are acceptable in routine work, especially non-professional documents, the glib ‘it does not matter’ attitude is not acceptable in a competitive world. The same comments go for basic grammatical errors such as people who always place an apostrophe before a letter ‘s’, e.g. the ubiquitous “Apple’s £2.40/kg”.
Just what i needed to hear, i recently got a comment about my typing errors (frankly it wasn’t that bad).
But what i really dislike is when these so called perfectionist say its ‘constructive criticism’ when frankly you get the feeling you have just been called a moron who cant spell. hahahhaa, i just love and hate the comment section!
Typos are forgivable. Neglect and apathy are not. I won’t respect an idea if the writer doesn’t care about the presentation and delivery of it.
The tools are at your fingertips, no matter how lazy or uneducated you are. More people are begging for written attention these days, and one way to get it is to earn the respect of readers and not bash someone who points out your ignorance of basic English.
That said, the grammar police do seem to cause far more problems than innocent errors on a web page. I think most of these people intentionally try to stoke tempers because that is the only way they can contribute to a conversation.
If you find errors in what I’ve written here or elsewhere, I do want to be told. I care enough to want to fix the mess.
Thank you!