Yes, I know. There’s a typo.
Almost everything I write has a typo.
Before you rush to deliver an admonishment or advise about proofing more, the fine art of editing, blah, blah, blah, please wait.
Believe it or not, I proof these posts, as many as five or six times before publishing.
No matter how many times I proof an elusive typo seems to appear. Even the posts that seem OK always have a few sentences that could be tightened, more active, or simply rephrased.
Let’s not even talk about social network and blog comments.
Baggage Alert
Don’t think I wasn’t “classically trained” as a writer. I graduated from American with a Literature degree. To graduate, I had to write a novella.
Further, I received a Masters in Communications, Culture and Technology from Georgetown, and graduated with distinction. My masters thesis on wireless Internet diffusion was published by the Strategis Group.
For crying out loud, my father was managing editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. Talk about the most maniacal editor ever. I still have bad feelings about the hard lessons dealt through his red pen.
Perhaps I’m a mama’s boy. And my Mom — Jacqueline Bigar, a syndicated astrologer in more than 200 daily newspapers — creates a lot of typos in her raw copy. Of course, she has the benefit of a professional editor.
Whatever the pathological cause, this deeply rooted problem plagues me.
Which is worse, that I know I’m this crazy, or that I identify with Woody Allen?
Publishing with Imperfection
The purists say you shouldn’t post with typos. Sorry, they’re wrong.
If I let my typo problem prevent me from publishing blogs, I would have been a non-factor in this business.
At some point you have to drop the rock, and say good will have to be enough.
Have I lost the “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” perfectionists? Probably.
Do I give up?
Hell no!
My writing has improved dramatically since my professional writing career began in 1994. It continued to improve through the past seven years of blogging and book writing.
I will grow as a writer with the coming years.
Each post here will be proofed by me. It’s the only way to get better.
Maybe before it’s all said and done, my tactical writing and editing skills will be perfect.
Until then, I’ll just have to accept the typos. I hope you’ll forgive me for my greatest writing flaw.
Do you struggle with writing?