Recently, I’ve come under fire for the large number of misspellings, typographical errors and grammatical mistakes on the pages of this web site.
For a long-time journalist who once typed 125 words a minutes, living in a world where the typing speed is down to about 20 wpm with the accompanying mistakes, this period of my life has been hel…err I mean hell.
My growing battle with nerve damage, combined with some of the drugs they put me on for dealing with the pain from that damage, destroyed my coordination, sent my concentration off to Mars and left me with with little or no focus.
Concentration can be a writer’s best friend or his worst nightmare. Mine, lately, has been Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street.
You’d think that technology would make writing easier but I find it gets in the way. Real-time spell checkers, grammar correctors and other writing tools are too distracting the writing process.
Plus those who publish blogs tend to serve as their own proofreaders and no one should proof their own material.
And I’m an old fashioned guy who likes to work on an old-fashioned, straight-foward, simple keyboard, not the current crop of smart phones, touchpads and super-gizmo laptops with multi-function keyboards and menus with more layers than my grandmother’s old chocolate layer cake.
Anyone who a good used Underwood?
Seriously, I’m aware of the problem and an looking now for ways to deal with it. I’ve had several offers of proofreading help but will need to work out logistics.
Any other ideas would be appreciated.
Doug….don’t fret one second about the typos, etc. Just drop a word or two as you can (to keep us informed re your progress) and just yank the comments and whatnots by. We’re pulling for you!!!!!! Get better soon.
At Least when we’re writing on the web we can always go back and fix things. A friend at the newspaper where I worked probably still has a 30-year-old clipping of a page-one photograph of himself with a caption announcing that he had won a regional award for excellence in “pubic affairs” reporting.
By the way , my droid typed this ; I just spoke it into the phone , then went back and corrected a dozen typos and added punctuation marks. If there are errors left I blame the droid and my ophthalmologist.
PS Coincidentally, I DO have an Underwood in the office. Underwood Noiseless manual portable — Not the company’s best idea, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Damper arms to reduce the “clack” also reduce the typing speed. No risk of 100 wpm there. Besides, the “clackety clack” was half the fun. Anyhow, I’ll try to find a ribbon for it before your next visit… which I hope will be sometime this semester!
Here’s a suggestion, Doug: Be yourself, run your site as you see fit and tell anybody that finds fault with you to go find a broom and make themselves useful.
*Shrug* Typos normally bother me but in your case, Doug, I did assume they were health-related…And if I was currently going through everything you are, I’m not sure I’d be getting out as much writing as you have been, typos or no.
–Danny, who misses his Hermes (but still owns an antique Remington)
You can proof read your own work. Write something and save it. Read it again later, not immediately after you wrote it.