On her “Copylicious” website, Kelly Parkinson uses the phrase “eyeball speed bumps,” a term which I will happily misappropriate. She’s referring to elements that create in the reader the desire to “communicate immediately.” I aver instead that they are errors or elements that slow the reader down, causing him or her a moment of “Huh?” You’ll get no argument from me that any element in a piece that makes the reader puzzle over what was just read is a not a good thing. What I want to address today, however, is typos, misspelling and why you can’t rely on spell checkers.
For me, and probably for many, typos and misspellings function as eyeball speed bumps. It stops me from chugging along comprehending what you have written and replaces it with an “Oh, no.” Let me clarify for one moment – your reader cannot usually tell a typo from a misspelling. Granted, if you were typing the word “boxcar” and it came out “bsxcar” or “bpxcar” instead, then yes, I would assume that you had inadvertently hit a wrong key. However, if you type “bixcar” “or bozcar,” I will wonder first if you are using a word that I’ve never heard of, and then I may shrug it off as a typo.
However, if you type “meat” when you meant to type “meet,” I will question your intelligence. “Unfair!” you cry. I can hear you all clamoring to make the argument that one letter is one letter and that the error is still a typo. Perhaps. The problem is that the one letter in question results in a different word. The wrong word. That’s not a speed bump –it’s a traffic accident. Whether it’s a fender bender or a head-on collision depends on the particular word in question.
There is a tremendous difference between the right word and the almost right word. In a recent post I typed “fuselage.”Mary Ellen called and asked why I was writing about airplanes. I wasn’t – or at least I hadn’t meant to. The word I wanted was “fusillade.” Close (at least to my harried ear), but not right. Over the years, I have learned that I spell by sound, and that I have tremendous difficulty spelling a word I can’t pronounce. Six years in the Pharmaceutical industry taught me to look up the generic drug name every time, because I could not mentally pronounce it. I could get close, but you can’t count on close. “Intravenous” and “intervenous” are NOT the same thing, but I’ll admit at first glance I suspected typo. The program in my word processor even offered to fix it as I was typing it here. If you have any familiarity with prefixes you know “intra” and “inter” are pretty much opposites. Our doctors know the difference between these words, lay people may or may not. Herein lies the danger of spell checkers. The program wants to change “intervenous” to “intervenes” or “intravenous.” And that would be about as wrong as you could get.
Like any overly-helpful relative, spell checkers want to make your life easier by enabling you to take shortcuts. When you complete a document and run through the program, it will offer suggestions for words it doesn’t recognize – helpful right? Yes, if you are paying attention. Under no circumstances should you ever let it automatically fix whatever it wants. Unlike the previous example, this can sometimes result in humorous errors. I am thinking of one website in particular whose principals claim to have graduated from Fairly Dickinson University. I am sure they meant Fairleigh. I even believe they typed “Fairleigh.” I think the spell checker was being it’s uber-helpful self and they just hit “accept change” and moved on. Sad to say, so did I.
A View From the Room 