Editing: As Easy as 1-2-3?

August 13, 2009

“Aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.*” Looks like a mess doesn’t it? (Unless of course, you can read it.) Supposedly everyone can read it, but I have heard there are some people out there who can’t. However, whether you can read it or not- I am sure everyone has had a chance to see it before now since this is one of the most popular forwarded emails. I know I have received it at least half a dozen times.

The thing about this messed up paragraph is that the last line holds so much truth. “This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole.” When we write and type, we all make mistakes. It is especially easy when typing on the computer. There can be some letters mixed up like “jsut” for “just”, or a letter can be forgotten like “othr” for “other”, or a letter could be replaced with another letter by mistake like “fell” for “feel.” But if you are typing in Microsoft Word, you expect that it will catch your mistakes before you proofread and edit. However, that squiggly red line doesn’t appear under a word that isn’t misspelled. It wouldn’t appear under “fell” because that is a correct spelling. Microsoft Word doesn’t know what you meat to say, and really it doesn’t care as long as the grammar is correct.

Here is a perfect example. As I was typing, I forgot the “n” in “meant” and it became “meat”, which Microsoft did not catch because of the correct spelling, because the program does not read my document to know what was really supposed to be said.

Therefore, if I (the writer) were to edit this myself, I may not catch the word “meat” either because I know what it was supposed to say and therefore may just skim over it because it has mostly all the right letters. And perhaps maybe my editor won’t catch it in the first read either. THAT IS OKAY! But some people just find nit-picking a habit. They always correct people’s grammar and pronunciation and… it is annoying. I do it too- to a degree.

When we read our work, we do not read each letter of a word. If I were to start reading the last line I just wrote, I would not read it like this, saying each individual letter: “W-h-e-n w-e r-e-a-d…” Instead, I would read each word as a whole: “When we read…”

There are sometimes when a writers writing must be perfect and flawless such as when they are a professional. Journalists for CNN, NY Times and anywhere that is even local should never have mistakes or obvious ones anyway. But for people who use a site like CNN for the iReport! to post their works, and they are not paid professional writers, are they not allowed a simple mistake or two? Are they supposed to have their “works” edited professionally just to post it as a reader submitted article that may or may not be read by others? Some people like editors say that everyone’s writings should be edited before posting.

So, whose side are you on?