Tiny Mistakes

Details, the small bits that can easily be overlooked, may turn an A paper into a B or a C paper. A few typos here, an extra comma there, an omitted word or two, and the superlative sentence you composed in your mind has landed on the page in a less than stellar form, perhaps as a fragment or run on.

Our minds are very kind to us when we read our own writing, sometimes even automatically correcting errors for us, at least as far as we perceive; sadly, though, the corrections our minds make for us do not change a typo on the page at all. We think we’ve spelled a word correctly, used the right punctuation, but the fact is that in the real world, the error remains unless we actually see it and change it.

It is necessary to go outside general habits of mind when editing/proofreading a paper. Hyper vigilance, super consciousness, something akin to the Zen of writing is needed to find tiny mistakes.

Reading your own writing as if someone else entirely wrote the paper allows you to achieve an objective state of mind. Expecting errors and searching every line for them is another way to become extra aware. And even then, more is required to find and fix all minuscule mistakes – you have to look at every letter of every word, too.

Tedious as such attention to detail may seem, you might turn it into a sort of game, a challenge. You could keep score for a few papers by noting how many errors you made, found, and corrected to see if the number of errors decreases as your ability to find them increases.

There’s no need to go to excruciating extremes (like reading every word from the right to left to check spelling - unless you really and truly want to do so). Still, taking time to verify what is and isn’t actually on the page does matter. Likewise, if I just think I’ve packed corn chips for the seagulls before I head to the beach, they’d all be disappointed if I made the mistake of not actually having tasty treats ready to toss their way.

Give your writing a second and third look, double and triple check it to make sure the clear and perfect sentences you have composed in your thoughts are, in fact, on the page exactly as you think they are.

See you next time the breeze is cool, the sun is up, and the waves roll into view! ‘Til then, hang ten!