"Well, if i were you" has two typos: two commas, and a lowercase "I." "Humens" instead of "Humans" is a typo, as long as you knew that it was spelled "Humans." If you don't know how to spell a word, it's not a typo, but if you know how to spell it but accidentally misspell it while typing, it's a typo. "Humens" instead of "Humans" is a misspellingĪ typo is when you make any kind of accidental mistake (such as a misspelling) while typing (not handwriting). "Once you've learned something in a particular way, it's hard to see the details without changing the visual form," he said.A misspelling is when you use the wrong letters to write a word: Change the font or background color, or print it out and edit by hand. ![]() Stafford suggests that if you want to catch your own errors, you should try to make your work as unfamiliar as possible. When you're proof reading, you are trying to trick your brain into pretending that it's reading the thing for the first time. Unfortunately, that kind of instinctual feedback doesn't exist in the editing process. But, Stafford says this evolved from the same mental mechanism that helped our ancestors' brains make micro adjustments when they were throwing spears. When it senses an error, it sends a signal to the fingers, slowing them down so they have more time to adjust.Īs any typist knows, hitting keys happens too fast to divert a finger when it's in the process of making a mistake. In that split second, your brain has time to run the signal it sent your finger through a simulation telling it what the correct response will feel like. "But, there's a lag between the signal to hit the key and the actual hitting of the key," Stafford said. As they type, their brains are instinctually preparing for their next move. Touch typists are working off a subconscious map of the keyboard. The second mistake was leaving out the entire preceding paragraph that explains why we miss our own typos. The first was a misspelling in a sentence that my editor had to read aloud for me before I saw it for myself. In fact, I made both of these mistakes when I wrote this story. This can be something as trivial as transposing the letters in "the" to "hte," or something as significant as omitting the core explanation of your article. The reason we don't see our own typos is because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads. Because we expect that meaning to be there, it's easier for us to miss when parts (or all) of it are absent. ![]() When we're proof reading our own work, we know the meaning we want to convey. "Rather, we take in sensory information and combine it with what we expect, and we extract meaning." When we're reading other peoples' work, this helps us arrive at meaning faster by using less brain power. ![]() "We don't catch every detail, we're not like computers or NSA databases," said Stafford. ![]() It's a very high level task," he said.Īs with all high level tasks, your brain generalizes simple, component parts (like turning letters into words and words into sentences) so it can focus on more complex tasks (like combining sentences into complex ideas). "When you're writing, you're trying to convey meaning. The reason typos get through isn't because we're stupid or careless, it's because what we're doing is actually very smart, explains psychologist Tom Stafford, who studies typos of the University of Sheffield in the UK. If we are our own harshest critics, why do we miss those annoying little details? Frustratingly, they are usually words you know how to spell, but somehow skimmed over in your rounds of editing. They are saboteurs, undermining your intent, causing your resume to land in the "pass" pile, or providing sustenance for an army of pedantic critics. But, the first thing your readers notice isn't your carefully crafted message, it's the misspelled word in the fourth sentence. You comb for errors, and by the time you publish you are absolutely certain that not a single typo survived. You've sweat over your choice of words and agonized about the best way to arrange them to effectively get your point across. You have finally finished writing your article.
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