A WordGazing Holiday

Today is National Proofreading Day, which seems an appropriate time to post this ad I noticed in the New Yorker:


Look closely at the first line of reverse type. Some would roll their eyes or mutter a “Geeze.”

Me? It just makes me sad.

WordGazing: Let’s Hope the Gov Sings

Saw this on a major news outlet’s Web site about important legislation that a governor was reconsidering:

“The governor said it is his policy not to say if he will sing or veto anything during the session … .”

Funny, isn’t it, how a simple switch of two letters can alter the meaning of a sentence? Heck, this transposition alters legislative procedures.

* Turns out the governor exercised his veto power on the referendum. Too bad he couldn’t sing.

WordGazing: Proof of Proofreaders’ Value

Found this ad online this morning while I was browsing for new clients:

HI I am looking for author to help me with my upcomming book. (Technical and non-friction author preferred.)

Of course, running a spellcheck program could have fixed the poorly spelled upcomming. But what about non-friction?

Technically, this isn’t a misspelling; spellcheck would have ignored it. Yet, if it doesn’t communicate what the writer intended, it’s a typo.

Now I’m left to wonder what the writer intended. Is s/he simply averse to conflict? Or does s/he really REALLY need an editor?

[Photo of 1901 proofreaders by Thomas Lewis.]

WordGazing: It’s Only A Letter

Years ago, I had a publishing client whose boss—the owner of the publishing company, no less—thought proofreaders unnecessary. As a former journalist, he believed writers should be held accountable for their writing mistakes; that is, writers shouldn’t make any mistakes. Hence the reason this publisher had no staff proofreaders.

What the owner failed to consider, aside from the fact that precious few writers are perfect, were the myriad goofs and glitches that can occur over the course of production: Copy moves, falls away, gets rekeyed by designers, changes fonts—you name it, I’ve seen it happen.

This all came back to me this morning when I opened an old issue of ARTnews magazine. Staring at me was this ad copy:

If the world tresures it, Huntington T. Block insures it.

The company was announcing its six new staff members—most of them vice presidents, none of them proofreaders. The copy is Block’s slogan and is probably on all of the company’s marketing materials.

Now most of us can be forgiving and see the typo for what it is: a mistake. After all, only one little letter dropped out, and a fairly useless one, at that (Andrew Carnegie would have been proud). We can still comprehend the meaning of the sentence.

However, there will be others who take the typo as a sign of how their art might get treated by Block: carelessly. The insurer will never know how much potential business it lost from this one omission.

Clearly, details matter. I bet no one at Huntington T. Block would dare suggest that proofreaders are unnecessary.


[Black Iris II by Georgia O’Keeffe.]

This article was originally published on Lull: Practicing Life Between the Past and the Future, 19 February 2010.