(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

For the most part, I consider verbal/linguistic intelligence my strongest suit, particularly in writing (synesthesia plays a big part in it). But lately it has come to my attention that I rather suck at one aspect: alphabetization. Oh, I know how it works; I just tend to charge ahead with it and get sloppy. Whenever I type a lengthy list in alphabetical order, I notice several errors on later viewings.

Maybe I shouldn't feel so ashamed. Maybe my self-standards lack perspective.

Heck, maybe I should be more ashamed for making the lists at all. They're for diversion, nothing important.

Comments

[akktri.livejournal.com]

Have you seen those optical illusion books that show you the invisible typo trick?
They show you a pyramid that says something like:
"Paris is beautiful in the
the springtime"
(Note the extra "the".)
The brain is programmed to read meaning rather than pick apart typography, so it skips over important details. Somehow a lot of bibles in the early days of printing came out with a sentence that said "thou shalt commit adultery". The people on TV think the typo got past the radar because that line is so obvious that everyone took it for granted that it said something else.
Typos are impossible to avoid. I wrote a 400 page novel, and found hundreds of mistakes in it when I tried reading it out loud. I printed it out and re-read it, and found hundreds more. I posted it online, and there were more errors. I removed the errors, but then when I tried making a "final" printed book, I sat down and found that every page contained more errors.
The book is now at a state where I feel a rewrite would make the story no longer resemble what I originally intended. I've changed a lot over these ten years, and I'm not really sure how to fix some of the problems in it.
I'm telling you this because the human mind apparently can't keep track of every single thing it has ever written, so a lot of details end up being screwed up, and you don't know what's wrong until you go back and read it the tenth time.
What makes matters worse is being sleep deprived and trying to write something. You make a huge amount of typos like that. One time I was even copying some writing to my backup drive when I accidentally deleted a month's worth of work. I had to pull up a backup CD to get the files back, and I've got tons of backup CD's to wade through.