It makes me positively ill, to the point where it’s hard to swallow and my heart sinks deeply into my stomach. I have done it again, and I thought I had been doing quite well recently. Yet in just the span of two weeks, I have had three spelling errors.
Two of which, my boss had called me out on. One because she spotted it and the other, the client complained. As for the third, it was for a word that could be spelt two ways correctly, but it is preferred for me to spell it in the other way of which I had written it. So for that one, I am not too concerned.
- The offending word: launched
- My misspell: launhed
- What’s wrong: I missed the ‘C’
I know how to spell the word, even without Grammarly mocking me at each and every turn. Before hitting publish I always speed read through my copy, keeping a keen eye out for those lifesaving red underlines. Since I speed-read my way through, and I know what I am saying, my brain fills in the blanks. So I don’t notice the times that the spell-check I rely on has failed for one reason or another.
For months, I had no spelling errors or issues on the published work posts so maybe, I grew too reliant and somewhat lazy. I admit I didn’t check the post as thoroughly as I should have done, yet at the same time, I wonder if this was a misspell or a mistype. Either way, it’s still wrong.
The previous word that offended me was sniffles. In a single place, I had typed it up as sniffels, here, obviously, my one finger was faster than the other. Since it was literally the only sniffle in that entire piece that I had misspelt. Today’s word I missed out on the ‘C’ which makes me wonder, did I press the key but the computer had simply not registered it. Which does occasionally happen.
This, in turn, brings me to question a couple of things. Am I in too much of a rush to move onto the next task that I am rush typing and not paying enough attention? Is my dyslexia tripping me up? Or have I become too lazy to proofread properly?
The fact that I know my spelling is not the greatest is why I have such dread when something like this happens. If it’s my own stuff I feel somewhat sheepish, however, when it comes to a spelling mistake at work, it feels like a firable offence. Especially when it happens a few times in succession and I know that my boss has commented on it before.
I just can’t shake the hollow stomach and sunken heart feeling. Whenever something is published and comes back with an error, I can feel myself go pale. Even as I sit here hours after the offending word has been corrected, I just can’t shake the feeling that I won’t ever get it right. I am restraining myself from going through all of my recent past posts to hunt down any possible errors.
Overall it leaves me feeling inadequate.
So here I am, writing a lengthy piece, on a mental state I don’t really wish to face, rather than exercising and then doing the work I brought home since I have tomorrow off for Rush and GeekFest.
The worst part is, I know this will happen again. A lapse in concentration and I will be back here trying to shake the feeling once again. It’s a constant battle with myself and I know it is impossible to pay 100% attention all the time but oh how I wish I could.
I hear you loud and clear. When I first installed Grammarly, I became somewhat reliant on it, especially for sentence length, commas and such (Grammarly and I disagree on the usage of commas and semi-colons; it’s a neverending battle; and the existance of certain words, I add to their in-app dictionary on a near daily basis), because I know that sometimes my sentences are just a little too long to be read out loud without passing out from oxygen deprivation.
I haven’t really struggled with spelling in years (believe me, there was a time), if you’d like someone to beta-read your articles before posting, you can always send them my way and I’ll be all too happy to lend a hand. Being that I’ve been following your blog for a while now, I can almost guarantee that those were more than likely simple typos.
I can feel you! The worst for a copywriter is to publish a post and then find an error >.< But, try not to be so hard in yourself. I'm pretty sure what is happening is that you are probably overworked and need to rush to the next task so you can do everything people ask of you. Unfortunately, globally, we can see that people are getting more and more work to be done.
Something I do to make certain I don't have any misspelling in my copywriting, besides Grammarly of course, is to read out loud (or at least out loud in my head) before publishing, The thing is, if you do it like that, you force yourself to read it in a slower way, and catch those small mistakes 😛
Dyslexia messes me up ALL the time. That is a word that I constantly have to re-write because my brain, without fail, always types it out as taht. There are more words that I do that. I also struggle a shite ton with reading because of my dyslexia. Like Mel, English isn’t my first or even my second language, so having to balance typing in English can be such a test, more so when my brain is always thinking things in Hindi or Urdu first. But I have noticed that writing a lot in English makes the dyslexia come out more, but it also makes me recognise it much faster and respond better to it.
That error that was pointed out look for like a typo than anything, everyone makes mistakes when they write and your boss shouldn’t get you at that and the customer could have just point it out without complaining “Oh just to let you know, you made a mistake here” without making a big deal of it.
English is not my first language and my brain think faster than I can type, I stop counting the number I missed a word or a letter just cause I try to type as fast as I was thinking…
Hey Mel! I also feel that these two instances were more typos than anything else but it’s a hard point to argue when your job is writing and it’s the client’s image (>.<)
I completely understand that you can’t argue with the customer, but the customer is still a dick for complaining about that.
Have I ever mentioned before I adore you?!
Maybe 😁