Typos

I got an email recently about my Book Review: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern post with the Subject: Typos. See the email below:

Name: Sally O
Email: removed

Subject: Typos

Message Body:
Hello; I found your review of The Book of Tomorrow via Google. It is an entertaining review but has a great many typos. If this doesn’t bother you then that’s fine. If it does, might I suggest a quick proofing and edit? Things to fix =

about to loose everything
LOSE

couldn’t bare facing
BEAR

Rose, in to the gatehouse.
ROSALINE, INTO

which burn’t
BURNED

angry and board.
BORED

having latte’s
LATTES

older man, who she fancies.
WHOM

begin’s to realise
BEGINS

Sally O

Reply Required: No

I’d like to thank Sally O for taking the time to email me. I know that Sally O didn’t require a reply; but I wanted to use her email as an opportunity to write about the grammatical and occasion spelling errors you may spot on my blog.

All of the “typos” or grammatical errors Sally O points out in her email about my Book Review: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern post are most probably right. When I wrote the post that’s where my writing was at. Once I’ve hit the Publish button I don’t go back and edit it, but I do consider the errors and try to learn from them so that my writing improves. This is how my blog helps me to learn to write better and it also shows me how my writings developed over the years.

Interestingly I now spend more time editing a blog post than I do writing one. I’ll write a first draft, then read it carefully looking for grammatical errors. Usually in sentences I’ll find words that I don’t need or words that are in the wrong order. Occasionally I’ll have written a sentence that doesn’t make sense. It’s the editing that takes the time, but it’s the editing that brings out the quality to my writing.

So although it’s tempting to edit posts removing the errors I spot after they’ve been published; especially on posts that bring a considerable number of visitors to my blog like Book Review: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern (according to the WordPress Jetpack Stats Plugin) because the process helps develop and improve the quality of my writing and editing I’ll continue to leave the grammatical and occasional spelling errors as they are.

Take Care,

Antony