Reading the previous entries, below, about how we acquired our typing skills,* made me (Donis) think of all the wonderful times I've had trying to catch all the typing mistakes I've made while proofreading a manuscript that I've already gone over at least a hundred times. Typos are creative and amusing. Years ago I wrote something about a man who saved dozens from a fire and called him a "true herp". Since that day I have a tendency to call anyone who rises to the occasion a "herp".
Typos may be funny, but grammatical errors are humiliating, and yet I still make plenty. I was an English major in college and later an English teacher, to boot. I even taught remedial English to freshmen when I was in graduate school, so I like to think of myself as well-versed in the rules of English grammar and punctuation. But by damn, with every book it seems I've either forgotten what I knew or the rules have changed (I'm looking at you, Oxford comma).
In one particular novel, I became hopelessly confused when trying to differentiate between “lay” and “lie” and all their permutations. In fact, my editor noted that I got it wrong nearly every time! She even wrote “Yay!” above the one time I got it right. I told her that at least I’m consistent. Now, how did this happen? I know that people lie down to sleep and that they lay their watches on the beside table. It was the tenses other than the present that threw me. I got lost in a miasma of “laids” and “lains”. The odd thing is that I never had that much trouble with it before. All I can suggest is that I had suddenly developed a metal block. In any event, no one in that novel either lays or lies. Everyone places, puts, reclines, or reposes. Except for that “Yay!” I left that one.
In another novel, my editor suggested that I refresh myself on the difference between “may” and “might”. Here’s the deal. When it comes to “may’ and “might”, I become ensnared in the net of my own ethnic dialect. Where I come from, “may” is for asking permission and “might” is synonymous with “perhaps”. However, this is not necessarily correct Standard English. I must remember that.
On a third occasion, my editor accused me of using too many commas. Okay, I admit it. But I have an excuse. Punctuation rules have changed since I learned them. (No cracks about runes, hieroglyphs, or cuneiform.) I was taught that in a list of three or more descriptors, there is no comma between the last two if there is an “and” between them. "He was tall, dark and handsome." It seems that the serial comma now reigns. (i.e. "We invited two strippers, a politician, and a minister," rather than "We invited two strippers, a politician and a minister.") Knowing that the preferred rule has changed, I apparently went on a rampage and put commas all over the place, whether the sentence needed them or not. My editor’s rebuke immediately reminded me of my late aunt, who literally put a comma after every other word she wrote. Perhaps I have inherited some genetic punctuation flaw. Whatever the reason, I’ve become hyper-aware of my commas. I must have removed 500 commas during that rewrite. It has occurred to me that I may now have a book full of run-on sentences.
And as for typos -- after a while you just don’t see them. You know how the sentence is supposed to read, and that’s what you see whether it is actually there or not. For example, during the last re-read of an advanced reading copy, I found a place where I had left the “g” out of the word “dog”. "The do began to bark." I had typed that sentence three months earlier and had read over it dozens of times. But I never saw that missing “g”. Neither did my husband Don. Neither did my editor. We all knew what it was supposed to be and that’s what we saw.
I think there may be a life lesson, there.
_____
*I acquired mine before the union of electricity and typewriters.
