11/07/2012

Why self-published books are plagued with typos

Embarrassed of your freshly printed novel being full of typos? Not your fault:

"Every time you type an email or a document, errors are likely to creep in — and no matter how carefully you proof read, you might not catch everything. Why do we have such a hard time noticing typos and repeated words?

It turns out this is partly a matter of the way your brain processes text — and partly something that's specific to English and a few other languages.

...why do we so often get tripped up on typos and misspellings? It turns out, there's a whole class of word illusions clustered around our instinct to miss errors.

It's true that we miss those types of things routinely. But that's generally because we look for what writing is — and not what writing isn't. What writing is, generally, is a way to communicate meaning from one person to another. 

...reading is so trained into our culture, we do it instinctively. Sometimes our eyes bounce off a page of dense, boring text without absorbing any content — but for the most part it's almost impossible to look at a word and not read it."

More: http://m.io9.com/5924861/an-illusion-that-explains-why-typos-are-so-hard-to-catch



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1 comment:

  1. Sadly it is true that reading has become an archaic method of communicating. It has become a loser in the plethora of instant and graphic communications.

    Out children are learning via the more stimulating electronic media. The streaming nature of images removes the importance of nuance in the written word and replaces the need for the art of precise distinction and stimulated imagination with the most powerful sense in the limited human arsenal of sensation, Sight is instantly interpreted as either peril or security. The writer can only slowly craft their specific visual image.

    Add the natural human tendencies to either shun or accept the five sensual components of survival of a growing population increasingly saddled with a lessening quality of basic education the need for creative interpretation erodes in favor of instant gratification.

    It is only those disappearing humans that crave artistic stimulation who will appreciate a finely crafted turn of words that colors the vision of the wordsmith.

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