Ya Gotta Have 'Em!

It’s not a true national holiday - no presidential proclamation or official seal - but perhaps it merits such attention. It’s National Proofreaders Day. From scribbled or texted grocery lists to the complex legalese of corporate and political documents, additional read-throughs are paramount.

Even with second looks from multiple pairs of eyes, mistakes still slip through. The argument is made that with spellcheck and grammar check and the ever-watchful artificial intelligence filtering into our lives, there is no excuse for errors in printed communication.

But…I have discovered that those avenues of error prevention/correction are the sources of some of my slip-ups. Have you grappled with auto-correct? AI can’t read my mind just yet, so it needs to keep its powers away from my words. Sometimes even I don’t know what I think, so there’s that. After wrestling a bit with lists and buttons, I have it off until it’s not and the match starts all over again.

Dexterity is a consideration. To compensate, I have a larger phone. My index finger still engages multiple wrong keys often. (How anyone uses their thumbs has me baffled). For a while I quit retyping what I meant to say; my readers could figure it out from context. I’m back to repeating since frequently I can’t decipher what I see and I typed it! Working slow enough to see the correct letters briefly as I hit the screen, I can still produce alien garble.

Don’t remind me about the talk-to-text feature. Whoever is in there listening can’t understand my St. Louis dialect affected by over half-a-century in the Ozarks. I don’t recognize the language it thinks I’m speaking.

Remember this: “Mistakes should and will happen…People may be so afraid of making a mistake that they refuse to take risks, stifling creativity and innovation…Much learning comes from each mistake.” (Tom Risse)

Hats off to the staff of The Prospect-News! Everyone proofreads everything! Hope I haven’t jinxed this issue.