Re: proofreading lament

["Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu>]

On Wed, 1 Apr 1998, David Bowman wrote:

> I am extremely blind to the typographical errors in my writing, and when
>
> What proofreading tricks to the rest of you use to see your own typos?
> I'm getting desperate here.

You are not alone. I never was a good proofreader of my own work. But I
could spot errors in others' work immediately. I read right by my own
errors and mentally correct them without noticing. And now that my eyes
are getting worse with age, it's more frustrating. 

When I must submit something for publication that's got to be right, I
find someone else to proof it. My wife is always good at that.

BTW, I've found all grammar and style checkers to be useless, and a royal
pain to use. I once had to review several of them for a magazine, and got
free copies of the best of them. They now sit in their boxes unused. I put
long passages of some of my favorite authors through them--Mark Twain,
H.L. Mencken, etc., and the results were awful.

	-- Donald

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Dr. Donald E. Simanek                            Office: 717-893-2079
Professor of Physics                                FAX: 717-893-2048
Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA. 17745
dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu                 http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek
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