We’ve all done it. Wrote a text, comment, post, novel- hit send or publish, and all the typos, missed words, and weird grammar instantly become obvious to anyone who’s looking. They weren’t there before, now they’re everywhere.
(And because I’m oh-so-dedicated to demonstrating this point, I typed at least half the words in that paragraph incorrectly, and had to stop and fix them. There’s a reason this is going to be a short post. If anyone’s seen my brain, please return it, so I can pack it in a moving box before it escapes again. No, we’re not moving until June, but I blinked on February 1, and the month was over; I don’t think March, April, or May are going to go by any slower.)
Straight-up misspellings are easy to deal with, and the computer usually catches them. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that I could add words to the computer’s dictionary- a wonderful boon to any writer of fantasy or science fiction- any genre that allows/requires you to make up words.
Wonky grammar is fun to deal with in fiction, because sometimes it really is a mistake, sometimes it’s there on purpose, and the computer never gets it right. Characters don’t always talk in standard English, and while the narration should be more standard, slight changes in wording or spelling can denote the narrator’s background or a change in POV. The first example that comes to mind is, how characters refer to their parents. Momma is Southern; Mama- with the accent on the second syllable- is Regency English. Same word, different spelling, and you’re the only one who knows whether the right version is used at the right time.
Then there’s the dreaded ‘invisible word,’ where a vital word vanishes into the ether. ‘I would do X,’ is not at all the same as ‘I would not do X,’ but you’re the only one who knows which is correct. Similarly, ‘boxes’ are not the same as ‘empty boxes,’ so when I asked a group of friends what I should do with all these moving boxes, I got a lot of suggestions on how to store things I don’t use much. No, no, I meant, what do I do with all the extra empty boxes that are cluttering up my living room? Bonfire, anyone? I’ve got marshmallows.
Speaking of invisible words, my keyboard has recently learned a new trick, in which it occasionally drops the letter ‘I’. Spellcheck catches most of the instances where an ‘I’ in the middle of the word is missing, but I can’t count the number of times it’s dropped the pronoun, and I have to look for the two-space gap between words where it’s supposed to be.
I tend to proofread as I write; it’s probably less efficient than doing it all at once, because I never know if that sentence, paragraph, or scene might get cut in the final edit, so I might be doing unnecessary proofreading; but it’s much more effective, because I don’t get caught up in the story and miss things. Do what works for you.
Actually, that’s good advice for just about anything related to writing.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “And The Missing Word Is…”
One thing that irritates me about Word for Android is it doesn’t have the ability to change and control most of the Word formatting options. So if I write in Word on my phone or tablet, I have to go back and make sure the formatting matches. Especially if I’m pasting text from my email. (I’ll write bits on my phone, email it to myself, then merge.)
And inevitability, I screw it up…
I’ve done all those things; missing words, wrong word, grammatical errors, and yeah, even though you’re not supposed to, if I spot them (or Word tells me), I fix them right away.
An irritant with Word is when it helpfully suggests a word that I know is wrong. A tailor is not a seamstress! A landlady is not a landlord.
Don’t tell me what I don’t need. Tell me what I do.
I’ve gone through stories a month, a year later and I’ve hit my head against the screen, going “how did I miss that?!?”
Even my usual trick of reading the story backwards-end to start-doesn’t always catch those missing or misused words.
“Brain and brain! What is brain?”
A far as cardboard boxes go, do you have any friends with crafts/hobbies that would call for cardboard? I recently got into book rebinding, using my author’s proofs as early guinea pigs, and so far I’ve been cannibalizing lighter weight cardboard boxes to make the structural part of the covers.
When it comes to missing words in document, the text to speech function in Word has been helpful.
Ohhhh, very much yes. I’ve been going through the process of setting my first book up for Amazon’s ‘Virtual Voice’ audiobook program and let me tell you, there is NOTHING like having text read to you for finding every… last… typo… and… grammar… error. 😳
I second this, except that I use Word’s Read Aloud feature.
It’s the bane of many a writer, you “know” what you meant to write so your brain sees what was intended rather than what made it into print.
Why it’s always prudent to revisit copy after a period of time, hours to days, until you’ve distanced yourself just a smidge from your immersion in the story.
It’s also why you associate with surly curmudgeons such as myself who are so rude as to pick your perfect baby to pieces, casting aspersions on your carefully crafted words. Just ask your MIL what a rude and evil man I am.
Squirblzrx. That’s the missing word.