Personal Blogs and Editing

March 08, 2004 | 27 Comments

I get lots of email and feedback on this site and all the posts within. The majority of these are “how to” type questions, followed by link exchange requests, kudos and the like.

I also get emails from people who’ve found a typo or spelling error in one of my entries.

This used to bother me, but as I’ve gotten used to writing and have done, in general, a better job of catching those errors, it has grown to be something I view as helpful.

Since I self-edit I simply can’t catch every error. I do edit every post before it goes up. The detail to which that edit is done really depends on the post and the amount of time I’ve got. Editing, in general, ends up taking more time than the actual writing.

I tend to write conversationally and very rapidly. If you’re curious as to how fast, I’m timing the writing of this post as well as the time spent on editing. I’ll post that at the bottom of the entry.

The thing is, because of my writing style here at Asterisk*, I often times post something with typos. I just churn through too many thoughts, and post to many entries, to catch everything.

And, let’s be honest, I’m still learning.

I’m curious to hear how others out there who have blogs or personal Web sites deal with editing. Do you self-edit? If so, how? Do you find certain things trip you up? I know I do.

Here are some things I do to help catch typos and misspellings. Keep in mind, this is hardly fool-proof, as anyone who reads this site closely can attest to!

The first thing I do is check my contractions. I’ve got a huge problem with these. My “your” and “you’re” and my “its” and it’s” seem to get mixed up all the time.
I run a quick spellcheck and then check for some of my “gotcha” words. There are a few that I tend to type wrong (“thing” for “think”) and others that I just can’t seem to spell right the first time (“maintenance” is a big one). I’ve actually got a list of these.
I then preview the post and read it to myself out loud. This helps me catch punctuation errors and awkward phrases.
Then, depending on the post, I’ll save it in draft form (I’m going to do that here) and come back and re-edit it later. This helps quite a bit. I catch all sorts of things when I’ve left it for a few hours or a day.

All of these things help me, but they don’t come close to doing the job a real editor would do. For any professional writing I think it’s very important to have your editing done by another professional.

FYI — This post took 8 minutes to write, and 10 minutes (total) to edit. This doesn’t count any time I spent formulating the idea before sitting down to write it up.

Filed under: Web General

Comments

1. renMan said:

Proofing.. What a chore. I appreciate you taking on this topic from a real sense. It’s no fun and so easy to point fingers at.

Design rule #1. A typo will kill the best of designs, but in the case of a blog .. where it is an open mind concept of discussion, it’s like critiquing an e-mail or a text message. I would hope the people get more from the message than getting hung up by a hanging participle (or what ever that is).

Design rule #2. Designers are not writers by trade, so if the job calls for it, hire it out (i.e. Danimal).

Design rule #3. Conceptual development is not a finish product, so live with it.

Nice work Keith. See you on the 12th dude.

Posted on March 8, 2004 10:52 AM | #

2. Jonathan Baldwin said:

For punctuation, check out Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss (hope the link works).

Editing is the longest part of good writing. It’s important as no matter how strong your argument, if you get, for example, an “it’s” wrong it sticks in the mind of the reader (if they spot it). I find your blog really interesting but keep spotting precisely the things you mention. I hate it when people do it to me - but I do it myself! (For info “it’s” for “it is” and “its” for “belonging to it” - bet you already know that, right? ;-)

Posted on March 8, 2004 10:57 AM | #

3. Dunstan said:

It takes me forever to write posts (or anything else I care about). I get the basics down pretty quickly, but my tweaks and rewrites go on for ages… and ages.

However, I’m _always_ pleased I took the time to chop, add, edit, and rewrite - any time I rush something I end up regretting it later on.

I also ensure I preview the post in situ after each modification - the way the words and paragraph lengths interact with the site are important to me - reading text in an editor is very different from reading it styled and positioned on the site.

And, yes, I read out loud a lot.

Posted on March 8, 2004 11:03 AM | #

4. Veerle Pieters said:

For me it’s a bit more complicated because English isn’t my main language (Dutch is). So I have to be more careful when posting something on my blog. Normally I first type my post in my e-mail program Entourage with spell-check on. Then I read it out loud to myself for the same reason as you. If there is anybody else around then I let them read it too. I sometimes have problems with placing live and life, but I think that’s just me ;-) Next I paste the post into pMachine and do a preview first to check everything just one more time. Sometimes I change things after reading it again a few hours later.

Posted on March 8, 2004 11:05 AM | #

5. Keith said:

Jonathan. Yeah I know the difference between “it is” and “it has” when you see those it’s simply a typo. I’m sure it’s one of the more common typos I’ve got. Sorry about that.

I do usually prefer when those are brought to my attention via email as opposed to comments. ;)

Posted on March 8, 2004 11:12 AM | #

6. Krista said:

I think regular readers get a good understanding of the writer’s writing style and their usual level of grammar, punctuation, etc. If a person makes the odd grammatical or spelling error, it’s my opinion that most readers forgive that quite easily.

It’s another story if the person continually makes grammatical, spelling and punctuation mistakes. That becomes carelessness and it calls the credibility of the writer into question. Maybe I’m being overly critical, but I believe that it can detract from the content. It’s also disrespectful to the audience.

That being said, I check my blog entries over a few times and read them over aloud before posting.

Posted on March 8, 2004 11:56 AM | #

7. Ste said:

I think one of the major deterrents for me in posting more often is my perfectionist attitude. I can literally spend hours writing a single entry. Editing generally takes me less time because I edit as I go along and simply reread once I’m done. Perhaps I should just try to type as I think (as you do) and then edit afterwards… it would certainly help me to get some of my ideas out.

In terms of mentally editing both my site and others, I notice that homophones cause the most problems. Bare with me, to many times its been the simple words their having problems with. (Bear with me, too many times it’s been the simple words they’re having problems with.) Another big problem I’ve observed is that of mental autocompletion, where the fingers keep typing the letters of a longer word instead of the shorter one you mean, for example, typing ‘and’ instead of ‘an’ or ‘they’ instead of ‘the’.

Misspellings don’t bother me quite as much, because I know that not everyone has an affinity for spelling. My pet peeve, however, is when people use words without really understanding their meaning; if you’re not certain what a word means, either look it up or don’t use it. :)

Posted on March 8, 2004 12:09 PM | #

8. Alanna said:

Wow. 18 minutes. Uhm, certain posts of mine can take about 3-6 hours to write, perhaps 1-2 hours of rewrites and edits. Not all, but some. But then again, some of my posts can get to about 10 pages long… Some I have to sit on for a few days because I feel like I’m too “in it” to correctly assume if the writing/editing is any good.

I am especially odd in that I constantly re-edit my posts after I’ve published them live. “Unprofessional” surely, but my blog is not something I view as “professional.” I write mainly for myself, as a record of my life, with the added bonus of a few loyal fans. And if I see something after I’ve posted the entry, I’m not afraid to make improvements.

Posted on March 8, 2004 12:37 PM | #

9. Paul G said:

I admit, it annoys me to no end to see the myriad errors that are quite common on the ‘net. I blame it on our laughable pre-college educational system. I had the benefit of being educated in a very challenging school outside of the USA during those formative years of my grade school career (2nd-6th grade - in Mexico, no less), and I think that opportunity is the main reason that I don’t struggle much with spelling and grammar.

That’s not to say that I don’t suffer the occasional typo or awkwardly worded sentence, but I don’t believe I have ever mixed up common hang-ups like “your” vs. “you’re”, or “affect” vs. “effect”.

However, I do struggle with coveying my thoughts and ideas as lucidly as possible, so I have a tendency to agonize over my sentence structure and wording to achieve maximum clarity, often at the expense of brevity (e.x. this comment). I have a deep admiration for those linguistic craftsmen who can express a feeling or thought precisely with a mere handful of words.

Posted on March 8, 2004 12:39 PM | #

10. Michele said:

I’m pretty much in the same situation as Veerle is, italian being my mother tongue.

My style of written english is heavily influenced by the books and magazines I read in that language, more than once I found myself using expressions or phrases that I’d heard in english movies or songs (on the other hand, I never have a chance to practice my spoken english, which in fact sucks :-).

Writing posts on my blog usually takes me alot of time (same goes for comments on other people’s blogs, like this one). I try to to construct my sentences correctly, not just translating my thoughts from italian to english: this usually is the hardest part. Anytime I doubt the spelling of a word or its meaning, I doublecheck it on Dictionary.com and when I’m done writing, I proofread the whole post.

I just realized it took me about 10 minutes to write this comment.

Posted on March 8, 2004 12:46 PM | #

11. Chris Vincent said:

I think one of the big helpers to typing my entries (and comments on other sites) is the fact that I’m using Safari, which uses Mac OS X’s universal spell-checker to check while I type. Sure, it trips up around HTML tags, URLS, and the like, but it really helps out.

Of course, it doesn’t catch everything. “Its” and “it’s” are problematic. However, a few years ago I finally went and looked up the difference (embarrassingly, I didn’t know it), and I haven’t had trouble with them since. However, other words with the same pronunciation (or general sound) will sometimes slip through.

It’s always better for someone to read and edit your work for you. Self-editing isn’t perfect because you’re reading stuff you’ve just written, and therefore will probably read right over many of your errors. If you self-edit, it really helps to read it aloud.

Of course, we can’t all have our own editors. That’s just a fact of life. However, helpful readers (who aren’t grammar nazis [j/k Eric]) can help a lot.

Posted on March 8, 2004 12:51 PM | #

12. Jennifer Grucza said:

While certain typos annoy me, I’ll only hate you if you mix up “lose” and “loose”. :) But really, those aren’t even homonyms - how do people mix them up? I don’t read my writings aloud when writing, but I still hear them in my head.

I do get the wrong “auto-completion”, though, as somebody else mentioned earlier. But I almost always catch it immediately, because as I write I’m usually making several passes of reading the current phrase, sentence, and paragraph. It slows down the actual writing, but I end up hardly ever having to go back to proof-read. That’s how I always wrote papers in college, and I’d usually do pretty well, even starting them 11pm the night before they were due.

I also have problems with spelling words with unaccented a’s and e’s, like separate, maintenance, dependent, etc. I can’t rely on my brain to see the wrong versions as wrong like I can with most other words, and sounding them out doesn’t help a bit, because the a’s and e’s sound the same.

Posted on March 8, 2004 01:03 PM | #

13. Aaron Schaefer said:

I too am somewhat of a perfectionist, and take my sweet time when writing posts. I tend to write things out quickly, so I have all of my ideas on paper (even if they aren’t in order or comprehensible) and then spend a lot more time editing/adding transitions/rearranging/tweaking.

I self-edit, and find the most helpful thing is to leave my writing alone for awhile, and come back to it later. However, that isn’t always a great option if you’re really itching to get something out there, or you’re commenting on current events. I’m like Alanna, in that, if I miss something major after the post has gone live, I usually have no problem in editing it. Mistakes just stand out too much to me and can definitely be a distraction to others.

Like most of the other commentors, I think that reading things out loud can help, but I tend to write like I speak, and thus it’s not something I really have to concentrate on doing. Plus, even when reading out loud, I tend to remember what I wrote and sometimes skip over the mistakes and just say what’s in my head.

This comment is probably a bad example of my usual writing style, but I’m sick today, so it will have to be forgiven…

Posted on March 8, 2004 01:20 PM | #

14. Keith said:

Aaron – I’ve noticed that my writing style goes way downhill in comments and I think that is pretty common, so no worries there.

It’s funny to see so many differing opinions on this issue here. I myself am not a perfectionist (is it obvious?) and I trust that if I do make mistakes my readers will be cool about it. They usually are.

I also have no pet peeves as far as writing goes. At least when it comes to personal sites. Unless the person is making money, and lots of it, on their site I’m very forgiving.

I know how hard it can be, and many bloggers aren’t writers by trade and write in their spare time. In fact I think many folks should be commended for even trying or taking the time.

For myself I really try and write to the best of my ability and I hope I’m getting better. I could probably spend more time on my posts, but I’ve just got too much to say.

ANYway, I hope y’all stick around and enjoy my posts – despite the typos, misspellings and grammar slip-ups.

Posted on March 8, 2004 01:39 PM | #

15. mattymcg said:

Kieth, thiss iz tha webb. Reeding kwolity sights lyke yors iz a reel priviledge becoz most of tha sights owt their r litterd whith alsorts off mistakes & rubbsih.

Posted on March 8, 2004 02:55 PM | #

16. Matt said:

For a while I actually had a friend/editor that would proof all my entries and correct any errors. She was very busy. :)

Posted on March 8, 2004 03:05 PM | #

17. Suzanne said:

I re-read and self-edit – being ruthless with the writing helps. I spend easily 2/3 or more the time of writing something in the “editing” phase, where I sort my thoughts and tighten up the writing. Reading aloud traps awkward phrasing and redundancies. Husbands, family and friends are often helpful as well, especially if you’re trying to impress them with your wit and insight.

I almost never have spelling errors, as I use a little application called SpellCatcherX by RainMaker which works even in little boxes like this.

Usually my comments on other sites are not as rigorously tested, when it should be the opposite, since I can’t amend what I’ve written here once I set it free.

Posted on March 8, 2004 04:16 PM | #

18. TOOLman said:

I definitely enjoy reading your posts, Keith. I’m not bothered by typos; everybody makes those occasionally. I have spotted a few “systematic” misspells in your posts, but since the content is so much more important, I don’t care. Yes, I’m a grammar nazi! :)

I find it very interesting that so many native English speaking people have problems with there/their/they’re, lose/loose, it’s/its, your/you’re, etc. We who learn English as a second language rarely seem to have any trouble with those, probably because we learn from the beginning what the differences are. You learn by hearing, at a very young age. That probably also explains why 90% of all Americans apparently are unable to spell “separate” correctly. :) At first it astonished me, since the Swedish pronunciation of this word (“separat”) has a clearly audible “a” in the second syllable (/sep-ah-‘raht/).

“Bare with me,” which Ste mentioned, is also so common that I actually became insecure enough to look it up. I had always thought it was “bear with me,” but I saw the erroneous form so often that I thought I’d gotten it wrong.

The ultimate irony, I think, is that so many misspell the word “grammar” (as “grammer”). :)

I’m not blogging yet, but I tend to write quite a lot both in Swedish and in English. I make quite a few typos (the mental autocompletion Ste mentions is dead on). A few years ago I was all but unable to type the word “field;” it always came out as “file.” I rarely, if ever, read anything out loud. Maybe I should. Self-editing is very, very hard, because you tend to read what you intended to write, not what you actually did write.

One laborious way of spotting typos is to read your post backwards. That way you don’t get caught up in the sentence structure, and your brain doesn’t “guess” what’ll come next. It’s very time consuming, though.

I think it’s great that you care so much about the “literary” quality of your posts. Many bloggers seem to focus entirely on the content of the message they want to deliver, while ignoring spelling and grammar. Keep up the good work, and thanks for an informative and entertaining weblog!

/Tommy

Posted on March 8, 2004 10:36 PM | #

19. TOOLman said:

While I was waiting for my previous post to be processed by your server, I happened to spot a small typo in your guidelines for posting. :)

“If you want to ad a link” should be “If you want to add a link,” shouldn’t it? You don’t actually want ads in your comments, right? :)

One thing I forgot in my previous post: typos and similar errors in comments is much easier to forgive than typos in the main post.

/Tommy

Posted on March 8, 2004 10:40 PM | #

20. Mark Trammell said:

My wife teaches blogging as part of her curriculum (as have I) and rules her bloggers with an iron fist. She has posted about it on her blog, but I’ll summarize.

Never delete a post. Never.

Note changes to your posts.

It’s okay to make minor changes your post right after uploading it.

I think keeping the rules simple is best.

Posted on March 8, 2004 10:51 PM | #

21. Mike P said:

I pretty much do the same as you Keith. One thing I have noted, though, is that I need to be extra careful depending on the level of coffee buzz that I am feeling at the moment that I write a post.

I’m still learning though, and trying to balance blogging with work and then fun-time (away from the computer) is something of a challenge.

Posted on March 9, 2004 12:26 AM | #

22. Richard Rutter said:

If I’m writing a lengthy post, I’ll often write it on paper first. I tend to refine my writing as I progress through an article, so having a paper copy means I get to keep my revisions in situ, albeit crossed-out.

If the article isn’t particularly time-sensitive (I call responding directly to someone else’s post time sensitive, a general opinion piece not) then I’ll leave the article on paper overnight and revisit the next day, typing it up in a word processor so I can easily spell check it.

Then I’ll cut and paste into my blog CMS, add the links and other mark-up, read through the preview checking links and hopefully correcting typos, and finally post.

All a bit laborious, but I’ve got three hours on a train each day which is a handy for blogging (reading and writing).

Incidentally I almost always spell ‘from’ as ‘form’.

Posted on March 9, 2004 09:17 AM | #

23. Matt Southerden said:

I can’t believe this hasn’t been spotted yet:

The thing is, because of my writing style here at Asterisk*, I often times post something with typos. I just churn through too many thoughts, and post to many entries, to catch everything.

The last sentence should be:

I just churn through too many thoughts, and post too many entries, to catch everything.

*grin*

(And I’m not too sure that you need the word ‘often’ in the first sentence)

Anyway, I personally feel that Asterisk* is one of the best weblogs out there. You do a fine job of managing your copy, especially considering that this is a personal site.

Posted on March 10, 2004 04:29 AM | #

24. Adam Kinney said:

Asterik* is definitley one of my favorite blogs, one of the best looking, too. The great thing about blogs is that they are usually candid thoughts of the author. Due to that nature, mispellings and typos are forgiven.

I usually read through my posts once or twice before I post, and then I give my self the 5-minute window to edit any glaring mistakes. Otherwise I’m pretty relaxed with my posts.

Its funny that Kaye Trammel’s advice mentions not deleting posts. My main impulse to comment was to share a link of a blogger who recently went back and fixed previous posts with bad grammer and mispellings. Unfortunately I can not link to his post because he DID delete the entry. Leaving me in my own personal reality that I can’t share with others…

Keep up the good work Keith!

Posted on March 11, 2004 05:21 PM | #

25. Ian Lloyd said:

Coming from an editorial background, it takes me an age to write - a perfectionist. But never mind my own posts/writing … what I find a pain is that I *still* can’t get away from critiquing (is that the right spelling, ah whatever, heh!) everything around me from the poorly-written signs on market stalls to promotional literature that obviously didn’t use a professional copywriter. I am definitely an ‘apostrophe nazi’ and one day, *one day*, people will understand that it’s does not mean ‘belonging to it’ but is a contraction of it is, and nothing else. A pedant, I know. It’s a hard habit to break!

Posted on March 12, 2004 04:21 PM | #