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  Sara Rosinsky • Shiny Red Copy

sara's Shiny red blog

Your brain is out to get you.

3/18/2018

3 Comments

 
Picture
Photo by Taskin Ashiq on Unsplash.
 "Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

I grabbed the previous statement from this article, but you can find countless similar passages online. Most of them have a congratulatory angle about how "You msut be a gneuis if yuor'e albe to udnretsnad tihs srcamelbd txet."

But you're not a genius. You're doomed.

Because when your brain automatically makes incorrect words seem correct, then how the heck are you supposed to identify misspellings? And don't say "autocorrect." Autocorrect is a conniving backstabber. If you write, "Libraries serve the pubic good," for example, autocorrect will just whistle nonchalantly and look the other way.

I am a professional copywriter, and a perfectionist by nature. And yet, I overlook spelling errors quite often. Too often. And I hvae olny my gneuis brian to blmae.

To leave or read comments, just click on the red "comments" link at the top of this post.
3 Comments
Theresa
7/1/2019 12:39:58 am

Great post, Sara, and great example of autocorrect stepping aside to let the writer get hit by a bus. I read a high school graduation supplement in our local weekly paper in which "principal" was spelled incorrectly half the time. I suspect that the "proofreader" relied on autocorrect, and because "principle" is a real word, every incorrect use of that spelling got into print.

Reply
Sara Rosinsky link
7/1/2019 06:36:09 am

Thanks for reading this and for commenting. I realized after I dispatched last night's grammar email that I hadn't modified the blog link. I had *meant* to direct people here: https://www.shinyredcopy.com/blog/i-cant-remember-my-first-kiss . So if it felt like there was a weird disconnect, there was. And I can't blame autocorrect. 🙄

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Denton Hopper
3/31/2020 06:52:07 am

How about the distinction between "bring" and "take"?

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