Beware the Tipo - Karen Bush

I hate typos.
I really do.

They irritate me beyond belief, distracting me from what I'm reading and making me itch to pick up a red pen or a highlighter. They seem to stand out from the text, thumbing their little fonty noses at me.

Naturally, when I proofread my own stuff I go through it very, very carefully.

It annoyed me no end when one publisher airily told me,

"Don't you worry about correcting typos. We have a very good team who are very good at dealing with that side of things. They are really hot at picking up typos."

Dear Reader, they were not. Despite the fact that I corrected all the typos anyway, they not only ignored them, but just for the hell of it added in some entirely new ones.

The one that especially made me froth (apart from the change of surname of a Famous Person in the index) was the change from 'Excerpt from a Diary' to 'Exert from a Diary'.

Obviously the 'team' the publisher used was a computer spellchecker with a very poor vocabulary.

At least when self-publishing you have control over this sort of thing.

Supposedly.

While all those horrid typos leap out, singing, dancing and generally doing all they can to draw attention to themselves when you are reading somebody else's opus, they are pretty good at adopting protective camouflage when it's your own work. You tend to read what you intended should be there, rather than what actually is there.

Especially when you are known for getting in a stew over typos it is rather embarrassing when they then succeed in getting under your own radar. I'm still smarting with shame and humiliation over "It's not about the Monet" instead of "It's not about the money" pointed out by an amused reader. Drat that auto-correct word processing feature. I don't care how much it knows about Art and Artists, it's pants at helping you to create a book.

The solution?



Before pressing that publish button, get yourself a good proof reader.
Better still, get two.

As any fule kno, Nature abhors a tipo.
This is their ultimate fate when She finally steps in and takes charge:
Tippoo's tiger, as demonstrated by a youthful Peter Purves
in my sooper Blue Peter annual.