If you’ve written a book, a good tip, which I generally ignore, is to read it backwards. After all, readers can be strange, so it’s not a bad idea to check that it’s just as good backwards as forwards. But the main purpose is to spot and eliminate typos. The reasoning being that by reading it backwards, you don’t get distracted by the story, so the typos become more visible. In cognitive terms, your attention is less engaged in higher level processing (constructing a meaning from the narrative), so more is available to focus on the lower level process of word recognition. Of course, if you’ve written the story yourself, you’re unlikely to be wondering what happens next, but you do keep thinking, ‘Hmm, that word’s not quite right’ or ‘That sentence works pretty well’, so all those sneaky typos scuttle past you just the same.
Now, I’m ready to give the backwards thing a go, but I’m not sure how it could stop thoughts like that popping up. Naturally, it depends how you interpret ‘backwards’. Unless you’ve written the whole book as a palindrome, reading it right to left is not just unhelpful but impossible: elbissopmi tub lufplehnu tsuj ton – naem I tahw ees? Theoretically, you could read the lines left to right but the individual words as normal (for English, that is): normal as words individual the but right to left lines the read could you. Hmm. How long before you utter a howl of rage and throw the whole thing from the balcony? Next level up would be the paragraph or the page. Much more feasible. But the thing is, I know the story backwards already, so the thought of reading it all again, whether forwards, backwards or sideways, doesn’t appeal.
So far, on my various readings, I’ve plucked 142 typos out of Perfume Island, which I put into a jar on the desk, screwing the lid on tightly. It’s cruel, I know, but I get a kick out of watching them squirm around before expiring. But how many are still lurking in the text? One thing’s for sure – too many. So now I’m going to bite the bullet and read it one more time, dressed as a frogman, rotating the book 360° anti-clockwise every time I come to the word ‘that’.
Good luck with this 🙂 Yes, typos plague every writer! Maybe just hire a Greek to read it? hehe.
Nice suggestion, Tammy, thanks!
It was tongue in cheek, they start reading from the right
Ufff… I’m not a writer, just letters, comments and so on… I reread them… but you’re really clever, you know how to find typos!!!!!!
Thanks, Rosa – I may know how to find them, but some are even cleverer at hiding…
Its the plaque of very righter, eras that pass as brother worlds.
No, I’m not going to keep doing that. When I did my last pass on Spark, I discovered a misuse of ‘lay’ instead of ‘lie.’ This, after two different editors had gone through the book! (And of course, I, countless times.) Of course, a lot of people aren’t always sure which of those troublesome verbs to use in a given situation, but even knowing the difference, things like that get by all the time. It’s one of the wonders of the human brain that it can effortless correct what’s on the page, glossing over all sorts of airers.
Your absolutely right, Atthys, thanks for the coment.
I think he meant you are absolutely wright, Atthys. 🙂
I tried reading my work from the back and gave up immediately. It just didn’t work for me.
It’s difficult, indeed – currently struggling with it!
Excellent! I’ve heard but never parachuted this advice, myself. Good to know it’s clearly worth it!
Thanks for the comment, Amanda – I guess anything’s worth it to weed them out, but it’s not easy!
I am amazed at how many laughs U have wrung from a dull and difficult but important chore.
One thing that is not funny but is really helpful (for me, anyway) is seeing the same content in different fonts and formats. I use a plain text editor for most of what I put in my posts, and I proofread often while composing the words. After I copy and paste into one of the WordPress editors, I see the same stuff in a different format and different fonts. So I proofread again. Different again when I switch to the other WordPress editor. Different again when I preview the post. I always do some of the previewing from the blue (beep-beep-boop) editor, so that I can see what the post would look like on 3 different platforms. I read the damn thing on all 3 platforms. Sometimes the phone platform reveals typos and other mistakes, not just phone-specific layout problems. Some mistakes get thru anyway, but not so many.
Thanks for the comment – that’s a very useful tip, which I have indeed noticed with my own blog posts, but I haven’t yet tried it with a book. Maybe changing the font for each chapter would work as you wouldn’t have time to get used to it. I’ll give it a try next time – thanks!
Comments are closed.