In preparation for class today/tomorrow, I just read over my last two posts. Found innumerable errors, typos, word variations spell check didn't but I should have. Mea culpa.
As I explained to my students, I was writing/publishing under fire and short deadlines. Didn't have time to sleep on anything. Didn't spend my usual five edits + at least one overnight away from it. Consider it a lesson to us all. Even the most pontificating professionals can become that old cliche Haste makes waste.
I'm not saying I'm always perfect, messed up just this once. Far from it. I am saying even writers as anal as I will make a mistake if we don't make time to take the time. My apologies. I'm human but embarrassed. Will do my best not to repeat.
Perhaps I should run every post past my Engineer hubby before I publish. He takes great joy with every published error he finds (newspapers, online, at work, in conversation, doesn't matter where - his engineer attention to detail finds/snickers at them all). On second thought, I do have to live with the guy. Maybe I should just hire a good proofreader instead.
A thought on advertising, grammar and errors in general: Ad copy needs to read like the Prospect thinks/hears/talks. We must be careful not to be willfully blatant about it, but sometimes we err on the side of the Prospect being human. Example: It just lays there vs. It just lies there. The latter may be the correct phrase, but lays there is the expression. For the majority of Prospects, I'll stick with the expression.
Ad copy also breaks rules in the name of writing short, reading fast, moving the Prospect along. I know many of you have noted I frequently eliminate commas, even between words in lists/series written in prose. Blame Gore Vidal. Reading his books, I noticed how he could move me through at a blistering pace. The reason: those missing - but technically correct - commas. Commas are pauses. In advertising copy, pauses become stops.
For the most part, people don't "volunteer" to read ad copy. We have to trick them into it. Stealing Vidal's technique is one of the many ways we can do this. Do it right, no one (except other writers, editors, proofreaders, people like my husband) will notice. They'll move right along, shoot through the sequence, move on to the next.
The errors I'm apologizing aren't those kind. Unfortunately, they were just mistakes made in haste, posted in haste. Apologized for in sincere retrospection.
As I explained to my students, I was writing/publishing under fire and short deadlines. Didn't have time to sleep on anything. Didn't spend my usual five edits + at least one overnight away from it. Consider it a lesson to us all. Even the most pontificating professionals can become that old cliche Haste makes waste.
I'm not saying I'm always perfect, messed up just this once. Far from it. I am saying even writers as anal as I will make a mistake if we don't make time to take the time. My apologies. I'm human but embarrassed. Will do my best not to repeat.
Perhaps I should run every post past my Engineer hubby before I publish. He takes great joy with every published error he finds (newspapers, online, at work, in conversation, doesn't matter where - his engineer attention to detail finds/snickers at them all). On second thought, I do have to live with the guy. Maybe I should just hire a good proofreader instead.
A thought on advertising, grammar and errors in general: Ad copy needs to read like the Prospect thinks/hears/talks. We must be careful not to be willfully blatant about it, but sometimes we err on the side of the Prospect being human. Example: It just lays there vs. It just lies there. The latter may be the correct phrase, but lays there is the expression. For the majority of Prospects, I'll stick with the expression.
Ad copy also breaks rules in the name of writing short, reading fast, moving the Prospect along. I know many of you have noted I frequently eliminate commas, even between words in lists/series written in prose. Blame Gore Vidal. Reading his books, I noticed how he could move me through at a blistering pace. The reason: those missing - but technically correct - commas. Commas are pauses. In advertising copy, pauses become stops.
For the most part, people don't "volunteer" to read ad copy. We have to trick them into it. Stealing Vidal's technique is one of the many ways we can do this. Do it right, no one (except other writers, editors, proofreaders, people like my husband) will notice. They'll move right along, shoot through the sequence, move on to the next.
The errors I'm apologizing aren't those kind. Unfortunately, they were just mistakes made in haste, posted in haste. Apologized for in sincere retrospection.
No comments:
Post a Comment