Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Attack of the Typo Gremlins


by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

The Husband says I’m weird. I prefer fanciful. That does not, however, change the fact there are some things out there that we cannot explain and which we definitely cannot control. In other words, my friends, the Typo Gremlin is real. He’s out there and he’s both malign and sneaky. I give it the masculine pronoun, as it is changeable, sometimes irrational and very dictatorial. It doesn’t matter what you do – edit, re-edit, get multiple professional editors galore and still that sneaky little devil will get around everything and embarrass you.

When I was still a child I started working in my parents’ advertising agency. Even then I was the picky sort, and one of my jobs was to proof-read the ads we put out. Being commercially oriented instead of consumer, our ads were both word-dense and generally boring, so that was a time-consuming job. Of course I wasn’t the only proof-reader – before an ad went out just about everyone in the office had looked it over – but in spite of that the Typo Gremlin would still have his way. We’d see the mistake – usually in 30 point type – right after the bazillion copy print run was completed.

When I was most definitely not a child I was editor in chief of first one multi-magazine publishing group and then later another; wherever I was, though, didn’t make a difference. The Typo Gremlin always managed to find me. The first group I worked for had been plagued with a slipshod editor who apparently didn’t care what the magazines looked like. I had been brought on board to bring the group up to snuff. Needless to say, it was not always a pleasant process, but after an issue or two I had pretty much everything looking better and under control. Except the Typo Gremlin.

The first issue of my editorship was a disaster; the second one was much better and by the third we were putting out a product I could be proud of. From the first day I instituted a law that even after our proofreaders had looked over everything no board went to the printer unless it had my initials on it.

And in spite of that the sneaky little Typo Gremlin still made his presence known, dancing through every issue, sometimes leaving one, or maybe two mistakes – though by the second issue they were usually little ones. Being a firm believer in turning a weakness into a strength I finally gave in and made a partner of the wee beastie, running a permanent contest that whoever found a typo in any one of our magazines (that group published three) would win a prize. The prizes were little – a yearly subscription, one of the little booklets we produced on everything from gardening to fortunetelling – but our readership soared and our ad revenue went through the roof. It was so successful that I carried the idea to my next publishing group, where we had the same results.


So, as odd as it sounds, your enemy can become your friend if you play things right. Even a Typo Gremlin. 

13 comments:

  1. The typo gremlin loves me, or maybe hates me. Not sure which one. He's "alive and well" and lives in my computer. Love your idea of giving your readers a reward for finding your errors. It's amazing how many times we can read our manuscripts and still have the little fellow sneak in after it is in perfect shape! Glad to know he also lives in other computers!

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  2. I too suffer from the Typo Gremlin no matter how much I try to edit. It's great that you turned a negative into a positive!

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  3. I know this gremlin all too well and am glad I'm not the only one he visits (though I really don't want to wish him on anyone else).

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  4. I once made a doozy - typing "the importance of accruacy" (instead of accuracy) - in a scolding letter from a school inspector that went out to every school principal in his district. He was not amused, but the principals thought he'd done it on purpose to illustrate his point. I was lucky that time! I enjoyed reading about your experience and thanks for the memories! I don't think we'll ever vanquish the gremlin.

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  5. I've never experienced a tyop. Everything I send out is prefect. Even so, I proof everything carefully to make sure I didn't any words out.

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  6. wow..never thought of that!
    interesting concept
    good luck and God's blessings
    PamT

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  7. Susan, you are more brilliant than you think! Your trick of offering a prize for readers who find typos was used by the great Eddie Bernays, the founder of the public relations industry, when he was retained by Fortune magazine. They didn't have a typo problem -- Eddie just wanted to be able to claim to advertisers that titans of industry read Fortune from cover to cover. If they found typos, they must be doing so! Worked like a charm.

    Here's my typo story: As a young investment adviser, I became very friendly with the secretary to the President of the company. One afternoon, I nearly had to revive her with brandy and burned feathers when she realized that the boss had gone home with something she had typed for him about "shifting economic currents. I'm sure you can work out the error she made.

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  8. That gremlin is very sneaky. I noticed early on that as soon as I realized I was making the same typo mistake over and over again and quit doing it, I started making a different one. It never ends. And I now notice them almost daily in other things I read, so I give everyone some slack. And hope they'll do the same for me.

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  9. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who has run into this. It's embarrassing! I wonder if a contest like that would work for a novel?

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  10. I love your theory about turning a weakness into a strength! That certainly worked wonders for the typo gremlin.

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  11. WOW, that's what I call creative. I would never have thought of turning those gremlins into a positive.

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  12. There's a Harry Potter fanfiction story involving Luna Lovegood chanting spells against Quill Mites, which do much the same thing.

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  13. I work at a newspaper and yes, those gremlins pop up constantly no matter how many people see the page. Maybe the company should start a "spot the typo" contest?

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