Random Rant about Misspellings

I’m one of those people who winces whenever they see an obvious typo. Perhaps it’s my 25-plus years of writing and editing documents for work, school and personal projects, but I’m flabbergasted whenever I see a misspelling that shouldn’t have seen the light of day.

A few recent examples:

An e-newsletter for A Southern Season in Chapel Hill misspells “receive” as “recieve.” Remember, it’s “i” before “e” except after “c.” Takes you back to grade school, doesn’t it?

While driving my daughter to school, we passed a truck with a sign reading “We Buy Used Car’s.” That may be the most useless apostrophe I’ve ever seen.

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney’s campaign released an iPhone app in which the phrase “A Better America” was misspelled “A Better Amercia.”

So what’s going on here? I attribute these and other misspellings to three things:

• Lack of readers with a critical eye. When I recently gave a presentation on proofreading at the North Carolina PR & Marketing Seminar, about half of the session attendees said they’d never been taught how to proofread. And these were all professional communicators and college students.
• Everyone’s in a rush. They needed that ad yesterday. The client wants it ASAP. We’ve got to tweet it now. In the digital age of instant communication, there often isn’t enough time to properly proofread everything.
• Lack of accountability. It’s the designer’s fault. It’s the intern’s fault. It’s everybody’s fault. It’s nobody’s fault. I’ll admit to mistakes that have cost us money and that have been professionally embarrassing. But I tried to learn from those mistakes and implement systems that reduce the likelihood that they will recur.

So what’s a proofreader to do? Keep the faith, continue to diligently proofread, diplomatically notify the offending parties if possible, and above all, maintain a sense of humor.