That’s Not What I Thought I Wrote!
“Um… what did you mean here?”
Those words make every writer flinch, and every writer who gets feedback from others hears those words at some point. They can signal something as minor as a forgotten preposition or as major as having a section that doesn’t explain itself well. Once the problem’s pointed out to you, it’s as obvious as a huge red zit without concealer. How could you have possibly missed that?!
Easy. When you read it yourself, you read what you meant to say rather than what you actually wrote. Everybody does it. It’s unavoidable.
What you can do is minimize it.
Remember all that crazy-sounding stuff your English teacher told you back in school? You know, the finishing your paper a few days early and reading it backwards nonsense that nobody ever did. (Okay, so maybe some people occasionally did the first, but whoever actually did the second without being desperate for a passing grade?)
As silly as those things may sound, English teachers harp on them for a reason. They work.
To keep yourself from submitting that article with the wrong preposition (or the forgotten sentence), you can try a few different things. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, so you can use all of them, or you can just stick to the methods that best suit your weak areas.
Wait at least an hour, preferably a day or week, before proofreading.
The longer something is, and the longer you’ve spent writing it, the longer it’s best to wait.
If you only have time for a short break of a day or less, find something intensely distracting to do in that break, so you forget as much of what you wrote as possible. Reading bad fan fiction can work for some people in a pinch, if you dare do that to yourself. Listening to music or watching an unrelated movie can also help.
The longer your wait, the more you’ve forgotten of what you’ve written, the better this method works. It can help you notice both typos and clarity issues.
Print it out, preferably with a bright pen handy for marking errors.
(I find bright pink ink the easiest to both notice and read, myself, but that might stem from my dislike of bright red.) This tip may not be the cheapest one on the list, but puts the least amount of strain on your eyes.
Your eyes actually process words differently on the computer screen than on paper, so that printout can make all the difference in making yourself see what’s actually there over what you meant to say, and it’ll even work immediately after you wrote the article.
As well as this can work for grammar and typographical errors, it’s not the best method for finding problems with how you explained something, unless you combine this method with a wait.
Read it aloud, and no, you don’t have to read it to anyone.
Just mumble along and notice where you stumble over what you wrote. No need to let the world hear you.
Any tongue-twisters are sure signs of things that could use changing. (That alliterative sentence is probably not nearly as cute as you think it is. And that fiveline long one where you used the thesaurus doesn’t exactly sound academic…)
This method works great for finding sentence and paragraph problems. It can also help with typos, but that’s mostly if you’re good with spelling.
Read it backwards, word by word.
After that, start at the end again and read sentence by sentence. Then read it back to front, paragraph by paragraph.
As nonsensical as this sounds, it works by rearranging your words out of the order you intended to put them in so you see the order they’re actually in. Then you rearrange the sentences to see what they actually say by themselves, and then you do the same with the paragraphs.
If you’re prone to typos and don’t have time to wait, this method is for you in particular. This method doesn’t work quite so well for clarity issues, because the logical structure gets slaughtered.
All the methods can be used together, or a writer can pick and choose which to try. For someone who doesn’t have time to wait, reading an article backwards, then reading it aloud, can catch most of his errors. Someone who quotes grammar rules and types with accuracy can get away with doing a lot less than someone who struggles with his grammar handbook and wars with his keyboard.
Everyone, though, needs to do something.
As for me, I’ve picked my method of choice, and it works well enough. If I have particular trouble with something, I pull in the others, but usually I don’t need them.
What I do is wait.
Leave a Comment
Good Post
That’s Not What I Thought I Wrote!…. many thinks is just are simple thought.. but some of them really useful.
Nice Writing Misti… thanks for writing that’s not what you thought you wrote
Oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the “read it backwards” tip before, but it does make an awful lot of sense. Another tool for the toolbox – awesome!
Why is there random ‘s in the first paragraph…. Whats up with that formatting?
lol, That not was you wanted to write… surley
I wait. Every single time. A day, two… I wait.
I also have to edit work from people who don’t wait, and trust me, if I send it back and say, “Could you take another look at this?” they often reply, “Wow… Yeah, that’s pretty bad, eh? Okay. I’ll rework it.”
Do. Thanks.
(ARGH, Collis! Do you not have Subscribe to Comments yet???!)
Oh yes, waiting cannot be underestimated. When I schedule any project I always add 2-3 days so that the end document/report just sits for a while.
It happens to all of us. It’s natural, writer never reads the text with the same eyes as the readers do. We assume things so we don’t write them down, but those things can affect the meaning of the whole text. So what somebody reads is not what we wanted to say. Sometimes we just miss the point that way, sometimes it goes even worse.
I got myself in trouble about a year ago with a text about Second Life economy. It was quite opinionated, but I missed to clarify some things that I thought everybody will understand from the rest or the writing. Next morning, I had to deal with number of comments that blog has never seen before. Problem was, many of them were accusing me for direct opposite of what I was advocating. Now imagine yourself writing about benefits of freelancing and being accused for advocating nine to five regular job!
Sure, regular readers of the blog knew what I ws talking about. They already know me and they know what I feel about issues in question, but all the new readers couldn’t. They just went after what I told in that particular post. Sure I had to write a follow-up, apologizing and clarifying things.
There is a bright side of being unclear, though. That post is still one that is most commented on the whole blog. Number of visits peaked for weeks. Controversy always brings traffic. But, I am not sure that’s a healthy practice.
I too wait, although I call it “letting the writing marinate”.
Thanks for practical advices!
Excellent advice. I follow this advice myself. Sometimes something slips through anyway, though. I recently had that happen and I realized it after I sent it in. I just contacted my editor and let him know that I had accidentally used one word in the place of another and it was driving me crazy. He loved that I noticed it and said editing my work was a pleasure. (Yay!)
I gave this a stumble, by the way.
*smiles*
Michele
This is really sound advice on ensuring one’s writing is error-free. Or at least as closet to it as possible.
This post will make a nice home in my delicious account.
Yes, valuable advice here, Misti.
*Waiting* is key. Consider your first draft “done.” Take a break. (Ideally, leave the piece for a couple of days.) When you come back to the work, approach it from a different point of view. Consider that you’re now an editor. Be ruthless. Chop it up, question your logic, and look for typos as though you were reading your arch-nemesis’ work and you’d die with glee to you catch them with a typo.
I always print the piece and read it aloud, too. But that’s mostly because I like the sound of my own voice.
You’ll never catch everything. If it *really* matters, get someone else to proof it; you can’t beat a fresh pair of eyes.
Great headline, BTW!
Yes, of course, there’s a typo in my post. I didn’t read it *backwards*…
I do all these but the last.
BUT HERE’S THE CATCH: I only do those for OTHERS work.
I never proofread my own work. Most editors will tell you not to. It’s so difficult to catch your own stuff (although our steps help). I prefer others to do it for me. I hire a proofreader, and lean heavily on my husband for freebies.
Great post and so true, I also recommend this post http://wpengineer.com/publish-the-feed-later/ to publish your feed a little bit later, how often do you press publish and the second later you see an error, very annoying,
Great post. I’ve been in this position many times as a young editor, though I didn’t write the documents myself; having someone kick back something for a mistake you didn’t catch is humiliating. These are all awesome tips to help the editorial process.
I definitely do all these things. My question though is what do you when you’re on an extremely short deadline? That would be a good post from you guys!
Is there a way to locate someone locally to try this?
So true. I often am surprised when I read something I’ve written out loud and see that it was not what I intended. Since I am a bit of a perfectionist, I appreciate reading that it I am not alone in mistakes because of how the brain processes what we intend to say.