Why worry about writing errors?
“Spelling mistakes, typos, mistakes in idiom, unfashionable usages, all these characterize you as a writer controlled by language rather than controlling it. You present yourself as still in rompers. It is not a question of being clear. These revelations of self don’t usually obscure ideas, they obscure you. They reveal that you have paid no attention to your own writing and invite the reader to respond in kind.”
—Richard A. Lanham
I don’t mean to imply that one need to settle for nothing less than perfection; Heaven knows I let mistakes slip through. I take comfort, though, in the fact that most readers will be forgiving of occasional mess-ups (depending on the context).
It’s the constant, consistent errors that will leave your readers with the impression that you don’t care much about your writing. And if you don’t care much about your writing, if you don’t care enough about your message to correct glaring, elementary mistakes, well, why should they?
Roy Jacobsen
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