I know. Ouch, right? Especially since this was posted by a major news site, where you expect editors to catch these things. And because, when repeated, mistakes like these can erode credibility.
It could happen to anyone, really.
It’s definitely happened to me – whether because of some autocorrect feature on my phone or via some weird mechanism in my brain that’s started transposing words. Just the other day, I was typing an email. I needed to give someone a name from an event that took place the previous night. Instead of typing, “Here’s his last name,” I typed “Here’s his last night…”
The problem here really isn’t our brains or our super-helpful autocorrecting phones, it’s the speed with which we’re delivering our communications – enabled, of course, by the simplicity of technology.
The solution is slowing down, briefly, to re-read carefully and edit, where necessary. After all, what’s a few seconds when credibility is on the line?
I agree Vickie. Ouch! I know these kind of mistakes can happen to anyone; still I’m surprised to see it on Slate.com.
That said, yes it’s happened to me too. One time I even published a blog post, was viewing it one minute later, and discovered the wrong word in a sentence (similar to the example you gave). Yikes! I quickly returned to edit mode and corrected the mistake (hopefully) before anyone else read the post.
Thanks for reminding us to slow down and take our time when re-reading and editing.
Hi Rita,
I hate to pick on anyone by exposing their errors – mainly because we all make them, myself very much included! – but if there’s a helpful way to explain why these mistakes happen, so we can correct them, then I think they’re useful teaching moments.