Typos, how do you handle them?

[Jay321]

When I started putting word to paper, screen, however you want to say it, I used WordPad just so I didn't get the red squiggly line under typos. I wanted the ideas to flow. Once the stories were passable enough to share them, I now had to go back and find all the typos and fix the problems. It was hell, especially if it had gotten long. I have a lot of typos, usually I catch them right off, but occasionally I will have one that didn't notice or misspelled words that I need to correct.

How do you handle them? Do you keep going, keeping the flow in your head moving? Do you correct them right away? Do you let your editor deal with them?

Most often I correct them right away unless I had some epiphany that I need to finish. Example: Epiphany was one I had to look up to get the right spelling. I finished the sentence then found the correct spelling. That I consider immediately.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I don't make typos. Actually I do, I'm blind, and writing is a colossal pain in the ass. I keep on truckin while most whine.

 

[Penuche]

<snip> How do you handle them? Do you keep going, keeping the flow in your head moving? Do you correct them right away? Do you let your editor deal with them? <snip>

I generally correct them as soon as I spot them, but I've found that it's a good idea to re-read at least a few hours (or even days) later to catch any which were overlooked the first time.

 

[sr71plt]

I correct them in review, checking out every instance Spellcheck highlights (although Spellcheck doesn't trump the dictionary or get it right all the time). I don't send an edit to Literotica to correct them and bog down the submissions process for others after the story has already posted. There's no such thing as perfect copy, even in the mainstream print world.

 

[HeyAll]

Well, I correct it right away if I see it. Especially when there's the red underline mark from the processor.

But I think the main thing is to keep writing if the ideas keep flowing. You don't want to think of the good stuff, and then forget it because you went back to fix typos that could have been handled later.

 

[oggbashan]

This recent thread also discussed typos:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1343304

 

[Handley_Page]

When I started putting word to paper, screen, however you want to say it, I used WordPad just so I didn't get the red squiggly line under typos. I wanted the ideas to flow. Once the stories were passable enough to share them, I now had to go back and find all the typos and fix the problems. It was hell, especially if it had gotten long. I have a lot of typos, usually I catch them right off, but occasionally I will have one that didn't notice or misspelled words that I need to correct.

How do you handle them? Do you keep going, keeping the flow in your head moving? Do you correct them right away? Do you let your editor deal with them?

Most often I correct them right away unless I had some epiphany that I need to finish. Example: Epiphany was one I had to look up to get the right spelling. I finished the sentence then found the correct spelling. That I consider immediately.

1] I suggest you look at JARTE, which is a simple bit that fits iver WordPad and turns it into a pretty decent bit of kit. The Dictionary is worth, too. The good news is that Jarte is FREE.

Were you to use WORD (NOT ver 365, but an earlier one), you can have it change your bad spellings 'on the fly', so all you have too look for is the To / Too, or YOUR / YOU'RE) kind of a problem.

2] A good Dictionary on your Hard Drive is well worth the effort. I use the Concise Oxford and it's no real effort to look up something. That said, a decent copy of a good big Dictionary is worth its weight in gold.

3] As for technique, it depends upon if the words are ready to tumble or be dragged from a reluctant brain. If it's in Tumble mode, I do not even use instant correct, but get the words down as fast as possible. Stop at the end of the paragraph (?) and review. A well-turned phrase can be misspelt; the right words are without price.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I use Word, so they show up right away, well misspellings do. A correctly spelled wrong word doesn't.

I read and reread as I go along. Then when finished I set it aside for a week or two and then reread it again, fixing things as I go.

 

[Jay321]

This recent thread also discussed typos:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1343304

I thought it was more about the name change, I didn't want to hijack your thread.

I don't send an edit to Literotica to correct them and bog down the submissions process for others after the story has already posted.

I meant if you had someone editing your work before submission. I should have been more clear.

I generally correct them as soon as I spot them, but I've found that it's a good idea to re-read at least a few hours (or even days) later to catch any which were overlooked the first time.

I guess that is a better description of what I do. I have to admit that I have found mistakes on the third/ forth time through.

1] I suggest you look at JARTE, which is a simple bit that fits iver WordPad and turns it into a pretty decent bit of kit. The Dictionary is worth, too. The good news is that Jarte is FREE.

I am currently using LibreOffice. I use the excel equivalent quite often. Another free program.

 

[sr71plt]

Were you to use WORD (NOT ver 365, but an earlier one), you can have it change your bad spellings 'on the fly', so all you have too look for is the To / Too, or YOUR / YOU'RE) kind of a problem.

I don't recommend having Word autocorrect on. It makes a whole lot of assumptions of the word you wanted to use that you didn't want to use and often you don't catch that. Just turn autocorrect off.

 

[sr71plt]

I meant if you had someone editing your work before submission. I should have been more clear.

Yes, I don't purposely leave anything like that for the editor to correct. If they have to deal with routine misspelling, they will be overlooking a whole lot of other issues that benefit from an independent pair of eyes on the piece.

 

[Handley_Page]

I don't recommend having Word autocorrect on. It makes a whole lot of assumptions of the word you wanted to use that you didn't want to use and often you don't catch that. Just turn autocorrect off.

A good point.

 

[TxRad]

Typos? What are those? Yeah, right!

If you write, there will be typos. Even a three fingered typist makes typos. Well two fingers and a thumb. The thumb is innocent since all it controls is the space bar. Someone asked me how I could be a touch typist using just three fingers. I told them to look at my keyboard. Eight keys have no letters at all and another ten only have part of a letter.

Lots of typos.

I use an old version of Word that has been heavily modified from stock. About the only thing on is spellcheck and maybe three of the grammar checks. The rest is for business letters and totally against fiction writing.

Finding typos isn't easy and takes time.

Spell check helps as it points out some of them.

Giving it a break in time helps.

Changing fonts help

Changing the background color helps.

Reading the piece aloud helps with typos and flow.

A second pair of eyes help.

And there will still be typos. They breed when no one is looking.

 

[Penuche]

<snip>
I guess that is a better description of what I do. I have to admit that I have found mistakes on the third/ forth time through. <snip>

Nearly everyone does, because your eyes start seeing what your mind wants to see. This is where getting somebody else to check once comes in handy.

BTW when pulling an allnighter, I found it was time to stop once the same mistake had been spotted, tippexed over, and remade in exactly the same way and the same place more than twice.

 

[EverLux]

[lots of helpful tips]

I kept getting frustrated when I'd reread my stories after they were posted on Lit, and I'd find a bunch of mistakes.

This time, I widened the margins and tried to match Lit's font. Worked like a freaking charm

 

[LIVINRFANTASIES]

I ain't neva made no typoz!
I do use WORD but sometimes it changes or corrects words I don't want changed.
Also I save my stories in folders so when I do get around to adding them to Lit I reread and attempt to correct the mistakes that are hiding.
I worked in an office and typed for over six years in another life. Now I use two fingers and a few others that try to help.
In all honesty, I'm not an author. I just scribble words on my monitor and have fun.

But you know that!

 

[Zeb_Carter]

1]Were you to use WORD (NOT ver 365, but an earlier one), you can have it change your bad spellings 'on the fly', so all you have too look for is the To / Too, or YOUR / YOU'RE) kind of a problem.

I don't recommend having Word autocorrect on. It makes a whole lot of assumptions of the word you wanted to use that you didn't want to use and often you don't catch that. Just turn autocorrect off.

Pilot is correct, word makes assumptions based on what you are writing is a business letter. It also guess wrong for a lot of simple words. I use it to find the misspellings, not to correct them. That's what a dictionary is for...if I don't know.

 

[Jay321]

In all honesty, I'm not an author. I just scribble words on my monitor and have fun.

That makes at least two of us on this forum. It blew my mind when my last story got the red "H"

. The thumb is innocent since all it controls is the space bar.

That thumb isn't so innocent. It likes to rush me, or I get ahead of it. Even better, it takes a break in the middle of a sentence.

Changing the background color helps.

And there will still be typos. They breed when no one is looking.

Going to have to try the background color trick. Never considered it.

I found a typo on a story after I had been over it several times, I had an editor go over it, and posted it. Damn thing just *poofed* right in. I swear it wasn't there earlier.

 

[IvyMarquis]

I tend to correct typos as I catch them, as I go along. Most of my errors aren't ones that spell check catch (the word isn't spelt wrong, it's just wrong for the scenario), so it's much easier to break up my thoughts then scroll through trying to find errors that aren't noted but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in this paragraph here, I vaguely remember noticing something wrong with that one sentence.

Of course another issue is I nitpick sentence structure for so long that I'll change one part of a sentence but not another, so a conjugation that should have been changed ends up getting left behind (changing "running" to "ran" for example), thus creating more errors in the editing process than I made while actually writing the thing.

 

[TxRad]

That thumb isn't so innocent. It likes to rush me, or I get ahead of it. Even better, it takes a break in the middle of a sentence.
Going to have to try the background color trick. Never considered it.

I found a typo on a story after I had been over it several times, I had an editor go over it, and posted it. Damn thing just *poofed* right in. I swear it wasn't there earlier.

I think my left thumb is smarter than the right. It seems to take up the slack when the right one gets bored or falls asleep.

Anything that changes the appearance you have been looking at will flush out all kinds of things. It makes the brain actually read what is there, not what it thinks is there.

I write a sentence and fix all the marked typos. I finish a paragraph and then read from two above to see if I'm saying what i thought I was saying. When I stop for the day and then resume, I go back to the last spot I checked and check what i wrote earlier. That gets me back into the story and allows me to find more typos and mistakes.

Make sure when you read aloud that you're not at McDonald's or one of those places. People give you weird looks for talking to yourself. Not to mention, the mothers with kids. Mom gets some interesting questions and you're usually asked to leave shortly after.

 

[ChloeKendall]

I don't use an editor, it's fun knowing that when your story first goes public that you're the ONLY one who's ever seen it. Personally, I do the same thing. Catch the big typos, anything with a red underline, and then when its done I go back through with a critical eye. Not just for typos, but for plot holes (if your story is large enough) bad character development, and any little grammatical errors that a computer doesn't always catch.

But if you don't have the time, an editor makes the whole thing a heck of a lot easier, nothing beats a fresh pair of eyes.

Happy writing!

 

[KimGordon67]

I've had quite a few journal articles and a book published (remember them?) After I'd had someone proofread the book, and proofed it myself numerous times, when the finished thing was sent to me ... I found a typo on PAGE TWO. I also edit a journal, and some things get read by three or four people, including a copy-editor, and yet we STILL find typos in the 'finished' version. They're just inevitable, unfortunately.

 

[oggbashan]

I thought it was more about the name change, I didn't want to hijack your thread...

Why not hijack? That's what threads are for once the main question has been answered.

I have used an editor only once - Naoko for my April Fool story Lecturer. I wanted to check with her that I had the academic details right. Thank you, Naoko.

I try to find typos myself. My first resource is to use Word's spellchecker/grammar facility. I reject most of its suggestions but it does find extra spaces between words and misspelled names Jemina for Jemima as an example.

Apart from changing the font and the background colour my most successful ploy is to print the story as a hard copy, put it away for a couple of days and then read it in a comfortable armchair.

My last resort is the review pane on submission. I sometimes see typos there.

But no matter what I do, and I do at least three checks of the final version, a few typos get through.

 

[i_would]

When I started putting word to paper, screen, however you want to say it, I used WordPad just so I didn't get the red squiggly line under typos. I wanted the ideas to flow. Once the stories were passable enough to share them, I now had to go back and find all the typos and fix the problems.

In Word or LibreOffice or any other self-respecting word processor or editor with spell check, you can simply switch this off. No more red lines.

Then when your ideas stop floating and you start your proofreading you switch spell check back on, and have it point out all the typos for you (but not the homophones, of course). This should take care of the vast majority of typos very quickly and rather painlessly.

That said, personally I keep spell check switched on at all times and correct as I go. Names sometimes will have to be added to the dictionary if I use one with an uncommon spelling or one that I just made up.