Ever Make Typos While Correcting Typos?

[jaF0]

My eyes and my fingers despise each other. I hunt'n'peck. Never could type properly. One, maybe two fingers on each hand is all that ever hits the keys. I've already made and corrected about 10 typos in this simple post.

One of my most common is with double letters where followed by an 'e', as in 'corrected' I almost always get the 'e' between them instead of after. When I go back to correct, I often hit the 'w' instead of the 'e'.

It's one reason why I've pretty much stopped writing longer posts or stories of any length. And no, this old dog ain't gonna learn no more. This dog's brain is pret-near mush these days.

 

[oggbashan]

Of course. I have double vision and type with an eyepatch.

(I made two typos in that sentence!)

 

[Rustyoznail]

I keep typing ‘the’ as ‘teh’. I have no idea why, but it’s really annoying.

 

[jaF0]

I keep typing ‘the’ as ‘teh’. I have no idea why, but it’s really annoying.

I did a whole thread on that one a couple of years back, but the Search here sucks so I couldn't find it again.

 

[litfan10]

I find autocorrect is the devil's curse and can lead me down a rabbit hole of "corrections" of corrections.
On my main writing computer the damn function is turned off. My correspondence machines like this one has it on and sure enough "damn" became " same" which became "fanned" when I tried to correct autocorrect.
Gah!

 

[SimonDoom]

I learned to type in high school, before computers (I'm a dinosaur, as my kids remind me), so I know how to type. I've spent a huge chunk of my professional life at a keyboard. I can type fairly quickly, without looking at the keyboard, but I make many mistakes. It's frustrating. And the results, when I look at what I've written, can be comical.

 

[TxRad]

I learned to type in high school, before computers (I'm a dinosaur, as my kids remind me), so I know how to type. I've spent a huge chunk of my professional life at a keyboard. I can type fairly quickly, without looking at the keyboard, but I make many mistakes. It's frustrating. And the results, when I look at what I've written, can be comical.

Typewriters and keyboards have nothing in common except the key layout.

In high school on a typewriter, I could do 60-80 word a minute with few mistakes. Now, on a key board, I'm down to three fingers, well two fingers and a thumb, and I make all kind of mistakes. I've corrected four in this short blurt.

I banned autocorrect on everything a long time ago.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I write a lot on my phone (I know I know, “those millennials” “those genzers” blah blah blah) so the bane of my existence is Google Docs autocorrect, it “fixes” all of my correct typing into ridiculous typos.

 

[SimonDoom]

I write a lot on my phone (I know I know, “those millennials” “those genzers” blah blah blah) so the bane of my existence is Google Docs autocorrect, it “fixes” all of my correct typing into ridiculous typos.

Do you actually write stories on your phone? I can't imagine doing that. I guess I'm too old school.

I find it trying enough just to post Author's Hangout contribs on my phone. I usually put my phone down and sit down at my desktop.

I have never, ever written a story on my phone. I just can't imagine that. But, then, as one gets older it seems like one's fingers become bigger and the letters on the phone keep getting smaller.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Easier to ask if there is anybody out there who has not.

 

[oggbashan]

My father (and mother - that's how they met) was a telegraphist with the General Post Office. They used then ancient telegraphy machines from before 1914. It was possible to type faster if you knew the sequence of letters on the print/send wheel and of course it was capitals only and no punctuation.

In his 80s my father was videoed operating that machine for a Postal Museum. Even then he could type without errors at 140 words per minute, slower than he had done in the 1920s.

But when he switched to a typewriter he made many mistakes, trying to replicate his speed on a telegraph machine. It took him about a year to relearn but he hadn't forgotten his old skill.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

All the friggin' time.

My most common one is to (especially with "s"s) leave the "s" off the end of the word it belongs to and stick it on the beginning of the next word. I also do this with "t"s quite a bit.
The typo that ANNOYS me the most, is when I want to change one letter and I keep hitting the wrong number of backspaces, and either put the same wrong letter twice, or delete TOO many letters.

Like Simon, I learned to type in high school, and I'm a fair to middling touch typer with four fingers and a thumb. I don't really look at the keyboard anymore, but I've never quite mastered the trick of reading something and typing it with out switching back and forth between what I'm reading and what's showing up on the screen.

Rusty - I can't remember all the science-y stuff behind it, but "teh" for "the" is pretty common on a standard QWERTY keyboard because the "t" and the "e" are typed by the same hand, whereas the "h" is the other hand (if you're doing touch typing and split the keyboard at the "home" keys). It's just faster for your brain to make the two fingers on the one hand work, one after the other, than to switch from one hand to the other and back.
Back when I was in college or grad school, I can't quite remember which, I got enamored of the Dvorak keyboard, which was supposedly designed to optimize speed and reduce strain on the hands (putting the most commonly used letters under most people's dominant hands, having the most common combinations of letters typed exclusively with one hand or the other). It's pretty interesting, but by that point I'd been using the QWERTY set up for so long, and re-configuring the keyboard would have been a pain in the ass.
Supposedly, QWERTY was partially set up the way it is to slow typists down, to reduce the keys getting tangled with each other with the old-old manual typewriters in which each letter was on its own swing arm. The first typewriter I used regularly was one of those (hand me down from my Dad), and I remember plenty of times when it seized up because the keys had gotten stuck together, and then you had to lift off the lid and figure out which order they'd clumped up so you could reverse it and have them all fall back into their space.

{{ok that was way to much info, but thanks for letting me nerd out a bit}}

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

Do you actually write stories on your phone? I can't imagine doing that. I guess I'm too old school.

I find it trying enough just to post Author's Hangout contribs on my phone. I usually put my phone down and sit down at my desktop.

I have never, ever written a story on my phone. I just can't imagine that. But, then, as one gets older it seems like one's fingers become bigger and the letters on the phone keep getting smaller.

I write all of my Lit stuff on my phone: stories, forum comments, and editing/beta-reading for other authors. I’ve posted about it a couple of times in the past, where writers have asked for phone editing advice. I also usually use my phone for work too; most of my business emails, most of my research and a good deal of my math modeling and simulations. I’m just used to it, so it’s easier/more natural for me than any other devices; for example, my laptops just collect dust in my office, and I mainly use my iPad to watch TV when I’m traveling.

 

[GuessImJamie]

I don't have to I have Otto Spelczek working for me.

 

[jaF0]

Do you actually write stories on your phone? I can't imagine doing that. I guess I'm too old school.

I can do a quick message on a phone or make notes for a shopping list, but that's it. I bought a portable Bluetooth keyboard for times when I have to do more for some reason.

 

[yukonnights]

My most habitual one is i — instead of I. It's so common I always do a "find" to clean them up. Must be something to do with the "i" finger being faster than the "shift" finger. I'm used to it now and just expect to fix it on review.

 

[GuessImJamie]

I write all of my Lit stuff on my phone: stories, forum comments, and editing/beta-reading for other authors. I’ve posted about it a couple of times in the past, where writers have asked for phone editing advice. I also usually use my phone for work too; most of my business emails, most of my research and a good deal of my math modeling and simulations. I’m just used to it, so it’s easier/more natural for me than any other devices; for example, my laptops just collect dust in my office, and I mainly use my iPad to watch TV when I’m traveling.

OTJ - I have many short periods of time with nothing job related to do. So stuff gets written on the smartphone, its darned handy. Old dogs CAN learn new tricks.

 

[SimonDoom]

I write all of my Lit stuff on my phone: stories, forum comments, and editing/beta-reading for other authors. I’ve posted about it a couple of times in the past, where writers have asked for phone editing advice. I also usually use my phone for work too; most of my business emails, most of my research and a good deal of my math modeling and simulations. I’m just used to it, so it’s easier/more natural for me than any other devices; for example, my laptops just collect dust in my office, and I mainly use my iPad to watch TV when I’m traveling.

Wow. I'm impressed. Kind of. I think I may just be of an older generation that thinks this is weird. I like sitting at a desk with a big screen in front of me and a large keyboard. I think I'd go crazy with the slowness and mistakeyness of thumbing over my phone to write a story. But, hey, it seems to work for you, so what do I know?

 

[GroverLang]

Of course. I have double vision and type with an eyepatch.

(I made two typos in that sentence!)

I usually use a finger, lol. Sorry but I couldn’t resist it. The picture of you holding an eyepatch in your hand while huddled over a pc was just too much. Hope your health is keeping pace with your imagination at the moment.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

Wow. I'm impressed. Kind of. I think I may just be of an older generation that thinks this is weird. I like sitting at a desk with a big screen in front of me and a large keyboard. I think I'd go crazy with the slowness and mistakeyness of thumbing over my phone to write a story. But, hey, it seems to work for you, so what do I know?

I’m not sure that it’s really generational, I think it’s probably just idiosyncratic. For example, my husband is older than me but still an “early “millennial”, and he finds it baffling that I write on my phone instead of a laptop or iPad. I have few friends who do most things on their phones, too; they’re all from different countries, have different ages, different primarily languages, different tech backgrounds etc, but one thing they all have in common is the type of work they do.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Rusty - I can't remember all the science-y stuff behind it, but "teh" for "the" is pretty common on a standard QWERTY keyboard because the "t" and the "e" are typed by the same hand, whereas the "h" is the other hand (if you're doing touch typing and split the keyboard at the "home" keys). It's just faster for your brain to make the two fingers on the one hand work, one after the other, than to switch from one hand to the other and back.
Back when I was in college or grad school, I can't quite remember which, I got enamored of the Dvorak keyboard, which was supposedly designed to optimize speed and reduce strain on the hands (putting the most commonly used letters under most people's dominant hands, having the most common combinations of letters typed exclusively with one hand or the other). It's pretty interesting, but by that point I'd been using the QWERTY set up for so long, and re-configuring the keyboard would have been a pain in the ass.
Supposedly, QWERTY was partially set up the way it is to slow typists down, to reduce the keys getting tangled with each other with the old-old manual typewriters in which each letter was on its own swing arm. The first typewriter I used regularly was one of those (hand me down from my Dad), and I remember plenty of times when it seized up because the keys had gotten stuck together, and then you had to lift off the lid and figure out which order they'd clumped up so you could reverse it and have them all fall back into their space.

{{ok that was way to much info, but thanks for letting me nerd out a bit}}

No worries, and thanks for that explanation. It’s really frustrating when I finish a document at work and see all the red wiggly lines. I thought it was me just getting old...

I’m like Vix and Jamie - I do some stories on my phone. Or any other device.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I have never, ever written a story on my phone. I just can't imagine that. But, then, as one gets older it seems like one's fingers become bigger and the letters on the phone keep getting smaller.

Me neither. I couldn't think of anything worse. It's tedious enough trying to put in map coordinates (but at least the Google maps girl has got a nice voice).

 

[jaF0]

It’s really frustrating when I finish a document at work and see all the red wiggly lines.

I know Speel Chuckers have been talked about a thousand times, but they're as much foolish as foolproof. They can't tell the difference between for, form, fort, forth and fourth for example. All will pass but may not be the correct word for the sentence. And they don't pick up what they can't understand like f4th or n0where. You still have to proofread.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I know Speel Chuckers have been talked about a thousand times, but they're as much foolish as foolproof. They can't tell the difference between for, form, fort, forth and fourth for example. All will pass but may not be the correct word for the sentence. And they don't pick up what they can't understand like f4th or n0where. You still have to proofread.

Yep. Particularly with highly technical docs.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

Me neither. I couldn't think of anything worse. It's tedious enough trying to put in map coordinates (but at least the Google maps girl has got a nice voice).

This rant sounds like a generational thing.