Wood Ducklings

I am the world’s worst speller and my mastery of English grammar is not so good either. So why are you writing this blog, you might ask. I guess that it is because I like a challenge. Think of it as someone with a fear of heights who takes up the high wire act. Every time that I write a post and an error is not detected; I feel the blogging analogy of cheating death. This is a bit of a stretch, because I do not write without a net, or two or three. I typically write my posts in Word, which has a decent spellchecker and a so-so grammar checker. The newer 2010 version of Office has an even better one. I then paste my words into WordPress, which also has a spellchecker. It occasionally catches a mistake that Word has missed. Generally, it seems to like to hyphenate more word pairs then Microsoft prefers. Finally, after both of these digital checks, I employ an analog one. I ask Anne to proof my posts. Her keen intellect is quite adept at catching word substitutions like there for their and the like. That is really not a good example, since even I can generally catch those mistakes. Plus Word 2010 can catch it too, but it was just such an elementary word substitution mistake that tripped me up this morning. In the previous blog post, I substituted the word carnage, when I meant to use the word Carnegie. Karen pointed it out and was nice enough to attribute it to a Freudian slip. It was a funny switch. I don’t blame my analog spellchecker, Anne, because I had asked her to proof that post right after she had awoken. Fundamentally, I blame myself. I should have more patiently proofed my own writing.

On the other hand, Karen’s comment is the first comment that this blog has received in over a week. Even the New York Times and NPR do corrections, so why shouldn’t I? Going forward, even with this post, I will purposely insert funny and clever word switches, like carnage for Carnegie. I’ll do this solely to garner corrective comments and when I get one, we’ll all know that we’ve caught another one. We’ll all know this, because of the clever humor behind the ‘mistake’. Occasionally, even the most dedicated of readers will find a clever and funny mistake that does not seem either clever or funny. In these instances consider the so-called ‘mistake’ just an inside joke, one that you unfortunately are not privy to. I venture to brag that in this very post, I have sneaked in almost a dozen slips and most of them without your awareness. On the third hand, you the reader could make more general purpose comments. Otherwise, I may be forced to release the Kraken, or even worse re-release Anne’s Swifties. 😉