Issue 3: On Typos

"Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned." -Joan Didion, "Why I Write" 

I’ve been thinking about typos lately, mostly because writing this newsletter means I’m sharing work that hasn’t been looked at by an editor. I’m flying without a parachute, so to speak, and that’s scary. 

I come from a background in journalism so I know the blowback a thoughtless error can cause. Once, an article I wrote ended up with a headline with the word “adverse” instead of “averse,” and I got more messages, more email, more feedback than from any piece I’d written before. All those years of reviews, profiles and features and the thing that got the most attention was a missing letter in a headline I didn’t even write!

But see how powerful the taboo around typos is? I just told you a story about an error I didn’t make to keep you from thinking less of me! That’s not the point of this newsletter, is it? Let me tell you about a typo I did make. I’ve made many. 

In the mid 2010s, I often got into heated discussions on Twitter with older male writers about prominent allegations sexual assault. They were the kinds of conversations that made me feel like I might pass out from rage, but also seemed like they might actually change the world. Maybe they did a little–I don’t know. Near the end of one such exchange, as we circled around the same point over and over, I typed a sentence with “sew” instead of “sue” into the little box and hit send. I knew as I waited for the tweet to appear on the screen that I’d lost any advantage I’d built up over the conversation because of that slip. My opponent leapt on the error and was followed by a gaggle of friends, and the conversation became about my typographical foolishness instead of believing women.

I think social media has taken the sting out of typos a bit since those heady days of 2015. We all live in a kind of textual meta-universe, writing writing writing, day in and day out. Amidst all that, there’s bound to be errors. People are far less likely to call you out on those errors these days because we’ve all done it. We’ve all had autocorrect change a word just before we hit send and watched a tweet circulate with the wrong word before there was anything we could do to fix it. Or watched an email with a missing preposition travel irrevocably into the sent box. 

Ironically, many of my worst typos arise from the process of editing for impact. I choose a stronger verb, but accidentally leave the original verb in place, for example. The more stressed out or passionate I feel, the worse the typos, though the latter is often when I feel the most energy for writing.

Oh, it’s just me, you say? Liar.

In my work as a writing instructor, I see typos all day long. Even the most conscientious writer will have one or two in that thousand-word paper. Something I’ve had to train myself out of is the urge to correct them in the way some instructors did with my own papers once upon a time. For one thing, I’ve seen enough “corrected” papers to know that there are instructors whose own grasp of the rules is weaker than they believe. But more importantly, it’s overwhelming for a student to get a paper covered in red marks. It pulls them in too many directions to be an effective teaching tool. Instead, I’ll choose one or two errors that seem to get in the way of reading and give the student resources that will, I hope, help them identify and correct those patterns. 

But I’ve come to wonder what the real point of that kind of correction might be. Recently, I spoke in a panel on “Alternative Grading Ecologies” organized by some brilliant colleagues from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. We talked about how grading systems can exclude students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and how they might impede learning.

I presented on my use of process grading in creative writing–a system where grades are given for engagement with the writing process rather than solely on the ability to turn in a polished piece of writing in a short period of time. This creates a more even playing field for students who come from different backgrounds and it encourages students to revise, a skill which is necessary to grow as a writer over time. My ideas on revision are heavily informed by Peter Ho Davies’ book The Art of Revision where he cuts down so many common myths about the writing process. It’s absolutely worth a read!

What I realized over a year of grading this way in a Creative Nonfiction classroom is that the second draft of a piece of writing is sometimes messier than the first. Often students will put ages into polishing the first and then run out of time on the second. Or their ambition for the second draft will outstrip their abilities. At first, I was worried I might be leading them astray, but then I realized it didn’t matter. Even if it was riddled with typos and errors, as long as that messy second draft showed some deepening in thought, it was achieving its goal. 

I’ve come to believe that a preoccupation with polish calcifies the rest of the creative process. It encourages an illusion of completion that steers a writer toward the obvious. It rewards safety over ambition. That's not to say the words or sentences don't matter, but sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to make a mess, to take the shame out of the blunders that will lead us to the next level. 

And for this reason, I want to celebrate the typo, the error, the small mistake as a sign of energy and a necessary part of the process toward ever greater expression. You’ll catch it later–or your editor will. Either way, the work will survive. 

Thanks for reading. If you have thoughts or questions, or you'd like to share a typo story of your own, go ahead and drop me a line via Twitter.

~ Erika

*Note: Because I enjoy facts, I must correct an error in the previous newsletter. I said the first season of Russian Doll aired in 2018 when it in fact aired in 2019. I aspire to feel no shame in admitting my errors. I'll probably make more of them.