Why You Should Think Twice Before You Point Out That Typo
Snarking on other people’s little slip-ups is the opposite of communicating. We’re better than that
Let me begin by saying that yes, of course, checking your work is an essential process for writers and content creators, and everything possible should be done to minimise mistakes slipping through. This, of course, is why editorial and content organisations employ a whole layer of people to work on quality control.
But vast amounts of content are created these days by clever, funny, interesting and inspiring writers — many thousands of them on Medium — who do not have the luxury of a team of sub-editors to sense-check and proof-read their work. Without industrial levels of QA and fact-checking of the sort that only certain very high-end American magazines can aspire to, the occasional slip-up is an almost unavoidable by-product of any content creation process. Even the New York Times has let in the odd typo, and one small error in an otherwise excellent piece of work should not become a stick with which to beat writers or reject out of hand someone’s entire meaning.
So why do people get so hot up under the collar about trivial language keyboard errors? And are typos really the end of the world?
