The Petty Writing Mistake That Drives Me Nuts
For no good reason, and I know I’m wrong to care, but I do, and so I looked for company
Earlier this week, I was reading a tweet from a writer I admire (the new “I was enjoying a novel”?), and she ended it with a parenthetical that should have had the period outside the close parenthesis (like this). But instead, it ended like (this.) I know it’s stupid, but this inconsequential error drives me crazy. Maybe it reminds me of what I hate about myself: a tendency to start things but never finish them, a droopiness, a carelessness. Or maybe it’s my own fear of missing details that are obvious to others. It makes me want to reach in and move the period into the right place, as if I could do it that easily for myself, too.
A friend mentioned that she feels the same way when people type “woah” instead of “whoa,” because it provokes a sense of being ignored, akin to when someone you’re talking with scans the space over your shoulder at a party. “You see the rest of us spelling it ‘whoa,’” she told me, “or are you not seeing it? Why are you sticking to this? Why are you choosing to be this way? The rest of us have agreed on something!”
Typing this all out mostly makes me feel ridiculous and wonder if the whole thing isn’t an illustration of even deeper personal…
