{"id":43,"date":"2014-08-15T19:34:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T19:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/?p=43"},"modified":"2014-08-15T19:34:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T19:34:00","slug":"why-cant-we-see-our-own-typos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"Why Can’t We See Our Own Typos"},"content":{"rendered":"

File under the category of familiarity-blindness: every writer knows that self-editing can be an exercise in frustration. This article in Wired<\/a> by Nick Stockton explains why. He also goes a long way in explaining the artistic impulse to defamiliarize which is the topic of one half of this blogger’s doctoral thesis<\/a>. Stockton writes,<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The reason typos get through isn\u2019t because we\u2019re stupid or careless, it\u2019s because what we\u2019re doing is actually very smart, explains psychologist Tom Stafford, who studies typos of the University of Sheffield in the UK. \u201cWhen you\u2019re writing, you\u2019re trying to convey meaning. It\u2019s a very high level task,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As with all high level tasks, your brain generalizes simple, component parts (like turning letters into words and words into sentences) so it can focus on more complex tasks (like combining sentences into complex ideas). \u201cWe don\u2019t catch every detail, we\u2019re not like computers or NSA databases,\u201d said Stafford. \u201cRather, we take in sensory information and combine it with what we expect, and we extract meaning.\u201d When we\u2019re reading other peoples\u2019 work, this helps us arrive at meaning faster by using less brain power. When we\u2019re proof reading our own work, we know the meaning we want to convey. Because we expect that meaning to be there, it\u2019s easier for us to miss when parts (or all) of it are absent. The reason we don\u2019t see our own typos is because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This can be something as trivial as transposing the letters in \u201cthe\u201d to \u201chte,\u201d or something as significant as omitting the core explanation of your article. In fact, I made both of these mistakes when I wrote this story. The first was a misspelling in a sentence that my editor had to read aloud for me before I saw it for myself. The second mistake was leaving out the entire preceding paragraph that explains why we miss our own typos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Generalization is the hallmark of all higher-level brain functions. It\u2019s similar to how our brains build maps of familiar places, compiling the sights, smells, and feel of a route. That mental map frees your brain up to think about other things. Sometimes this works against you, like when you accidentally drive to work on your way to a barbecue, because the route to your friend\u2019s house includes a section of your daily commute. We can become blind to details because our brain is operating on instinct. By the time you proof read your own work, your brain already knows the destination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This explains why your readers are more likely to pick up on your errors. Even if you are using words and concepts that they are also familiar with, their brains are on this journey for the first time, so they are paying more attention to the details along the way and not anticipating the final destination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

HT: Prufrock. <\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"File under the category of familiarity-blindness: every writer knows that self-editing can be an exercise in frustration. This article in Wired by Nick Stockton \n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sunergoi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/WIN_20140815_152952-2B-2-.jpg?fit=650%2C384&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ESBE-H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}