As a person who writes, I have an allergy to typos, mistakes of grammar, and improper punctuation.  I have worked with a great editor.  She lives in the large metropolis of Helena, Montana. Her lessons in editing have made me a better writer.  One of the things she taught me was that no matter how many times a person reviews what they have written, they will not catch all of the misspelled words.  I’ve found that to be true.  I could reread something I’ve written ten times thinking its solid.  Hand it to somebody else to read, and the one hidden typo jumps off the page at them.  When somebody points out a typo in a document I’ve written, I’m extremely appreciative.

However, not everybody is in agreement with me.  I have contacted people I know and people I don’t know if I see a typo (or typos) in a document they’ve created.  Half of the time the people are appreciative that I contacted them.  The other half they are irritated that I took the time to contact them to let them know a document with their name on it has one or more misspellings.

I know a person who self-published a book last year.  Anybody that I know who writes a book gets a sale to me and a read.  I started reading this person’s book.  I noticed a typo early on.  Then another.  And another.  I underlined each typo.  The work was also complete with incomplete sentences, punctuation mistakes and misstatements of fact.  I finished the book and contacted the person.

Now, if this person would have asked me to meet them at a coffee shop or the library to go over the numerous mistakes, I would have had no issue doing so.  But this individual adopted a literary attitude with me and told me that I would have to deal with their publicist.  A publicist?  The writer of the book needed “Spellcheck” much more than they needed a publicist.

In teaching writing, I share that a person must first “train their brain” to think the way a writer must think.  After that, all writing projects should work off of an outline.  And ten times the amount of time needs to be spent on fine-tuning the outline as is spent on the actual writing project.  The person who wrote this book certainly doesn’t have a “trained brain” and didn’t spend enough time on the outline.  But the publicist—who probably charged a few thousand dollars for their services—no doubt told the writer how great the manuscript was and the book needed to be published.  The money spent on the publicist would have been better spent on an editor.

The photo attached to this essay is on a government building in downtown Pittsburgh.  It is not a new sign.  It has been displayed for at least a year.  I once stopped in the building to let the office staff know that there is a typo in the sign.  The woman who met me inside the office looked at me like I was gum on her shoe when I told her about the sign.  “And you came inside to let us know that?” was her condescending response.  I told her that spelling matters always and she should fix the sign—which she obviously didn’t do.

If you know this building in downtown Pittsburgh, stop in and tell the staff the sign is misspelled.  Unlike me, you may meet the person who is “athorized” to correct spelling mistakes.