Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Typo City, Population: Me

Per Amy's suggestion, I've been reading my latest manuscript out loud to myself, and DANG there are a lot of typos. I also abuse certain words. Without plopping the whole text into Wordle.net, I predict that my most common offenders are:

"Even"
"Totally"
"That"
"Ever"

How embarrassing! I'm purging my text of unnecessary qualifiers. I definitely recommend reading your work out loud because you really don't catch the same problems when skimming or reading silently. It's a bit tough and awkward at first, but worth it.

On the plus side, by the time I send it along to my agent it'll be in cleaner shape.

My voice will also be hoarse.

5 comments:

  1. I have a problem with "definitely," so I understand. I like reading aloud too. Sometimes I'll make my husband read my MS aloud to me and that's the best, because he'll stumble over sentences I thought were clear and I'll know I have to make changes.

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  2. I cringe when I read my work aloud, but it does help! And I like Natalie's idea of having someone else read it to you. I'd probably cringe even more, but it'd be worth it.

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  3. That is my word...I read out loud all of the time, but years of reading out loud to kids makes it feel natural. Once you've identified you have a "that" problem it's easier to catch yourself in the future.

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  4. It's no wonder I had typos galore in my marketing course. I'm going to go back and reread it. Thanks for the tip.

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  5. Lou, I never would have believed that reading aloud would make a difference until I tried it. Thanks for commenting and I hope this technique works for you like it did for me :)

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