I’m standing here (as I often do stand as opposed to sit) at my computer, waiting for the phone to ring. Although I can’t decide if I actually WANT it to ring – I’m waiting for some freelance proofreading work… but seeing as it’s already Friday afternoon, any work I get will have to be completed over the weekend. And I can think of better ways to spend my weekend than plodding my way through annual reports. Oh, I know what you’re thinking – “but Lisa, you don’t have a real job right now – why should you care if you have to work over a weekend? All you’re doing is wasting space and consuming other people’s valuable oxygen anyway…” Gosh, that’s really mean of you guys to say…
I suppose it might be slightly IRONIC that I’m talking about proofreading today – a mere 24 hours after my own glaring error was sighted by someone who wasn’t even looking for mistakes. At least I don’t THINK he was looking for mistakes… I could be wrong about that. I do, at times, get the distinct impression that SOMEone has an ambition to prove me wrong. Like about my long-time word-foe “comfortability,” for instance. And I wasn’t WRONG about that… I feel I must point out that I was, in fact, quite right. “Comfortability” was NOT a word, and it was NOT in any dictionary. But as it has apparently managed to sneak into conversations now and then, some unseen vocabulary higher-power decided to add it to a dictionary. Fine. Whatever. That certainly doesn’t mean that “dummification” will ever catch on. No way. Not a chance. Won’t be seeing THAT in the dictionary any time soon. I should shut up now before I jinx it…
It’s actually rather difficult to proofread your own writing. Not that it’s an excuse for my mistakes… it’s just a strange fact. Or perhaps I should say – it’s rather difficult to proofread your own writing immediately after it’s been written. And I don’t know why that is, exactly. But it’s best to have someone else read what you’ve written, or to at least step away from what you’ve written for a few hours and read it again later. It’s like you get used to knowing what you MEAN to write, because it’s already in your head… so if you read it immediately after you write it, you just kind of gloss right over some of the words. Because you already know what they’re supposed to say. But if you wait a few hours, and read it again, then all that writing has flown out of your head and you can read it with a clean point of view. Does that make any sense? That probably makes no sense, does it? Looks like the dummification of my writing has already begun… wait – DARN IT! Not a real word… not a real word… not a real word…
But I also can’t say that I honestly “proofread” my posts most of the time. I usually reread them before I post them, but reading and PROOFreading are really two different things. When I proofread, I generally go syllable by syllable. I’ll break each word down into its smallest parts, and then check each individual syllable (it doesn’t take as long to do that as it sounds…). Especially when I come across a word like “responsibility” or, yes, even the maddening maybe-word “comfortability” (those “ability” words can be easy to misspell…). I’m not usually that careful with my posts…
So I guess while I’m waiting for the phone to ring, I will go back and read this post again, ver-y care-ful-ly, to make cer-tain I have not made mis-takes in my writ-ing. But if I have, please be sure to point them out to me… :)
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