www.inkthinkerblog.com — A colleague on one of my discussion lists was kind enough to share this link to a blog entry that discusses a fairly significant typo that made it into “print” in a column by National Review Online contributing editor James S. Robbins: micobiome.
Although I found Carl Zimmer‘s comments on the error to be rather interesting, I was more fascinated by the comment trail, which includes such brilliant observations as “Oh please – people make spelling mistakes all the time. Ever see a printed book with [sic] a spelling or grammatical error? I once bought a book that actually had to insert a page of corrections. … Complain about the author’s point, but picking on spelling errors is pointless.”
er?ror? /??r?r/ –noun
1. a deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or
speech: His speech contained several factual errors.
error. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1). Retrieved November 02, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/error
Uh, hi, just because people make spelling and grammatical errors regularly (which reminds me, I believe you mean “a printed book without a spelling or grammatical error”) doesn’t mean they they’re not still errors, which, as we now know, makes them wrong.
I think that saying, “Hey, so what, we all make mistakes,” is fine, but frankly I expect better and I think you should, too. From what I can tell, Robbins isn’t a scientist. He appears to be a national security analyst, actually, so I have no idea why he’s writing columns about global warming, but that is neither here nor there. If we all wrote about only things we know, we probably wouldn’t be writing very much. I digress.
Anyway, the fact that he wrote the article doesn’t bother me; it’s that he makes very scientific-sounding arguments, however tongue in cheek (I hope!), but can’t use correct (or, for that manner, existent) terminology. So now I don’t know if he’s a doof and doesn’t know that “micobiome” isn’t a word (You’re talking a big game there if that’s the case, aren’t you, buddy?), or if he’s trying to be funny. Either way, now I don’t trust him because I can’t tell what he’s trying to communicate to me and I don’t know why he didn’t just come out and say it with words he himself understands. My fear is that this demonstrates ignorance on his part. My hope is that it demonstrates carelessness on his part, and possibly on the part of an incurious copyeditor.
This brings me to my point. (Finally, right?) Good writing means clear writing. You can have great ideas and you can talk about them intelligently, but if you can’t write them clearly (and, ideally, interestingly), you’re not a good writer. I don’t care how creative you are–if you can’t construct understandable, grammatically correct sentences, you’re not a good writer. Am I a prescriptivist? You bet I am. Am I also right about this? Yes.
It’s okay to break rules sometimes.
It’s okay to not be born with the entirety of Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition committed to memory.
It’s okay to screw up and vow never to submit without proofreading ever again.
It’s not okay to make your readers question your authority because your writing lacks clear evidence of reliable communication skills.
If you’ve got a skeptical, or even somewhat disinterested, audience to begin with, you’re shooting yourself in the foot with senseless blunders. Every mistake you make is another reason for your reader to, well, stop reading–and that’s never okay.
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You had me at “poofreading.”
That’s because you’re easy. ;]