As a result, this morning I had the pleasure of reading a story in which the poor protagonist was stuck somewhere for five minuets.

Seriously – it was well worth putting that reminder out there. To me, getting the grammar and spelling and so on right (including homonyms!) is much like touch-typing; the nuns back in grade school drilled us mercilessly enough that not making usage errors got to be as much a habit as using my left index finger to hit the “g” and “f” keys. For most of the grammar and syntax stuff, I think working this way is an advantage for me – getting it right makes it easier to make the sentences do what I want. For homonyms, that part isn’t so important (using “their” instead of “there” doesn’t change the rhythm of the sentence, or, usually, affect what you wanted to say or thought you were saying)…but getting the homonyms right on the first try means I DON’T have to go through the tedious process of search-and-check that you described, which is a good enough reason for me to want to do it! So sometimes I forget that there are folks out there who CAN’T get the habit in quite the same way, like my dyslexic niece. So it’s good you said it.

I was riffing off of someone else’s comment. And then once I got into that particular rut, I kept on supporting that point, and you kept on supporting your point.

Wonderful example of two people talking right past each other.

Ah well, my last post provides a description of a good technique for people to use when putting your point into action, so maybe I managed to contribute something worthwhile to the conversation.

Guess what, in my last manuscript, by the time I had gotten down my copy edit check-list to the “there search” ie typing “there”, “their” and “they’re” into my search box and checking each and every one in the manuscript to see if its right, I had *none* of that kind of error. It was a novella manuscript, but still I felt pretty proud of myself.

But learning to *not* make the error required me understanding what the error really was. Learning rules I already knew didn’t help. Training myself gradually over a period of years, to catch myself typing a there and check if it was the right one, was what was needed. (I wish it had been learning rules, it would have been much easier.)

Now, if only I could get on top of those blasted commas!

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho – The difference between there, they’re, and their isn’t purely a matter of spelling; there are places where they’re actually pronounced slightly differently (like merry, marry, and Mary, or ant and aunt). So it’s possible that the difference is a holdover from a time when they were pronounced differently by pretty much everyone.

accio_aqualung – Love the posters! Yes, colloquial and informal English is more relaxed about some things. Some of it is fine – colloquial English is, after all, supposed to be informal! – but there are still usages like “ain’t” that are seriously problematic.

David – That’s the trouble with writing – you can’t ever be an expert in everything, so even if you do research, you make mistakes with stuff like railroads that actual experts find off-putting. The thing is that words (and spelling and grammar and punctuation) are supposed to be the thing WRITERS are expert in, which means getting them wrong ought to be really, really embarassing.