Good spelling is paramount for clarity and building trust with your audience. It is how you build a reputation for reliability and quality. However, it is not apocalyptic if you make a mistake. We all make them. The sign of a truly quality source is acknowledging that a mistake has been made, and then editing it.
However, as author and Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway notes in a piece on the BBC, people should not obsess over making spelling mistakes or typos because they aren’t what makes their writing good or bad.
“Writing is a sophisticated job and our brains focus on the structure, the sentences and the phrases, leaving the close-up work to be done on autopilot. Afterwards we are programmed to read only what we think we have written, not what we actually have. If that is the case, it is odd that we make such a phenomenal fuss about them.”
Kellaway adds that if you are hiring someone, you should not disqualify them for having a typo in their CV, unless you are, say, looking for a proofreader.
“If human beings have any remaining competitive advantage over the machines, it is not our skill at crossing i's and dotting t's. It is our ability to write something that provokes a response - and not just because it contains a howler or a spelling mistake,” she states.
The ‘I Had a Stroke’ online group has been around since 2018, and just recently celebrated its 8th birthday. The idea behind the community is very straightforward. Everyone is encouraged to share photos and screenshots of typos that are so bad that “you would think you’re having a stroke” (or “you would thnk ye havin an stroke” as the moderators originally wrote it).
The mods point out that their online group is in no way related to actual strokes. “Real strokes are not allowed. Images of a person having a stroke, known to have had a stroke, or appears to be imitating having a stroke are not allowed.”
This sounds obvious and like common sense. But you have to wonder what happened to make the mods spell things out like this to everyone?
Meanwhile, the ‘I Had a Stroke’ group stresses that it values originality and authenticity. So, fake or staged situations and intentional typos are not allowed. Furthermore, if you plan on posting in the group, you have to ensure that the content is family-friendly and that you avoid anything related to politics or current events.
And to make sure that everyone’s poking fun at the typos and not the people making them, you’re not allowed to share any personal information. Make sure that you censor it! Again, the point is to laugh at the typos, not the people misstyping things.
Once you’ve upvoted the images that made you laugh the most, why not join the discussion in the comments? Tell us which of these typos made you laugh the hardest.
Meanwhile, what are the biggest, most hilarious, and bizarre typos that you’ve ever made? Have you found that relying on spellchecking tools has made your typing more sloppy or the opposite? Let us know!
