Edits

In this day and age of twenty-four seven news, social media posts, texting, etc., I can’t help but notice editing mistakes wherever I look. I’ll see things like the letter “I” not capitalized when used as the subject in a sentence; I’ll see typos and misspellings when these mistakes could’ve been fixed if the writer had reread the sentence once; I’ll see words dropped from sentences, the wrong word usage, and run-on sentences with no punctuation, which will read like someone was trying to say something in the span of a paragraph in one breath.

But when we compare this type of writing to published books, it gives a different experience for the reader. Whether it’s a novel or a non-fiction book, they have to be carefully edited to be taken seriously (and to be read for a great length of time). They have to be double checked, triple checked, and reread and rewritten multiple times before they’re even published. It’s a far cry compared to reading something that’s posted online, which might’ve been written in a few seconds, then posted.

The amount of time and effort we put into our writing matters when we want to make a strong impression and leave a lasting impression on the reader. Thus, if I see typos and grammar mistakes galore, I won’t take the prose seriously since the editor in me will automatically come out and want to fix everything. The point didn’t come across as it was intended, since there were flaws in the delivery. Ultimately, it’s a matter of quantity versus quality, and which we value more in how we approach writing and what we choose to read.