The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
My Thoughts On Typos In Blog Posts
Earlier today, I wrote a post about whether a minor typo in a clerkship application should disqualify the candidate. Fittingly, my post had typos. I think I've fixed them, but maybe there are others.
I thought it might be useful to give my own thoughts on proofreading. Blogging is for me a form of release. I have lots of thoughts in my head, and writing them down helps me to make sense of things. My primary audience when I write is not you (sorry) but is me. Longtime readers may recall that while clerking for Judge Boggs, I was not allowed to blog. So I made my blog private, and continued writing blog posts that no one would see. (Well, a few friends had the password, but the site was not for public consumption.) When my clerkship finished, all of the posts were made public. To be sure, some posts I write are intended to influence public discourse, but most of my blogging is introspective.
To that end, typos don't bother me. I want to make sure my writing is clear and understandable, but my goal is not perfection. Each subsequent round of review takes time that I could be using to do something else. If I were to ensure that each post was flawless, I would end up writing far less. That is not a tradeoff I find worthwhile.
There is another aspect of my writing process that may not be obvious. I often have very discrete blocks of time to write, and I do not wish the project to extend beyond that block. Maybe I have 30 minutes before class starts to pump something out. Or it is late at night, I'm getting tired, and I need to wrap up a post before I call it a night. Today, for example, I had about 30 minutes on the elliptical, in which I conceived, wrote, and published the clerkship post. (I keep my laptop on a music stand adjacent to the elliptical so I can type while working out.)
You might ask, why don't I just pause the project when the time block finishes, and resume later. I'm sure I could fix errors after some sleep. But that wait is agonizing for me. My goal is to sort through my thoughts as quickly as possible, and move onto the next topic. To leave a post unpublished would make me keep coming back to it over and over again. I doubt I would be able to fall asleep if a project was still not fully developed. Once I hit the "Publish" button I can sign off and move on to the next project.
There are a few regular readers who email me typos. I will usually fix these promptly. I promise, I will respond pleasantly. Comments about typos will not be read.
For those curious, I wrote this post in a single five-minute block, after having thought about it for the past hour or so. I proof-read it once.
