Not at all, please share what you find! I originally saw it in an article snippet, but can't for the life of me remember where, smh. It was shown to me by someone that thought it'd be of interest.
http://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/opinion/tn-blr-me-aword-20151218-story.html I found that, and the "Wired" article it references. I tend to think of "Wired" as tabloid-ish, but the research from Tom Stafford is well-summarized in the article above. It has to do with brain power and our preconceived ideas about what we're trying to convey. It's like laughing at a joke you just told without realizing you didn't deliver the punchline. You know what you meant, but nobody else does. Sometimes we spend so much time focusing on the world of a story, we take certain ideas as "common knowledge." Then someone expresses their confusion, and we realize we've left out important details. Pobody's nerfect.
there's an interesting bit here https://www.betteratenglish.com/proofread-like-a-pro-how-to-catch-mistakes-your-spell-checker-misses - the essence is that your brain knows what you meant to write and thus skips over missing letters etc
I'm trying to find reputable studies but, like @Autumn Rose Broughton, I can't remember which ones I've read and how to find them. Grr. I'm a professional editor and we all know it to be true that you need another person to catch all the errors in your work, and I know there are good studies that show it... but for the life of me, I can't find them.
I hate to be that kind of pedant but... I don't think it's even close to a given that you can't find all the errors in your work. I think it's hard and it takes time and you will have to put the book down for a while and come back to it when you can't remember the wording you intended. But errors are something that you can catch just because they are, well, wrong. Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't want to bet a lot of money that I've weeded my errors down to literally zero. But to get them low enough that I'm confident in sending my work off? Well, yeah, that's no a problem for me. Now there are certainly other kinds of imperfections that I think you do need other people for, whether pro or keen amateur, particularly you need someone who isn't you to tell you if scenes are doing what you want, if characters are coming across how you think they do, even for spotting which frequently used words stand out and which don't. But for like straight up errors? For spotting your instead of you're? Nah, you just need to get some distance to the book and when you come back you can spot it exactly like anyone else would.
Given that there are still occasional errors in published books which have been through the whole process including passed a professional editor, I don't think we can ever be certain we've got every single last one. distance can help and software is getting better (PWA /Grammarly are both a lot better than the built in checkers) but imo you still need a line edit and proof read even if you don't need a structural one
Yes indeed; no matter how confident you are in any aspect of your book you always want some fresh eyes on it. It's always worth doing that and it does no harm for someone to hand it back and say "Couldn't find anything wrong with that". For piece of mind if nothing else it's worth having someone else have a look. But I do think that most writer can get their work to the point of having only very occasional errors; and the last thing I want when handing someone my book they've offered to read out of the goodness of their heart is make them slog through my poor grammar, you know?
Of course not. But I'd bet my house that I catch fewer errors in my own work than other people's. It's proven.
Your error 'piece' instead of 'peace' jumped out at me the moment I read it there. But you know you meant to type peace, so you were much less likely to spot it even if you had checked this post for errors (maybe you did check it - I usually read my posts before I click post reply.)
Actually I got wrecked by auto correct. And no, shockingly, I don't spend weeks proofing my forum posts, nor do I put them down for several weeks and come back to check them. And that's exactly my point. It's not that I don't make errors, it's that I can remove them if I put the effort in.
And I didn't see it at all, because I haven't trained myself to have an editor's eye. Editing's a skill/mindset/ability. I firmly believe that others can see errors I can't see in my work just because they're my errors, but I ALSO firmly believe that the "others" in question should be people with editing skill. JUST fresh eyes isn't enough - we need a combination of eyes and ability. Can a self-published author develop that skill? Yeah, probably. Well enough that it might make sense for two authors who've developed the skill to trade manuscripts for proofreading. Just like a self-published author can probably develop graphic design skills well enough to make a presentable cover. Eventually. But all of this takes a lot of time. If you're self-publishing because you want to master all aspects of the publishing process, excellent, take the time. But if you're self-publishing because you want to be a writer... focus on writing. Get someone else to do the other jobs.
Okay, well you carry on, Lost, and I, and other professional editors, will carry on swapping our writing for proofreading.
I've found that when my writing looks even a little different--different font, exported to PDF, printed, whatever--I catch more errors. So I definitely agree that familiarity makes it harder to catch errors. Not that I'm suggesting that as a solution to catching all your own errors. But it does seem to help a little.
Yep, I will go through and edit my first draft completely, then immediately send the Word doc to FedEx Office for printing and go through the whole MS again on paper with a red pen. I catch a lot of additional errors that way, and it's my last act before sending out the MS to beta readers - they deserve as clean a copy as I'm capable of.
