Blame it on the fact that I’m reading Isaac Asimov at the moment, but I have a theory stuck in my head. Bear with me since I’m not a sciencebrain, but there was something in there about how you can either have one Universe or infinite Universes, but it doesn’t make sense to have two. If you have two, there must be an infinite amount, because any other finite number is ridiculous.
Which is why I’m going insane. We’re on deadline here at work and we’ve been catching stupid mistakes all week, exponentially more frequent the more stressed and tired we all are. So I started reading a circ (magazine-speak for a circulated copy of a story we’re working on) and caught exactly one mistake – a missing “e” at the end of “the. Easy enough.
Then for a lark, I read it again, paying special attention to the captions on the product images. Then I caught another mistake, an “a” where one did not belong.
Then I read it standing UP, because I was convinced a change of venue would help. I caught another one – “deskop” instead of “desktop”.
This is when Asimov’s Universes occurred to me.
So I read it three more times, and caught two more mistakes.
According to Asimov, I could read it for infinity and catch an infinite amount of mistakes. With an infinite amount of monkeys. And eventually, the story on imaging essentials would turn into Hamlet.
So I handed the circ back to my boss and threw my hands up and let the chips (and the infinite mistakes and the monkeys flinging infinite amounts of poo around) fall where they may.
Asimov is great, but Dad and Stuart are speeding over the Queensboro, two shining knights to sweep me away from work, and they’re going to take me for hamburgers and then to Rhode Island. So I’m throwing in the towel, giving up the ghost, and other expressions as well. Take THAT, Isaac.
an infinite number of infinite possibilities for error
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You have a proclivity towards writing about monkeys throwing poo. I find it quite charming!! Have a great weekend.
Isaac is wonderful for so many things, but maybe not as a guide for proofreaders. Copy for publication is not a universe, much as it might feel like one when you’re in it up to your twitching eyelids. I find it helpful to read copy line by line from the bottom up, so I’m not tempted to engage in any mental-optical shortcuts, but the copy is a finite, bounded reality, in which only a finite number of errors can exist – unless they self-propagate, which I understand sometimes happens under deadline.
Borges wrote a great story about the universe as a library full of books that were full of gibberish which, if properly sorted and evaluated, led one to the inexorable numinous truth of existence. I, however, prefer the crisp prose and piercing inquiries you offer us through my deskop. I say, take two leeks and call me in the morning.
I don’t know what it is you do, but I am glad I don’t have your job.
You just described my life for 40 hours every week. Insanity!
A very smart guy from MIT once told me that the time allotted for any given task correlates exactly to the amount of time it takes to accomplish. So the longer you have to nitpick and proofread, the longer it takes to finish. That said: one trick I learned during my editing days was to read the sentences backwards, starting at the end of the document. That way it’s harder to gloss over the phrases you know so well.
this is by no means related to your entry, but i came across this in the NYT today (chances are you may have read this) and I thought of you: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/travel/14next.html
Very interesting stuff. You’ve inspired me to thumb through my copy of “Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe”–no Isaac, but asking questions along the same lines.