everybody typos

This is an occasional series based on actual emails I receive, and my actual responses.  Everybody Writes is just shy of its second birthday. Since its birth, I’ve heard frequently from readers who have highlighted the same few typos in the text. (Sometimes nicely. Sometimes less so.) The “few typos” sounds dismissive. But the truth is that those typos pain me. I’ve cleaned up (most) of them by now… but earlier copies of the book are still in the wild. So I still get letters like the one below, questioning the book’s credibility. That’s the thing about writing a book about writing: You set the bar pretty high. So you’d better be the kind of linguistic pole vaulter who’d qualify for Rio, if linguistic pole vaulting was actually an Olympic sport. (Side note: It should be.) So why do mistakes still happen, no matter how toned and buff we might […]