For someone who generally writes for a living and occasionally does it here, I’ve come to horrible realisation about my writing habits. No, it’s not that I never get around to tackling the things I thought I’d do years ago and probably never will. It’s that I simply don’t proof read anything.
On an odd whim, I re-read last week’s bit of thing soon after posting and promptly picked up on a couple of inconsistencies. See, whenever I do these bits of word leakage right here, I type into the Notes function on my iPad. By doing this, I naturally assume the iPad autocorrects everything for me, which it does. It just stylised “iPad” correctly twice, even though I’ve only tapped lower case letters. Even that case of “I’ve” only required me to type “ive”, and what’s even more frustrating is that had to manually cancel the autocorrect on the latter one just to demonstrate my point.
Since the autocorrect kicks in every time without fail, you’d think that all those minor inaccuracies, mis-taps and neglected apostrophes would surely get picked up on, right? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Accidental taps of incorrect letters in incorrect sequences are often corrected quicker than you can say “Hey Siri”. The problem I end up facing though is that some of those autocorrected words make no sense in the context of what surrounds it.
In the aforementioned broadcast of language I did last week, there were several bits of text that just didn’t quite make sense, like the word “still” somehow materialising as the word “stick”. I figured this out through the magical power of actually reading the damn thing through, you know, like humans do. You know, like writers should do (I was taught) in order to catch those bits what not sense making. Nice to see I’m putting that Bachelor’s Degree to good use.
Some years ago, I conducted a mass proof read of everything published under this particular banner to that point. I called it the “Grand Proof Read of 2011” or some shit like that because I’m literal and unimaginative. To further demonstrate that, I’ve changed the title of this whole banner because what was there before just seemed too wordy and unnecessarily existential. I’ve also been considering conducting a second grand proof read – most likely to be titled “The Second Grand Proof Read” – to actually look through everything up to that point and slap myself over the head every time I come across similar, stupid mistakes.
I also plan to look through postings of old, using that opportunity, in order to see what bits of past nonsense can be salvaged and (to a degree) re-written. The general aim would be to compile a collection of old and new articles that could potentially, in some form or another, exist elsewhere besides here. Say, for example, on physically bound paper sheets or trapped inside a Kindle or mown into an overgrown field like a linguistically convoluted set of crop circles.
I’d also aim to produce bits of stuff about aspects of culture and society within the public consciousness, rather than just my own narcissistic shite. After all, that’s originally what I wanted this space to be about. And there have been some rare instances where I’ve succeeded there: just the other week I did a thing based on awards ceremonies, I’ve written an open letter addressed to a video game and I once made a load of waffle about watching an episode of Masterchef, which (sadly) didn’t contain waffles.
As first-paragraphly mentioned though, I never get around to tackling e things I think I’ll do so that may have to wait some years.
Finally, in honour of the content you just begrudgingly dragged your gaze over, none of the above has been proof read. Neither has the next bit.
Delving back into the daily playlist of BBC Radio 6music, but presenting it like I’m some left-field, cultured genius, this is a song that I was surprised to learn didn’t come from the 70s. There’s a certain indescribable vibe about it that (in my mind) just places it around such a particular time period. Either that or it can be described and my brain just doesn’t want to use the additional energy to do it.
It doesn’t even have the energy to come up with a second paragraph of further description. Quite frankly, I’d be amazed if a video even shows up underneath this at all. Oh, wait, no. There it is…
White Denim – Ha Ha Ha Ha (Yeah)
Jamie Walsh 
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