WRITING: More Visual Editing

I wonder if I’m the only one who grimaced at the full screen slideshow display where ‘complexity’ was spelled without benefit of an e or i. 

It’s difficult to proofread your own work, and it often takes readers or a workshop session to find the flaws, but there are some among us who just spot them in all forms of printed matter–hardcover books that go through many editing sessions.  My friend Chris once magic marked her way through a newspaper till it grew heavy with red highlights.

But spelling and punctuation and grammar errors are just a small portion of an editing position.  Experience and knowledge through reading, reading, and more reading
will eventually improve everyone’s abilities to proofread and get down
to more serious mental editing of their own work.  But it does make me
wonder if there’s a slight chance that the personality trait of
nitpicky is a part of it as well. Copyediting is one thing though; taking it further to include continuity, story detail, timeline, tense, etc. is truly an art. 

There are those that spot the inconsistencies in film narrative–details such as wristwatches suddenly appearing in what should be a single event, yet was shot on different days.

Language and use of standard story elements of plot and theme and narrative structure are complicated areas that may seem easy to define yet as we all know, are more difficult to assess within a story either while writing (yes, throw away those outlines folks, unless it’s an historical novel) or reading. 

Then there are those who have become dependent upon software devices such as Spellcheck…