Even the best of us make mistakes. How often have you hit ‘Send’ on an email only to wish you could stop it going as you’ve just spotted the howler in the middle of the third line? And the tweets Andrew recently scheduled in the early hours of the morning are testament to this phenomenon too. What phenomenon am I talking about? The wonderful ability of the human mind to ‘fill in the gaps’ – to read what should be there rather than what is there... at least until it’s too late to do anything about it.
We all know it’s much easier to make this sort of mistake with something you’ve written, but even when it’s someone else’s work, we see patterns that don’t exist and make huge leaps of expectation.
Sometimes, though, it’s plain old lack of knowledge that’s the problem – people are hazy on some of the ‘rules’ of grammar and punctuation.
Just for fun, Andrew and I had a go at the Guardian’s grammar and punctuation quiz.
I’m sure our clients will be pleased to know that we passed with flying colours.How do you think you’ll get on? Go on, I dare you...
Alison
