What is it about a misspelled word or typographical error than drives some readers to fury? We live in a world with wars, poverty, terminal cancers, rampant gun violence, politicians who prefer sound bites to serving their constituents and other social ills that rip apart the fabric of society, but what gets some people seeing red is a typo. I know this because they aim their rage at me. They send me their fury in emails and text messages, sometimes saying I should be fired as a result of them. The notes are some of the meanest I receive. Even-tempered people write about typos, too. They suggest hiring more copy editors or enlisting retired people to copy edit our stories for free. They nicely tell me that I’m failing them and must do better. Many are aware that we once had an army of copy editors who read everything for grammar and spelling errors. The number we had is hard to fathom today even though they were here as late as 15 years ago. Our business model has changed dramatically since then, reducing our resources dramatically. We focus what we have on generating as much content as possible. Even with the army of copy editors back in the day, though, we had typos. We were never perfect. No newsroom was. Perfection is an impossible goal. Worth striving for, of course, but impossible to attain. Let’s talk about perfection. I’ve mentioned in previous columns that I’m a hobbyist woodworker. I started about 35 years ago and have spent many an hour since then at the workbench. Our house is filled with furniture and a lot of other things I’ve made, but I’ve never come anywhere close to perfection. Everything I’ve made has flaws. Nearly 20 years ago, I made a set of mission furniture that has been in our living room ever since. Two of the pieces have flaws that I cannot not see. They drive me nuts. But no one else has ever spotted them, even when I mention that they have flaws. (I’ve never fessed up to what they are.) Here’s the thing: The furniture works, in spite of its flaws, because it serves its purpose. It looks pretty good, sits easy and is made to last. Now think about the typo. Our staff of just over 70 people cranks out an astounding amount of content on an impressive number of topics. Thousands of stories a month. Many dozens of podcast episodes. Social media posts. Text messages. YouTube videos. The amount of typing that goes on around here is inestimable. The number of individual keystrokes our staff taps out is in the millions. There’s no way we won’t have typos. Who does anything millions of times without making mistakes. Our content works, in spite of its flaws, because it serves its purpose. It conveys information to the audience, which readily consumes it. Our readers cannot get enough information about the Statehouse, the Browns or the arts. And the typos don’t stop them from consuming it. (I should acknowledge that I once foolishly thought we could corral the typo. I caught some attention a decade ago for issuing an ill-considered zero tolerance policy for typos. That was simply never going to happen.) When it comes to perfection, let me ask you this: Are you perfect in your job? Do you never make a mistake in the performance of your duties? If you make a mistake, does it result in someone expressing rage? So, for those who write me such caustic notes, how about knocking off the condescension about our typos until you attain perfection in your job? Please, continue to let us know about our mistakes. We fix them online as soon as we learn of them. But enough of the anger and viciousness. The people in this newsroom are doing the best they can to cover this region with the resources we have at hand. They work at a breakneck pace that is nothing like what existed in newsrooms 30 and 40 years ago. They do that to bring you as much information as possible. And know that the typos bother them when they make them. We keep looking for new ways to reduce them. We use software to spot them. We try to do extra reads before publishing. Artificial intelligence offers some hope in the not-distant future. They’ll always be there, though. Nobody’s perfect. I’m at [email protected]. Thanks for reading. | 