For years I have been sending things to James for him to proof read and he always finds lots of embarrassing typos despite the fact that I had checked the document with a fine tooth comb. This spring he even found a typo in the title of a poster I was making.
I have always flipped letters and when it comes to reading can't ever seem to see the trees for the forest. In grade school, I was repeatedly told I was lazy, and I believed them. Now that I am older and I know that I check things over and over and still the mistakes are there, I realize the problem is out of my hands. I have grown to looove spell check and considered having James' wedding vows changed to "I promise to love, honour and proof read..."
For years, I though James had been blessed by sprinklely, glittery dust of the Eye-for-Detail Fairy. (She thought it was a better gig than collecting rejected body parts like her sister the Tooth Fairy. But I digress)
Anyway, for the first time ever, I got to proof one of James' papers last night. I am relieved to say The Chicken is fallible too. He has a bit of a blind eye to type-os in his own work too. Admittedly, not nearly as bad as me, but I caught at least two awkward sentences, several missing italicizations in chemical names, misuse of the word "attenuating", and a random bracket instead of a comma.
Some of it he can't help, sadly, because he is – sigh – an organic chemist. Metal complexes miraculously gain and lose ligands from nowhere in catalytic cycles, laughing in the face of the First Law of Thermodynamics. And, uch! Did you know what uW means to an organic chemist? No, not microWatts, like it means to the rest of the scientific community, but microwave!
I have tried an intervention to bring him to the dark, nano side but to no avail. Sigh. Ah well, no one is perfect.
12 years ago
No comments:
Post a Comment