Typo Negative

How people deal with typos in instant messaging (IM) says something their character. What it says, we're not sure. But something.

Are you the type of person who , when IMing just lets it gly and assumes that yuour ingerloocutor will get the giust of what you'tre saying regardless of any67 unflortruabnet mistakes?

Or are you the type who feels the need to produce clean copy at all times, even if it leads to moments like this:


----the type who geels the need--

Damn it!

BACKSPACEBACKSPACEBACKSPACE. . . . .

--the type who geels the need--

DAMN IT!

BACKSPACEBACKSPACEBACKSPACE. . . . .

--the type who geels the need--

ARRRRRRGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you use "backspace" more than the spacebar?

We, obviously, are in the latter camp. A side effect of our profession, perhaps. We demand--not perfection from our students, obviously--but conscientiousness. And typos suggest a lack of care. In the olden days of manual typewriters, one could overlook teh occasional typo. We could hardly expect people to take time to scratch out every mistake or kill countless trees in the pursuit of paper perfection. But if all it takes to produce the illusion of flawlessness is careful proofreading and a handful of keystrokes, then there's really no excuse.

In the last paragraph, we intentionally used "teh," which we understand is something of an ironic buzzword. People deliberately transpose the letters that are so often transposed accidentally by way--we guess--of postmodern commentary on the act of producing digital text. A question arises: How do we know if the typer of "teh" is being ironic or merely careless? And should we assume that every "the" is merely a mistyped piece of satire?

In our classes, we make a point of telling students that, if ever we misspell something on the board, it is actually a test of their powers of observation. We think they've fallen for it.

Or should we say, they've fallen for ti?