Word Perfect 

I’ve been working with an editor on my latest book, I’ll be Your Server, a series of reflections on servants in the Bible. As we go back and forth on placement of commas or singular versus plural verbs, I’m aware that we’ll not catch everything we should. I’ve increasingly accepted that there are no perfect books. All my books, and I assume all other books as well, have errors: typos, grammatical mistakes, incorrect word usage, or whatever.

My son, Matthew, is an excellent proofreader. He invariably catches numerous errors in my drafts. But even he doesn’t catch everything, and within about 17 minutes after opening my latest book, he can be guaranteed to find at least one more elusive typo. Sigh…

This leads to acute schadenfreude [pleasure at someone else’s misfortune] when I discover the typos of others, and I’m reminded of their humanity—and mine.

Three examples. A music organization in Spokane proudly advertised its upcoming “12-hour continuous recital.” Unfortunately, they omitted the “i” in “recital.”

The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, at the University of Texas in Austin, published its commencement brochure describing itself as “The School of Pubic Affairs.” The School duly issued an apology for what it termed its “eggregious typo.”

Then there is the so-called “Wicked Bible,” published in 1631. It proclaimed in Exodus 20:14 that “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

I’ve recently read Dreyer’s English, by the former copy-editing chief of Penguin-Random House, Benjamin Dreyer. He notes how difficult it is to attain perfection in editing and even he continues to find errors in books that he has edited.

Writers and editors are uncomfortably aware of the first part of Alexander Pope’s line, “To err is human, to forgive divine.” But we turn to you, dear reader, to embrace the bit about forgivenes.

[300 words]