You’re Just My Typo

To all of those who have complained over the years about my typos, misprints, errors, omitted words, dittography, haplography, misspellings, mistakes, scribal errors, or other minor boo-boos, I’m not sorry. There will be no erratum nor corrigendum issued (including any necessitated by my potential misuse of those words). None of these keyboardian goofs were accidental. It was my way of enabling you to be certain that these missives were being delivered by a human being. I typo, therefore I am. Not only were my countless typos intentional, they were prescient and prophetic (or prophylactic, I need to check Grammarly). It turns out that typos that once enraged readers are now all the rage. “Although typos and other mistakes don’t suddenly mean that a piece of writing is good or praiseworthy, to some people, they are at least signs that it is worth reading. On a base level, many of us are willing to invest time in reading a long email if we sense that someone actually wrote it, line by line.” (The basic rule these days: If a note is perfect, it was written by AI. If it has typos, it was written by a human. And if it has a lot of all-caps, it was written by a monster.) The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Typo Vibe Shift. “Some job applicants are intentionally adding typos to their cover letters to prove that they, and not an AI program, wrote them. Celebrities and CEOs are sending out error-ridden emails and Instagram Stories, and instead of getting a scolding, they are praised for sounding authentic. On some dating apps, where people are, somewhat absurdly, prompted to compose their profiles with AI, typos are apparently no longer an automatic repellant. Nicole Ellison, a University of Michigan professor whose 2006 study showed that dating profiles with spelling mistakes turn people off, now thinks people are warming to the Tinder typo. ‘A typo maybe signals that you actually do care.'” (Now you know: There’s never been a newsletter writer who cares more about their readers than I do.)