writermag.com • The Writer | 5“A poet can survive everything
but a misprint.” —Oscar Wildework hits the shelves. We eagerly crack open the
spine to a random page...
“Yoo-hoo, doll!” You wave to us and do a little tap
dance, though your theatrics are hardly necessary.
In fact, from this point forward it is impossible
not to see you every time we revisit our published
works that were meant to reflect our scholarship,
our literary acumen, or at least that one clever
idea on which we had pinned all our hopes. Hey,
Typo, didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not nice
to gloat?
And so it has come to this. Because we writers are
mere mortals, and clearly no match for your
wiles, we have more lately turned to artificial
intelligence and algorithms to help thwart your
efforts. How foolish of us, to think software like
autocorrect could save us. Clearly, you have had
autocorrect in your pocket since the day this pre-
sumptive data validation function (as if ) was
released into the world. I see your influence in
every one of its weirdo text replacements that
aren’t just misguided but often mortifying. Do me
a favor, Typo, the next time you two get together,
please pass along this message from me: Frankly,
autocorrect, I’m getting a bit tired of your shirt.
“Write online with confidence!” Here, I know that
you know that I am quoting Grammarly, one of
your most recent adversaries, an AI-powered app
that promises to check our work for hundreds of
common and advanced editorial errors. (Subject-
verb agreement! Wordiness! Irregular verb conju-
gations! Plagiarism!) Yeah, right. I think you see
Grammarly as Batman to your Joker. Sure, Bat-
man is smart and obsessive and renowned as the
Dark Knight, but he doesn’t have any real super-
powers and – holy irreproachaboly! – with that
moral code of his, everyone knows that he can’t
take a Joker.(Get it? Joke...Joker. Well, I think it’s funny. Or
will readers think it’s just another typo?!)I am sure all of the frustration you cause writers
is funny to you. I am sure you have been laughing
at your clever antics for a long, long time, as far
back as 1621, for example, when you insinuated
yourself into the Bible no less, so that the text of
one of the Ten Commandments read Thou shalt
commit adultery. Help me understand, what part
of adultery is funny? Similarly, where is the
humor in this other example of omission, in
which a story about war crimes proclaimed: We
must repeat these atrocities. And what about the
trick you played on the poor Reverend Robert
Forby in 1830, whose scholarly work The Vocabu-
lary of East Anglia opened with this heading:
Peeface. (OK, that one is a little bit funny.)Speaking from personal experience, I must warn
you that sometimes you go too far. Maybe writers
should learn to laugh off some of the mistakes and
misprints that inevitably show up in our work, but
not when it comes to our good names. For
instance, I failed to see any humor when I looked
at a published piece of mine and discovered that
my hard work was credited to a “Jon B. Cole.”
That’s right, Jon B. Cole, which is not my first
name and never has been. So, dear Typo, the next
time you are thinking about playing around with a
writer’s words, just remember this: It’s all fun and
games until somebody loses an i.Sincerely,Joni B. Cole
—Joni B. Cole is the author of the acclaimed book Good Naked:
Reflections on How to Write More, Write Better, and Be
Happier. She teaches creative writing at various MFA programs,
conferences, and social service programs and is the founder of
the Writer’s Center of White River Junction, Vermont. For more
info, visit jonibcole.com.