A WORD, PLEASE:Don’t feel bad, typos are common

Dear screenwriters, fiction writers, copywriters, letter writers, memo writers, resume writers, e-mail writers, manifesto writers and public lavatory poets: It’s time we had a talk ? about typos.

Wait. Before you turn to the comics ? it’s not what you think. This is not a scolding. In fact, let me save you trouble of turning the page: Cathy doesn’t like swimsuit season. There. Mystery solved.

Now we can get back to the business of typos. And here’s what I want to say: Don’t feel bad.

That’s right. This is not one of those all-too-common rants about the sloppy English of adolescent bloggers and Yale-educated world leaders.

Yes, there are a lot of people out there who blatantly butcher the language who may, in fact, deserve a severe scolding. But I don’t think the adolescent bloggers read this column (except on the rare occasions when I talk about the difference between “gender” and “sex”). And Yale-educated world leaders don’t read newspapers at all. That leaves just us want-to-speak-and-write-well types ? people who, like the members of writing groups I participate in, go sheet white whenever someone catches a mistake in their writing. Take Ellie (not her real name). In the rough first draft of a script, Ellie repeatedly typed “it’s” when she meant to type “its.” A potential problem, I know, but not in this case. You see, Ellie had already demonstrated throughout the script that she knew the difference. “It’s” with an apostrophe is never a possessive. It’s always a contraction. It means either “it is” or “it has.” No exceptions. The possessive for “it” is counterintuitive because unlike every other possessive under the sun, it takes no apostrophe. It’s “its.” “The cat lost its collar.”

Yet when one of the group members mentioned the typos to Ellie, she didn’t say, “It’s just a first draft and I’ll clean it up later.” She didn’t say anything at all. She was mortified. Her expression was one I’ve seen many times on many different faces: shame, fear, certainty that the writer has been exposed as a dolt and a fraud who deserves neither success nor love nor even basic cable.

And that feeling, I’m convinced, is completely counterproductive to good grammar and usage. Because by not realizing that other people make the same mistakes, we either give up hope we’ll ever be able to use the language well or, worse, we begin to overcompensate.

Take my sentence above, “Don’t feel bad.”

When we’re not feeling insecure about our grammar knowledge, this is how most of us speak. But when we doubt our first instincts, that can get us into trouble. Because that’s when we say things like, “Don’t feel badly.”

“Feel” is a verb, we tell ourselves, and adverbs modify verbs, therefore it’s got to be “badly,” right?

Wrong. Apply this same logic to a sentence like, “I am happy,” or, “He seems nice,” and it becomes clear that the adverb rule isn’t as cut-and-dried as we thought. “I am happily” and “He seems nicely” are both, quite clearly, wrong. The reason is that verbs like “ be” and “ seem” and even “feel” are a different category of verbs. They’re called linking verbs. And unlike the other kind, they take adjectives and not adverbs. None of my grammar books has a really clear definition of linking (also called “copular”) verbs. The best I can describe them is that they refer to a subject’s state of being. But even this definition, which is clear for “I am,” becomes less clear with “I feel.” So just trust me on that one. And know that in writing, fast and careless is sometimes better than over-analyzing and self-doubt.

In other words, feel good and you’re much more likely to do well.