The Perils of Editing

Before publishing my blog posts I try my best to review them and edit as necessary. I almost always find that, I leave things out. What I mean is that I tend not to give a full explanation. I have all of the details in my head, but I tend to leave gaps in the telling. So, once I am done with the draft, I need to read it over, and I more often than not feel the need to add the pertinent details.

Additionally, I see where I might say things better, and I make phrasing alterations as well.

But sometimes, editing just creates new problems, for I may decide to write something differently but then fail to clean up the previous wording carefully enough.

In fact, recently, after editing well, or so I had thought, I smugly scheduled my well edited post for publication. Later, after some people had already commented, I happened to notice a very bad mistake in the very first line. Unfortunately, I forget what it was now, but it was a typical case of making one change but not fully excising the previous wording.

Sometimes, however, the problem is opposite.

Many of my posts are pre-written and scheduled for later publication, so I have plenty of opportunity to revise. I normally schedule them to post at 7AM. This almost always works well because I generally rise long before then.

Recently however, after a rough night, I slept in long enough for a post to be published before I was able to look it over just one more time.

This was the final line of that post.

Whose old? I'm not old. They're old.

Mary G picked up on that, immediately, in Comments.

... I hate to say this to you since you are a sleep deprived person, but sleeping in makes old age almost worth it ... 'who's' = 'who is', contracted. 'Whose' is the adjective. I guess obnoxious ex English teachers never really retire. They are just tiresome.

 My reply.

I know Mary G but I get careless. 🤓😇🥺🙄

Her reply.

Very seldom. I can find a lot of messes in my own stuff if I review. Better not to do so?

My final follow up.

Nary G: Trying my best to edit often leads to more mistakes than if I had left it alone. I recently went through a post with what I thought was a fine-tooth comb. I congratulated myself and hit Publish. But when I looked again later, I found a mistake in the very first line.

I made my error (above) red just for this post to draw your attention to it. As you can plainly see, we had been writing back and forth about editing, and I wrote Nary G instead of Mary G.

BTW, in case it needs clarification at this point, I am a very poor typist (keyboarder). At some point, I should do some screen captures for your benefit to document this, but I think I have exposed my incompetence enough for one session.