I postef a few days ago about blogger JeffGoins 500 Word a Day challenge - while I am not taking his channllenge I do get an email from him every day with adive for those that do. Today he asdvises writers to forget about correcting grammar and punctions saand spelling and just write 500 word. Worry about corrections later. Sondes like a good idea, so Ive decide to try this for today's post.
I'm sure like a lot of people, I make a lot of typos as I write with a keyboard. My fingers sometime seem too big for the small keys and I oftern hit the key beeside the intedned one. I also mix up words like from and form - my fingers fdon;t seem to be connected to my brain when I write certain words. So far it is proving difficult for me to write this withour hitting the backspace of delete key!
Kevoin Ashton, in hios book "How to Fly a Horse" recounts the sotrey of Stephen Wolfram who used a keylooger to log all keystrokes over since 2003. Guess what - the key he hit most often was teh "Delete" key - he hasd used it more than 7 million times and estinated that he deleted 7% of all charcters he typed. Ashton aslo examines what Stephen King (the author) does and estimates that must erase almost two words for everyone he keeps.
All of this means that we are erasing a lot of what we do whne we use a computer. IN addition to making corrections, we sometimes sp[end a long time writing stuff only to delete it later. Maybe it's not good enough, or is out of date, or we just don;t want it anymore.
My keyboard at work is heavily stained with dust - but interestingly I can see some keys are clean from being used a lot, while otehrs are covered in dusty grime 'cos I hardly ebery use tehm (note to self - clean your keyborad!).
I've just checked the abouve text in Microsoft Word and it is 335 char words. IN addition too loads of typs I can also see a lot of red squiggly lines indicating erros.
Try this yourslef - it is quite liberating, but also an intersting thought about how we write and and how much we waste.
Admission: I pressed Backspce twice during this ecxperiment as I automatically corrected pressing an incorrect key - it is hard not to use it?!
I'm sure like a lot of people, I make a lot of typos as I write with a keyboard. My fingers sometime seem too big for the small keys and I oftern hit the key beeside the intedned one. I also mix up words like from and form - my fingers fdon;t seem to be connected to my brain when I write certain words. So far it is proving difficult for me to write this withour hitting the backspace of delete key!
Kevoin Ashton, in hios book "How to Fly a Horse" recounts the sotrey of Stephen Wolfram who used a keylooger to log all keystrokes over since 2003. Guess what - the key he hit most often was teh "Delete" key - he hasd used it more than 7 million times and estinated that he deleted 7% of all charcters he typed. Ashton aslo examines what Stephen King (the author) does and estimates that must erase almost two words for everyone he keeps.
All of this means that we are erasing a lot of what we do whne we use a computer. IN addition to making corrections, we sometimes sp[end a long time writing stuff only to delete it later. Maybe it's not good enough, or is out of date, or we just don;t want it anymore.
My keyboard at work is heavily stained with dust - but interestingly I can see some keys are clean from being used a lot, while otehrs are covered in dusty grime 'cos I hardly ebery use tehm (note to self - clean your keyborad!).
I've just checked the abouve text in Microsoft Word and it is 335 char words. IN addition too loads of typs I can also see a lot of red squiggly lines indicating erros.
Try this yourslef - it is quite liberating, but also an intersting thought about how we write and and how much we waste.
Admission: I pressed Backspce twice during this ecxperiment as I automatically corrected pressing an incorrect key - it is hard not to use it?!
No comments:
Post a Comment