{"id":1470,"date":"2022-11-23T16:44:24","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T16:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2023-03-05T10:07:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T10:07:39","slug":"when-thin-letters-vanish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/23\/when-thin-letters-vanish\/","title":{"rendered":"When Thin Letters Vanish…"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Or:\nDon't make a pubic spectacle of yourself<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u2018Spellchecker won’t notice if you’ve left the l<\/em> out of public<\/em>,\u2019 I used to warn my students at essay submission time.\u00a0<\/div>
A\u00a0brief pause while they worked it out, then some\u00a0polite chuckles.\u00a0<\/div>
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It was a joke, but it was backed up by experience. In a decade marking essays in the Theatre and Performance Studies fields, I encountered that particular typo more times than you\u2019d expect. I read about pubic entertainments, pubic spaces, pubic protests and pubic spectacles.<\/div>
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(That last was the one that broke my composure, by the way. My mischievous brain connected spectacles with eyewear, triggering one of the finest fits of giggles ever to beset an academic during working hours.)<\/div>
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These days, Grammar Check will flag up most unwarranted pubics. But that\u2019s no reason to relax. Not all writing is done in MS Word and, essays aside, final proofs are seldom in that format.\u00a0<\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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And the l\u2019<\/em>s keep vanishing.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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It\u2019s thin letters that disappear most frequently. Especially when they\u2019re next to other thin letters. That lower-case l<\/em> in public<\/em>, tucked beside a similarly narrow i<\/em> and\u00a0flanked by attention-grabbing, bulbous b\u2019<\/em>s and c\u2019<\/em>s… the eye knows that there should be something skinny there, so it accepts the i<\/em> and fails to notice that the l<\/em> has slipped away.<\/div>
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The second i<\/em> in millionaire<\/em> is another recurrent runaway. Four tall, narrow letters in a row \u2013 that takes some keeping track of. Our reading instincts tell us to expect two dotted i\u2019<\/em>s, but millonaire<\/em> provides a decoy and we often fall for it.<\/div>
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Sometimes they slip in somewhere else instead,\u00a0like arthiritis<\/em>. That one\u2019s usually a spelling error, not a typo, but it gets away with it for very similar reasons: the thin imposter i<\/em> squashed in between the h\u2019<\/em>s leg and the r\u2019<\/em>s back, with two more decoy i\u2019<\/em>s appearing later in the word…<\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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They\u2019re tricky, thin letters.<\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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They need careful watching, or they\u2019ll make a pubic spectacle of you.<\/p>

Want help watching them? You know what to do!\u00a0Call the\u00a0Proofs Detective<\/a>: your private contact in the\u00a0Missing Letters Bureau.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Hoping to hear from you…<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sincerely Yours,<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Proofs Detective<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or: Don’t make a pubic spectacle of yourself \u2018Spellchecker won’t notice if you’ve left the l out of public,\u2019 I used to warn my students at essay submission time.\u00a0A\u00a0brief pause while they worked it out, then some\u00a0polite chuckles.\u00a0\u00a0It was a joke, but it was backed up by experience. In a decade marking essays in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-proofreading","wpbf-post"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"the proofs detective","author_link":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/author\/lucynevittmac-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":1,"uagb_excerpt":"Or: Don’t make a pubic spectacle of yourself \u2018Spellchecker won’t notice if you’ve left the l out of public,\u2019 I used to warn my students at essay submission time.\u00a0A\u00a0brief pause while they worked it out, then some\u00a0polite chuckles.\u00a0\u00a0It was a joke, but it was backed up by experience. In a decade marking essays in the…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1679,"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proofsdetective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}