Friday, August 25, 2006

Detecting Corrections (click on this title)

I like to try to see if I can spot any "second thoughts" by a writer, where, they review what they wrote, and correct it in some way, but leave evidence of what it used to say. In this article, note this sentence:

For trucks that drive more than 100,000 miles per year, that's can be more than $2,000 per year in reduced fuel costs.

The typo here, obviously, is "that's can be...". What it tells about the thought process of the author is that at first he had "that's more than $2,000 per...". He probably reread that and thought "that's stating it too strongly. That may not be entirely true. I better tame it down." So, the edit was to add "can be".

Interesting. To me, anyway. And, by the way, I proof read this posting about 5 times.