Jonny McCambridge: What happens when your brain gets it wrong?

It usually begins on a Saturday with the pursuit of inspiration. This generally involves me staring out the window while holding an expression of great seriousness and importance. Occasionally I will nod my head when an idea of profundity and wisdom stirs within me. More often I will doze off and wake up later with saliva drooling down my cheek.

Next I may type a few lines into my laptop, then a few more, enjoying the experience of how the concept grows and flourishes like a seed in the ground. Great depths of creativity and originality pour out of me as I exhaust every possible line of reason and argument on the chosen subject, until I am satisfied there is absolutely nothing more which can be said. Then I do a word count and realise I’m 400 words short and have to pad.

My newly composed work is then transferred onto a templated page on my computer. The text is made to fit and then captions, pull quotes and headlines are chosen. The headline can often be the most difficult part, with the necessity for short words and a catchy clause. Long words don’t work in headlines. Good ideas have fallen before because I cannot surmise the breadth of my creation into 30 or so characters. A previous totemic piece ‘The floccinaucinihilipilification of sesquipedalianism - my thoughts’ so perished and remains tragically unread by the masses.

After all this is done I read over the column to weed out the mistakes. Then I read it again, and again. At the end of this a couple more capable colleagues will examine the presented article before it is deemed worthy of publication.

And so it was recently. Another column neared its public premier when I received an email from one of my workmates. It stated: ‘Just reading your column. I’m sure you would have spotted it but there’s a typo three paragraphs from the end.’

Now, some people don’t like having their own mistakes pointed out to them, but I appreciated the generosity of the gesture. There was also a delicacy in the correspondence with the sender being gracious enough not to be specific in spelling out the error that I had made. He was gently nudging me towards finding my own blunder.

So I returned to the column. I read the paragraph in question. I could spot no mistake. I read it over and over. I perused the lines immediately before and after. I read the whole column again but could recognise no imperfection. I frowned.

Eventually I had to send an email back.

‘I’m really sorry, but I’m not seeing it. What is the typo?’

So my friend sent me another email with the offending line. It read ‘When we our taking our first faltering steps...’

I stared at it with some embarrassment because the fault was now so obvious. I had mixed up the words ‘our’ and ‘are’. After a career spent writing and editing I had made a mistake which my seven-year-old son could have spotted within seconds. Worse, I had probably read that line several dozens times and not noticed it. What was going on? Was this an undeniable sign of deterioration in my brain, a signal that it was time for me to consider another career? Over the past 18 months I have written two books, but now I had tripped up on the simplest of hurdles and a little bit of my self-confidence had been punctured.

So, as is my habit, I entered a period of introspection. The truth, I concluded, is that this is a phenomenon I have witnessed several times before in newspapers, where the writer cannot see a mistake which seems obvious to others. And the explanation, of course, does lie in the brain.

I’m no scientist but I am aware that there is a recognised phenomenon known as generalisation. The crux of it is that the writing is a complex process and the brain is occupied with complicated issues such as trying to knit words together into sentences and paragraphs in order to convey meaning. Our brains concentrate on the bigger picture while more mundane tasks such as spelling are automatic. Even if the order is wrong our brains still process the intended meaning.

To illustrate, I rmebemer bneig tlod yaers ago taht it deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod aepapr, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is the frsit and lsat lttetres. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit dficufilty.

Better still. I can throw in a few numbers.

Y0UR M1ND 15 R34D1NG 7H15 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17 (the spellchecker on my wee computer is about to blow a fuse now).

This process is hardened when you read your own work. In essence your brain already knows what the final destination and the intended meaning is. So the version that your eyes tell you is on the page is competing with the version that your brain has already formulated, and it can blind you to your own mistakes. When another person reads your work they don’t know what the final destination is, so they pay more attention and are more likely to spot the typo.

So, I wondered to myself, what is the point of spending so much time on this? (There had better be one or else this ends up as the longest justification for making a typo in the history of journalism.)

Um....uh....

Well, I look at my own character, how I trust my brain to tell me that I am always right and that my accepted thought process is inevitably the correct one. Of course my brain is fallible. Maybe it is time to accept the lesson that I am not always right and that other viewpoints, expressions and arguments which clash with my own are equally worthy of consideration. Maybe the point is tolerance and a lessening of pride.

Better still, maybe the point is learning to accept help when there is someone who is willing to lend a hand

Will that do?