The Abundance Of Proofreading Summary

Taylor Mali’s “The The Impotence of Proofreading” is a poem that catches the eye of the reader immediately from the title. Mali writes about the importance of proofreading in a very humorous way. He says even though you may have a spell-checker, proofreading is not to be forgotten. A spell-checker can fail to catch missing words, fail to catch wrong words that are spelled correctly, fail to catch words that are written more than once in succession, and a spell-checker might even replace a misspelled word incorrectly. Failing to proofread a paper can also sometimes get you into trouble because of the crude nature of the wrong word that was spelled right. Mali showcases the profane side of failing to proofread a paper. When reading Mali’s work,
it appears that the words are not just replaced at random. Mali has put deep thought into his poem, and substitutes words that change the entire meaning of the sentence or phrase. For example, he writes “This is a problem that affects manly, manly students.” Mali, who meant to write ‘many,’ has changed the sentence by writing ‘manly.’ Nonsensical phrases and sentences plagued the paper: “Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence.” Did you notice that the word the is repeated twice? Of course there were other errors in that sentence, but that is just another example of how spell-checkers are not all-encompassing when it comes to errors a writer may make. This style catches the attention of the reader, and helps Mali make his point about lazy writers; Mali wants his audience to understand that these problems could have been avoided, had the writer simply grabbed his or her red pen and proofread their paper. Reading any piece of writing that has obviously not been proofread is a cringe-worthy experience. This poem makes mistakes that are glaringly obvious to the reader; however, a writer who spends careful time preparing a paper and proofreading cannot always notice small mistakes he or she may make. I read through the poem more than once, and each time I would catch more errors. A writer, or reader for that matter, cannot expect to catch each and every mistake on the first read-through of a paper. However, just because typos, among other errors, make their way through your meticulous revision does not mean you are stupid; it just means your brain is reacting with familiarity to your essay (because you have probably read through it a couple hundred times).