Before you read any further, please stop and read the notice on the left. Then come back. I'll wait . . .
. . . So apart from thinking I'm promoting my website, which I'm not, but now you come to mention it . . .
There is a reason I asked you to read that advert. Some of you will have spotted the reason.
A few days ago, a friend of mine wrote and said he'd been reading my weekly devotion and he'd noticed a somewhat unique spelling of the word encourgement. Ahh! You spotted it this time! He said he'd noticed it before on my previous posts too.
Well, there is a simple explanation. This advert appears down the sidebar of my "Closer Walk" which goes out automatically every week to those who sign up for it. And guess what? I use the same template for every post. Whereas the devotion is always fresh, the panel down the side is usually the same. So what seems like a small matter, after all it's only a missing 'a', has been duplicated over 50 times to date. What a bind. I not only had to open 50 devotions to add the 'a' to the side bar, I also had to correct it in the plain text version. 1 typo; 100 corrections. How I wish I'd noticed that little slip after the first or even the second devotion.
This got me thinking. How often do I let something small slip through my daily routine, and then I let it happen again? In no time it has become a habit. Maybe I skimp on my daily Quiet Time for a day. Then another day slips by. Before I know it, I have got into a habit of cutting the time short. Perhaps it's a book that I really didn't want to read, but got absorbed in the story, and before long I'd wasted precious time reading something that did nothing for me. Then there's the piece of chocolate popped in while watching TV. It's not the one piece that's the problem, it's the rest of the slab that seems to keep it company.
Surely that's what Paul was talking about when he said "I decide to do good, but I don't really do it." If only I'd done a really thorough check of my original template I wouldn't now be wading through 50 devotions!
John Wooden, the famous basketball player and coach said, "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" My challenge for you this week is simple. Do it right the first time, and don't allow the little typos to creep in unchallenged. Little typos grow into big hassles!
Oh, and if you'd like to sign up for these weekly devotions, hopefully with no other typos for you to spot, simply follow this link.
SHIRLEY CORDER lives on the coast in South Africa with her husband, Rob. Her book, Strength Renewed: Meditations for your Journey through Breast Cancer contains 90 meditations based on her time in the cancer valley and can be obtained from bookstores or online stores.Please visit Shirley through ShirleyCorder.com, where she encourages writers, or at RiseAndSoar.com, where she encourages those in the cancer valley. You can also meet with her on Twitter or FaceBook.
Receive her once-a-week devotional challenges "Closer Walk" in your inbox.
Thanks Shirl. The devotion is so relevant to me. A side of human nature that I suppose is in us all. We need to overcome those urges don't we?
ReplyDeleteYes Ann. It's the importance of "Do it right the first time". The problem is you so often read what you know you meant to say. And whoever gets a critique of a small ad? Sigh.
DeleteSomeone's knocking at the door of my heart.
ReplyDelete"Who's there?"
A whisper: "A lonely little sin."
"Come in" we answer.
And all of hell is in.
The above is compliments of Dr. H. W. Graves, my godfather, who died in 1957. It's in a scrapbook he made for my twelfth birthday. I miss him to this day.
Thanks for the comment Judith. Thanks for the quote from your godfather. Can we expect a book, "What my Godfather Would Say?" Very appropriate.
ReplyDeleteI don't think so. It's just that half or more of who I am came from him and that scrapbook. I still have it sixty-three years later. Were the house on fire, it's the first thing I'd grab after I knew the people were all out.
DeleteHow wonderful to have such a valuable memory!
DeleteHi Shirley
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we sometimes don't 'see' the little things which are missing because we don't pay attention to what has been written to us or spoken to us. This is not so much letting in sin (although that happens) as not perceiving what the writer/speaker is actually saying. The result can be we miss out on the tone or thrust of what is said or written. (Am I making myself clear, or am I missing something
/0
Hi Ray,
DeleteThanks for your observation and I think you are right. We don't pay attention. However, in this case my point was that we can fail to notice something "little" once or twice, until it eventually becomes a habit. We need to be more sensitive to the small things we allow to slip into our lives.
Great post. Loved your quotes. So true.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting Debra. I find it so amazing how you can read what you know (thought) you wrote!
DeleteGreat words of wisdom. Now to stay away from the whole bag of chocolate!
ReplyDeleteSo good to see you here Mary Jo! LOL! So you have problems with chocolate that follows the first piece too do you?
DeleteDear Shirley,
ReplyDeleteAt least you've found the mistake now and you corrected it. Hurray for doing what you can to make sure something doesn't happen again.
Celebrate you and your humility.
Never Give Up
Joan
Hi Joan. The joke is I DID ask someone to proofread the original devotion. But I guess she didn't realise that included the side banner! Ah well, it's right now! I HOPE!
DeleteShirley? You are marvelous and a great encourgment. (baahahaaa!) And now I want chocolate.
ReplyDeleteLOL! Jenn - I seem to have put everyone into the mood for chocolate. I sense another devotion coming on!
DeleteMy dear, Shirl. What a great advertisement for the new second edition of my The Frugal Editor (http://bit.ly/FrugalEditorKind).
ReplyDeleteI received a letter from one of my readers asking if I didn't think I had overdone my recommendations on hand edits (meaning doing the edits on an old fashioned printout and not on a screen). Well, no.
Though Word's spell checker would have caught your encouragement booboo, a rested pair of eyes is better--both yours and those of a professional editor. The three together are very nearly magic.
Of course, that's only if we take the time to do it. And with all the blogging and promoting we do, we can only do so much editing. Our BOOKS are worth that extra care. I believe we'll be forgiven for an occasional "encourgement." By our readers. By our fellow authors. In our everyday material but even in our books. I've seen typos in books published by the big New York publishers.
I figure it will happen to us all at one time or another. Help one another out is the battle cry. Avoid being critical is the devotion. Someting like that.
Yes Caroline, I have come across typos in books published by the big New York publishers. Thanks for making me feel better. :-)
Delete