The critical eye


On a typical day, I write a blog in a hurry and post it. I don't perform any proofreading. On most of the occasions, the writing and posting happen one after the other with no break in between. However, in certain circumstances, the creative process is broken into two or three sessions due to lack of time. When this situation arises, there is an element of rewriting involved at times, and some posts are discarded because the initial enthusiasm is lost. So I mostly resort to writing and posting routine without any time to overanalysis. Sometimes, the analysis results in paralysis. The side effect of such a fast cycle is the grammatical errors.

When the writing is over, there is no energy left to comb over the post for syntactical errors. Some good friends point out the mistakes in the private medium. The others choose to ignore it. At the end of the day, I have assessed my work. None of them qualify for preservation for the future generations to revisit to find out how life was at the beginning of twenty hundred. Wait! Now I wonder what if such a situation arises. What would the future generation find out about being at the beginning of twenty hundred? I prefer to wake up from my reverie with the belief it is never going to happen. So grammar takes a back seat. The idea gets more weight.

My blog is personal. But I can't adopt this approach at work. There are reputation and money involved, to state the least. If I submit a document for a purpose, it is in my best interest and also the organization's best interest to have a review before sharing. If there are no reviewers, there should be at least a spell check on the document. I used to take pride in spellings at a young age. But with old age catching up, I have become confused with what comes first in many cases. Is it e before i or i before e? If you are still confident about the spellings, here is an anecdote.

My friend recently submitted a document for a transformation project. One of the critical factors considered for transformation is the minimal disruption to the business as usual. My friend devised a brilliant approach that will take care of issues arising out of the current operations. He wrote so in the document but forgot to perform a spell check. As a result, a critical i in the word arising was missed out. You may use your intelligence to find out what was missing. The resulting word doesn't make any sense, but the word is offensive. As we speak, my friend is awaiting the outcome of the submission.

Photo Courtesy: Robin Corps

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