Why Is It So Easy to Write 'The The' and Not Notice?

in #funny6 years ago (edited)

I'm guilty of publishing posts with the the.

Some are so old, they cannot be altered.
The the the must stay there, forever.

NoNamesLeftToUse - The The Lake.jpeg
The The Lake

The The

The the easiest typo to overlook.

I already know what you're thinking.

"Who cares! This is a shit post."

And you're probably right, but do you have to be so rude?

The The Lake

It was supposed to be called The Lake.

Unfortunately, when I went to save the the file, I called it The The Lake.

I didn't produce that image with the the intention of sharing it here either. A simplistic picture of the the world isn't something I'd normally work on. I was messing around, killing time, thinking about the the lake. That's all.

The The Lake. Once I noticed how I made that mistake, I simply could not resist coming here to tell everyone. Then, while responding to a comment under my previous post, I did a quick read of the the post I wrote and noticed another the the hidden in plain sight.

I wondered if anyone else noticed.

I've Seen Many of The The The's

In my day.

Our brains must naturally stutter and go fizzle pop when it comes to the the word 'the'. That's my unscientific conclusion.

I did find an article though. It was boring but it did say:

The reason we don’t see our own typos is because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads.

Basically, when we're proofreading our work, we're expecting certain words to show up because we wrote them. We know what's coming, so it's easy to miss the the the's, because we think we're so perfect, we'd never make a mistake with the the word 'the', so we don't pay much attention to that portion of the the sentence, naturally.

When someone else reads it, that's their first trip down the the little string of words you made there, so they'll likely catch the the the and start thinking you're some kind of nincompoop who doesn't know how to write properly, or worse.

Many editors will say:

That's why you need us.

To them I say:

No, you need my mistakes, so be grateful for the fact I make them, or you'll be jobless and living on the streets.

So, Anyway

I hope you've all learned something here today.

Enjoy the the art if you want to.

Have a nice day!

linebreak1
Credits:
All images seen here were produced digitally, by me.
"The The The's."

Images © 2018 @NoNamesLeftToUse. All rights reserved.

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That's why the little red squiggly lines are so helpful with spellcheck. I don't know where I'd be without spell check.

I once dated a girl who clearly didn't use Microsoft Word very often. She wrote me a letter in word and when she handed it to me she said "I don't know where all the red squiggly lines went when I printed it, I liked them".

I don't think I was with her for her brains.

Yeah, spellcheck is awesome. Normally, I spell words correctly. Sometimes, I feel like being lazy, mash the keys so the word is close enough, then do a quick right click and select the word from the list. As easy as fixing spelling errors is, I still see a lot around here.

The the best tip for dealing with with this phenomena is is, when you you proofread set the font to a a monospaced font. Or if you you already write in a monospaced font, set to a a variable spaced font when you proofread. Either way, the switch is sometimes enough to knock us us out of our heads and help us see what is actually in in front of us.

That's some good good advice. The Steemit author might benefit by switching to or from night mode to do their proofreading as well.

I decided to go back and give my last post one little extra proof read a couple of hours after I'd posted it, I about passed out. There were so many typos scattered through out. I edited (hopefully all of) them out repeating to myself over and over "I hope no one read this yet".

Typos are assholes.

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

They might be assholes, but they still get the point across.

Wow, I read that whole thing in one fell-swoop. I thought I was really smart, until I got to your last line. Now I'm just back to normal. Sigh.

I already know what you're thinking.

"Who cares! This is a shit post."

And you're probably right, but do you have to be so rude? << hahaha thanks for the laugh!!!

I don't EVER notice, hence why I have SO many typos in all of my posts. I don't care! I still like your post with "the the" and I like this "the the" post because it made me smile.

That's all that matters.

So the "the the" haters can suck it.

That was an important part of the 'lesson' here today. They always teach us to own our work and be confident. The pros will say something like, "Never make your readership feel as if they're wasting their time."

But just look at how many wonderfully chilled out and down to earth people I get to meet when I break all the rules.

The The The's were a band? What a great name!

Check this song out!

Errors jump out at me and demand to be noticed. I only hope I notice them in my own stuff before I post. And 4-leaf clovers are the same way, like errors in patches of regular clover. I love the sky in your picture and the land reminds me of the lake but my lake and not your lake.

I was going for that rare late evening orange reflecting off of a thunderstorm cloud look. Have you ever seen that before? Conditions and timing have to be perfect and one of the only places I ever get to see it is at the lake.

Yes, I have.

I noticed a the the yesterday, actually. The the's are such harmless mistakes though. I hate when I get words mismatched. Advice v. advise; scaring v. scarring. I really love those little spelling differences, which I guess is why I hate screwing them up.

The the is quite common. I see it often.

Look what I did here one day:

Sneak Peak196-2016.10.29-02.02.11.jpg

I just acted like I did that on purpose...

It took me a couple seconds to notice that. With your sense of humor/mysterious meanings I think you can easily get away with those sort of errors.

Yeah, that's true. If you look that up, you'll notice it means something like: to sneak away and get high. I just left it because I thought it was hilarious. The post was about some lame attempt at getting support and attention to my work though. One my early miserable failures.

That should be added to urban dictionary, ideally with a link. You have a lot of phrases that would enlighten the general internet population.

No failures, just creative process that had to leave the brain and end up somewhere. That's how I see it anyway.

I think my favorite is when someone is trying to write "a part of" and instead write "apart of" because it can give the sentence the entire opposite meaning.

Ooo, yeah that's a good one.

I have difficulty with "passed" and "past" occasionally. In the middle of my writing thought I just can't wrap my head around them.

I really wish we could edit posts past 7 days. I understand that blockchains can't be edited and I don't care. It's an aesthetic thing.

I had some life business to take care of for a while and I missed being able to edit the the latest post in my series. So when I finish the next part, I won't be able to edit in a link to it. That bothers me.

There was a time when we had 30 days, I think. It was more than seven days, that I know for sure.

As for the link, you could always use the comment section and vote it up to the top. I think we can still comment on old posts? I haven't tried in awhile.

Tell me honestly, did I finally slip one past you... or did you just choose not to entertain my shenanigans? :D

Just being able to link or have a "recommend by author" after the fact something has closed would be such a quality of life change.

Well, we have Grammarly now. Time to get them out on the streets. bloody editors!

Grammarly creeps me out. I'm not a fan of anything that watches everything I type into a device or browser.

Lol.
In that case, ive got my eyes on you.

Where is this band from? I didn't know they existed until today.

England. Not sure if they still exist, or if they stayed in England.

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