Glider18 Is Resigning---Effective Now

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Sorry for the abrupt sound of the title. But yes, I am resigning...from my obsession of proofreading my posts before sending them, and from posting them and then editing them to try to find and correct mistakes. I get worn out after this proofreading routine whenever I make a long post. I guess it has been because of my Asperger's comorbid OCD with perfection. Or maybe the perfection things is a result of the Asperger's. Anyway, since I don't feel like I have to obsess with the proofreading, I am wanting to know how many of the rest of you handle the proofreading. What I want to do now is glance over stuff as I write it, but not have to worry about rereading the whole thing and searching for mistakes. Maybe this is because I taught English for 19 years and was accustomed to correcting/grading student papers. So how about the rest of you? Do you feel the urge to proofread, or do you just relax and write your post and send it without worrying about some mistakes? I thought about doing a poll on this, but I don't think that is necessary. All I really want is to hear some general responses as to your thoughts on this. Thank you for your time.

glider18

I use spell check and it help catches all my misspelled words because I do not like reading through my long posts looking for mistakes. Call that lazy. I also do proof read when I make posts because I don't want people to take them the wrong way and I try and make sure people know what I meant when I said X. I also think to rather add in more and I also take out things I think is irrelevant to the post.

I obsessively revise and proofread everything I write. I will attempt to bury the urge to do so right now..... I am just responding to your question..... Yes. *breathes deeply*

Being that my verbal communication and social interaction is so poor, the written word has taken on special significance to me. It is the one way in which I am nearly sure that I'm expressing myself properly, and with which I have the greatest chance of being correctly understood.

So I pay my writing way more than its share of attention. On average, I spend anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes crafting posts on WP. It's about 5 minutes of actually getting thoughts down in words, and the rest is proofreading and correcting. Then there are the countless revisions after the fact.

Huge OCD freak right here

Whew! I thought you meant you were resigning from WrongPlanet, and I was about to scream, "NOOOOOOO!! !!" Glad you're instead relaxing about your proofreading.

I usually just give it a once over, and if I later catch a grammar error or something, I will edit the post and fix it. My grammar is usually good enough, especially for here where people just don't care all that much. Unless they have a grammar hangup, of course, in which case it's their problem.

Sometimes I will craft a thoughtful response in Notepad, away from the web page (I'm a bit of a minimalist). Then, when I get back online, I will simply paste the text into a response and go from there.

Thank you to all who have responded so far. You have each given me something to think about.

Spokane_Girl---good point on not putting something that could be taken the wrong way.

Acacia---it makes sense that our written word is very important to us. I have trouble verbally communicating too at times. I have even had to write letters to my wife over certain things that I just couldn't say comfortably---nothing bad...just personal things.

Fiddlerpianist---the once over sounds good. And the notepad---never thought of using that with the copy/paste. That could work for me.

Oooooh, yes, that's one thing I'm trying not to do too, glider. It could be our Asperger's. I'm good at spelling, but then and again I hit the edit button just to make sure I didn't misspell anything. Hard habit to break, but you'll get there.

I'm glad you're not resigning, Glider 18. I try to avoid spelling and grammar errors that create ambiguity, but I have yet to post anything long, so I don't find myself concerned about coherence. And I'm accustomed to being misunderstood, so I don't concern myself with that much either.

I've never had trouble understanding your posts, and hope that your new approach is more comfortable for you.

I do a quick proofread of my posts.If I miss an error it's no big deal, but in my future profession as a paralegal, I will be REQUIRED to proofread to the point of perfection since I will be drafting legal documents and courts are very picky about how well the documents are done.

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I used to be real bad about proofreading and constantly re-wording everything i wrote. Now, I can say i relaxed ALOT in my style. For me, I used to do it because i was always worried about looking stupid, or that i was trying to impress other people. Maybe not impress? Rather, not look stupid, like I said initially.

Now, i don't care what others think.

I feel you~
If it's a long post or a new topic, I'll go back and change a word or a bit of punctuation here and there several times within the hour. XD;;; (I always am trying to think if something could be clearer, or wondering how it might be misunderstood.... It keeps running through the back of my head, all the possible meanings of the things I've recently said or written.)
But if it's just a short reply like this, I don't usually bother to go back.

You had me worried, Glider! I thought something must have happened at school to make you resign from your teaching job.

I must confess, I AM a compulsive proof-reader. If an error DOES slip past me, I will almost always go back and edit. As an English teacher, I do make an effort to express myself accurately and errors tend to leap out at me. However, it doesn't worry me if others on WP make errors- they're not my students, so so it's not my problem. Jenny

I proofread all my posts before sending them.

I don't proofread on WP.

If I see a mistake, I feel I need to proofread, but I just won't do it.

However, my compulsions have been under control for a long time now. I don't know if the two are connected in any way?

I normally proofread my posts, but not obsessively so. The funny thing is that I often miss mistakes when I intentionally proofread papers. I always like to get someone else to look at my work. Then, I don't take corrections personally. I hear that's a problem for others.

I too, am also near-reading. However I also use long time of just composing the text, cause like Acacia said:

And I also use notepad alot to express my thoughts and feelings. Some of them turns into posts here, others are just thoughts "on paper", for myself to read later.
Written form is deffinently the prefered one here!

EDIT: I only editted because of a quoting mistake!

Last edited by TheSpecialKid on 15 Aug 2009, 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.