Quality and Errors

 On the subject of errors and quality, lets look at books and the errors that are almost always present in them.  I have just finished a 210 page book on the history of an old road in Michigan and have put it through a pretty tough regimen of proofing, but I know that there are still some errors---but the problem is I don't know where to look.  So why do I know there are errors yet I don't know where to look?  Because one can not find every last error by inspection.  There are classroom exercises that demonstrate that a whole group of students, working independently, that fail to find every error.  Error free writing can only be accomplished by the writers ability to write error free text--in other words, error free writing has to be accomplished by the process of writing and not by the process of inspection. Oh, but you say, how do we do that, meaning, what is the process of writing?

Avoiding errors in written material is important simply because any reader will be annoyed by encountering errors while reading the text.  Some readers are annoyed by errors relating to facts, some by grammatical errors, some by spelling errors, and some by sentence structure.  We once bought  a book from a self-published author at a writer's fair, and found it so full of errors in sentence structure and spelling that we ended up tossing it in the trash bin.  It simply was not worth the mental effort to correct the errors as the book was read. When you stop to think about this, the first reaction is to just not bother correcting the errors as you read, but that is not easily done.

Commercial book publishers have skilled staff to proofread, and these individuals do a near-perfect job of correcting errors, but they miss some too.  Just recently we acquired a book on the best mystery stories of the century and Damon Runyan's name was spelled two different ways;  Runyan and Runyun.  Actually I am not sure how to spell Damon's last name because even Wikipedia spells the last name two different ways.

Of course, some errors are minor and one can overlook them, but still these errors stand out in reading.  

What is the process of writing and how can a writer improve the process such that errors are eliminated?  Some help is provided by software that looks for errors; MS Word in the latest version has an effective and automatic tool that searches for errors and provides solutions, but that tool misses many errors that fall into a category often called "style".  An informative text on style is one titled The Chicago Manual of Style.   I have the 14th edition but there are many more recent editions---and this book has 900 pages.   Then there is the classic The Elements of Style by Strunk and White---it was first published in 1957 with more up to date versions since.  Then there is William Safire's book titled fumblerules which is a lighthearted guide to grammar and good usage.

Now I can just about guess:  What do we mean by "style"?  One good example are the rules on when to use "that" in a sentence instead of "which".

There are other rules of grammar that Safire presents humorously.  He says that in elementary school we all were taught "Never use prepositions to end a sentence with".

Well, now you've been given the big picture so you are on your own.   

Oh, by the way, avoid using clichés like big picture.

Now I am hesitant to publish this for fear of errors that may be present.