Boredom leads to mistakes

It's hard to muster up the same enthusiasm you initially had for a story that you've read three times before. Especially when that story is your own.
It's easy to get bored with it to the point that you glance instead of read. That's what leads to errors going from catchable to printed. From "phew" to "oh no!"

Typing fast to meet deadlines is another way to get an error into a story. Whether it be typos, spelling errors or just brain freeze - their instead of there or they're - a mistake is only glaring once it's in print and available to the hundreds of arm-chair editors we lovingly call "readers."

Almost a decade ago, I was assigned to cover all the new deans of the colleges at my university. There were at least eight newcomers, maybe more, but I was getting worn out of this type of profile.
How many ways can you make that story interesting?
Well, one of the deans, a very gentle and gracious woman in the College of Business, called to thank me for the profile. I was pleased she had enjoyed it. After a few moments of being pleased, she unleashed a very valuable lesson: a person is insightful, not inciteful.

Talk about embarrassed. I had written this lovely tome about how nice and educated this woman was only after I had accused her of starting riots. Inciteful, huh? YIKES.

And recently, a co-worker's typo became my error because I didn't catch it during copy editing. It should have read that the public is responsible. It actually read that the pubic is responsible. YI-IKES

Live and learn. Truth is, that kind of thing will always happen, but it's more likely to when the reporter and editor are mentally fatigued. Things that are obvious the next day, blend right in the night before.

My advice?

Get more sleep, try to relax and step away for just enough time to gain renewed interest in the written word.

It can only help.

Now, I suppose I should take my own advice, eh? On it!