The Power of Novelty in Visual Perception or how I screwed up the company newsletter

I work for a private mental health agency, and on top of seeing clients, I have a lot of other responsibilities. Like program evaluation and outcomes research. Training. Supporting quality control processes.

And, for some reason only understood by my boss, I also have to write the newsletter (those of you who actually know me personally will understand how funny that is).

Because our company is comprised of therapists who either go out to people's homes or practice in doctors' offices statewide, I've been doing profiles of our employees and contractors to help them connect with one another. You know, a picture and some background on the person.

Last week, I was doing this newsletter at the last minute, as always, and I put together three lovely therapist profiles and sent it out.

One of the profiles ended with the following sentence: "she participates in a training program at a local Marital Arts Center."

Did you spot the typo right away? I didn't, at least, not before I sent it out to about 120 of this poor therapist's colleagues. And I really did read it over a couple of times before I hit SEND, I swear.

Why aren't we efficient typo-catchers with our own work?

Well, I'll tell you why, because I know you were wondering. Our eye is greatly affected by what we expect to see. So much of our understanding of the world is based on the mind's ability to fill in blanks, to skip efficiently over visual information, fill in gaps, and form a cohesive whole from it. When I know the word I expect to see, sometimes it's hard to spot the missing or switched letters. But also, if it's something I've looked at several times in quick succession, my eyes skim over it even more, because I'm already used to looking at it.

Some things that might help:

1. Obviously, have someone else read it (I don't have time to have everything proofread at work, but it's great for my creative writing if beta-readers help me with it)
2. Set it aside and come back to it later (some of the novelty wears off if you give your brain a long enough rest from the material)
3. Look at it in a different way (some people have talked about the benefits of printing pages instead of reading on a computer screen, and I think the novelty of looking at the printed page might help the author spot things)
4. Take it line by line. When I make recommendations for kids diagnosed with ADHD, one of them is often to break things down, including using a paper or ruler to help the kid read one line at a time and really focus instead of getting overwhelmed by the whole page. I think this works for everyone--when it's needed.
5. Read it right to left. Just another way to force novelty onto something you've looked at a billion times (not the most practical, I know, but if you hate typos as much as I do, it might be worth it)

What are your techniques for typo avoidance? Did you find any typos in this post? And are you skilled in marital arts (no, wait--please don't answer that)?

Take the time to check out the fabulous Lydia's Medical Monday post, as well as Laura's always awesome Mental Health Monday post!