Back in 2000 I was working as a writer for a Federal contractor...

[Recursion]

...I wrote the manual the State Department uses for diplomats and their families when they move from one duty station to another. It was generic government-ese but I did a decent job organizing it, I thought. I'm usually a good proofreader (you might not think that from my posts), but when we got the final back I just randomly opened it to page 53, and wouldn't you know it? "seperate". Sigh. This will always happen at some point in any large writing project, and you learn to shake it off. In the intervening time I basically forgot about it.

Today, as I'm tying up loose ends at work and starting my packing to move in with my fiancee, I opened my welcome package and saw -- a copy of the book I wrote. I opened to page 53. Still "seperate". Sigh.

[grasswire]

1. I hear ya.

That's one mistake I'm not likely to make. Some childhood book had a story about learning to spell the word "separate" and emphasized that there's "a rat" in "separate" -- and that has stayed with me forever.

It is hideously embarrassing for a professional to miss those errors. As an editor, I dealt with writers who took no care at all to spell well. Kinda funny.

[pinboy3niner]

2. Haunted by past mistakes

On an algebra test in school, I had some time to review my work and I went back and changed an answer to a very tough problem. When our tests were returned, I had one problem marked as wrong--the one where you could see that I had changed the answer and you could still read my erasure of the correct answer: +/-2.

That was 47 years ago--but I still remember +/- 2.

[In_The_Wind]

3. We are all haunted by something in our past.

[olddots]

4. I am functionally illiterate (went to a Waldorf school )

but a voracious reader and can catch spelling and editing errors more than most English majors .
This may be a "separate " paradox --to know yet not apply .