Lyon's Law of Typos: On your first glance at a newly typeset document, you will immediately discover an error you missed while editing.
Why this maddening experience occurs is a mystery to me, but it's nevertheless true that when I see a document in a new form, I also spot "new" errors. If this is true for you, too, you can use Microsoft Word to turn it to your advantage. How? By changing the way you view a document in Microsoft Word.
Let's say you've already "finished" editing a document--you've made everything consistent, fixed errors of fact, run a spell-check, and so on. Ordinarily, you'd send it off to be typeset--*after* which you'd spot those additional typos. This time, however, why not try reading through the document again after changing the way it's displayed? You could try any of the following:
* If you've been working in Normal view, switch to Print Layout view (under the View menu)--or vice versa.
* Read the document in Outline view (under the View menu).
* Change the Zoom percentage to something radically bigger or smaller than what you've been using (View > Zoom).
* Attach a different template (using the same style names) to display your type in a different color and font. If you're going to do this, make sure you have a "real" template that you can attach later to restore the document's true formatting. You can learn more about this here:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704544112
* Switch to Draft font. You've never used Draft font? It shows text in a plain font with a minimum of formatting. Here's how to display it:
1. Click "View."
2. Click "Normal" (you must be in Normal view to use Draft font).
3. Click "Tools."
4. Click "Options."
5. Click the "View" tab.
6. Put a check in the box labeled "Draft font."
7. Click the "OK" button.
Word 2000's Draft font has a bug that prevents the display of bold and italic, as explained here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q210585
But in other versions of Word, Draft font works fairly well and is definitely a different way to look at your documents.
Will using one of these methods eliminate typos in typesetting? Well, probably not. After all, Lyon's Law of Typos is a law. But another read-through in a different view should help catch some of those errors.
You can see a long list of other amusing (and often true) laws here:
http://www.cpuidle.de/edition.htm
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RESOURCES
After reading the article above, you may be interested in some other strategies for spotting errors. If so, you'll probably enjoy the Proofreading Strategies page at Purdue University Online Writing Lab. Much of the information is aimed at college students, naturally enough, but there are still some helpful tips here:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_proof.html
