POV: You do your best proofreading when you’ve committed your work to its most permanent form. Confessions.

🎻 What’s that music you’d hear on those Radio 2 confessions?
 
Bring it to mind to accompany this post.
 
💭 A memory popped into my head this morning.
 
And that memory involves an occasion where an error I introduced into a text went to print.
 
❗ Before you all scratch me from your proofreading Rolodex, know this: I was 14 years old, just about to turn 15.
 
It was June of 1997 and I was on work experience at the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald. That’s the local newspaper in my old stomping ground.
 
I was put in charge of typing up the What’s On column for the Saturday paper.
 
9️⃣ And, horror of horrors, I hit a stray key. A random number 9 appeared mid-word. I can’t remember now what word suddenly had this new digit, but it’d be something like Eden Vall9ey Banger Racing.
 
📰 I was so excited to see my copy in print when the paper came out on the Saturday. And, of course, my eye was immediately drawn to that error.
 
🔎 As people say: You do your best proofreading when you’ve committed your work to its most permanent form.
 
I’ve not thought about this for years. But a meme brought it to mind this morning. I came to proofreading and editing in my 30s, but I wonder if something took root that day?
 
🔡 Feel free to share your typo confessions below. What have you mistyped that’s made it to print?