If you have a typo in a word, people can usually figure out what the word was supposed to be. Even if you ended up with a different valid word in the process, context lets them know something is wrong. And even if you mangle a word so severely that it's unrecognizable, the reader will recognize that there's a problem and call you on it.
Numbers are different. Every number is a valid number, so if you miss a numeral or transpose a couple or just hit the wrong key, it is not immediately obvious that anything is wrong. Sometimes you get lucky and end up with something that doesn't make sense -- a price with more than two numerals past the decimal or a phone number with only six digits -- but you can easily have an unnoticable mistake. You want to meet a friend for dinner at 7:00, but your finger slips and you type 6:00 instead.
When dealing with times, write out the words rather than using numbers. Meet your friend for dinner at seven rather than 7:00. For dates, write out the word for the month and include the day of the week as a check value. If you make plans for and type 7/14 or 8/13 when you meant to type 7/13, it'll probably be missed. If you make them for Tuesday, July 14, your friend will notice when putting it on a calendar that the 14th is a Wednesday and will ask you what day you really meant.
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4 comments:
This is SO RIGHT ON. It seems like something that's hyper-cautious, like, oh my god, how often are you going to make that mistake?
I swear at least 40% of all-staff emails I have sent AND received have a date in them like "Wednesday, July 13, 2010" and have to be followed up with a correction of "Wednesday, July 14, 2010". It's such a common and easy error!
Totally. The key to this is assuming that you'll sometimes make mistakes and that it's best to have a habit that mitigates the damage caused by mistakes.
After I read this, I started noticing it happening all the time. This is very good advice.
This never even occurred to me, but it makes total sense!
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