Super Bowl or Superb Owl? My thoughts on editing...

I heard on the radio the other day that a Google search for the Super Bowl may land you on a page about the superb owl instead if you misplaced your space. I tried it, with and without a space, but most of the items on my search list only included Super Bowl news, with a couple of exceptions:

Owl hanging out in our front yard

Wiktionary, a free online dictionary, included this usage note: This spelling is used, jocularly or seriously, to try to avoid being sued by the NFL, when trying to associate places, events and products with the Super Bowl without acquiring a license first.

And then there was this tricky post from the NY Times which was a mix of a beautiful owl photo, some wit about how you may have landed on their page, football links and, if you're really just interested in owls, a link to an article you may enjoy.

Since I'm partial to owls and not football (although I do enjoy Super Bowl commercials), I'll stick to real posts and articles that relate only to owls without game day tidbits sprinkled in. [Side note: Word wants me to fix the term "superb owl" to "super bowl" - even the computer likes football more than I do. J]

But when I heard that bit about the Super Bowl vs superb owl search results, I found it interesting...

How often do we search the Internet for one thing, only to become lost down the rabbit hole of another subject we didn't realize might be interesting? How often do we type words and sentences, not realizing one misplaced space or missing letter completely transforms what we were trying to say? Or worse, when auto correct thinks it knows what you mean to say and completely changes the whole meaning of your  message (sometimes embarrassingly!).

I guess the reason I found the radio snippet interesting is because I've been editing and revising my novel in preparation for its final edit. You can edit and edit, again and again and still find errors you missed from previous passes. I've learned from using a professional editor how important it is to have those professional set of eyes review my work. While my eyes will eventually gloss over from reviewing the same paragraphs over and over, a professional editor will see the story with fresh eyes and the ability to catch those misplaced letters or words, extra spaces, unintentional meanings due to extra words and so much more.

There are many ways to edit: self edits, mixed with computer applications that will edit for you before beta readers take a stab at the story (where some are better than others at catching mistakes), but I've learned from my last seven publications, some with and some without professional edits, that a professional edit is key.

And if for some reason my words just don't make sense and aren't caught by myself or the computer, I can rely on the fact that my editor will ask me...did you man superb owl, or Super Bowl? J  

Have a great day and happy Super Bowl Sunday!