Nancy Williams: The sport and art of pointing out others’ mistakes
Most of us know about Type A and Type B personalities. Type A is a structured, hard-driving, and perfectionist. Type B is laid-back, loose, and flexible. Over time, I’ve become aware you aren’t either one or the other. It’s a continuum. And way out on the edges are double As and double Bs.
Precision, accuracy, and attention to detail aren’t something you decide to be, you just are. Born that way. At times, there’s a curse of sorts when you’re made in such a way that you immediately see the crooked line or the misshaped thing. You can’t help it if you see problems and flaws, but you have some choice in how you point them out.
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One of the ways to observe a person’s tendency is what I call the Name Tag Test. I’m responsible for the registrations and name tags at the monthly luncheons of a volunteer community organization. When you don’t have a name tag prepared or a name isn’t spelled right … you learn quite a bit about a person. Some say no problem at all and make a joke. “I’ll just take a name tag from one of the no-shows and be somebody else today.” Others seem personally offended a mistake could be made spelling their name and frostily inform me their version of Alison has one “l.” The Alison doesn’t upset me, they simply make me remind myself I don’t one to be one.
Frankly, I don’t mind being corrected when I miss the boat. I kinda like it. Grew up in a family where it was welcomed to notice someone’s mistake and point it out. Not as a matter of superiority or putting someone down. It was more sport. If you noticed a word being used wrong, mispronounced, or that a math sum was off, you spoke up, often with humor.
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For minor as well as less minor things, it was a gift if someone shared criticism with you, instead of sharing it about you with someone else.
My whole life my mother taught us the main thing you’d be surprised about what people think about you … is that they don’t. When someone takes the time to pay attention to you, whether to offer a compliment, concern, or correction, it causes you to be grateful. And I am.
I’ve lived enough life to be thankful for the friend who will tell you the truth. In such a self-absorbed world, it’s easier to just let someone (literally or metaphorically) walk around with their skirt hem tucked in the back waist of their underwear and them not even know it.
I truly value the person who pushes through a little bit of awkwardness to say, hey you might want to check out the breeze you feel on your backside. And I want to be that person.
Another occasion to notice how folks differ in their approach to others’ mistakes is when they write in response to column errors. Through the years, people have written with lots of feedback or have left comments on websites where a column is posted. Readers write to agree, disagree, share their own story about a topic, or occasionally, point out and correct an error I’ve made.
I enjoy the correctors and learn from them. Recently a reader wrote when I mentioned a parent Calvary racing in to rescue a kid, that it was actually the Cavalry. I’d like to say it was a typo, but honestly, I don’t think I knew any better — having spent more time in a Southern Baptist pew than watching old westerns on television. To be fair, both have an element of being saved, so there’s that. Hahaha. In any event, I learned something. Cool.
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I also had several correctors write me when I’d written about our family dog. “The dog is a heeler, not a healer.” Actually, my dog is both. It’s a wordplay. I called him a heeler until he helped with family wounds, which made him our healer. A couple of people responded to me pointing that out with “Oh geez, my bad, so sorry.” No problem. Glad we sorted it out.
When I wrote about barbecue, I talked about the perfection of the hushpuppies at Three Pigs. One reader wrote to ask if I meant Little Pigs BBQ as he didn’t know of Three Pigs. Yes, I did. Thank you for the correction. I get my pigs mixed up sometimes.
In the same column, I spoke about a barbecue joint in Dillsboro. A typo resulted in it being written as Dillsbot. A good-natured reader wrote to ask if that’s what the youngsters are calling Dillsboro these days. I went with yes, as a matter of fact, it is. And now, I really do call it Dillsbot. Let’s head over to Dillsbot for the day.
Among the correctors, the grammarians are a specialized subset. The precision patrol. There’s a bond and unspoken permission with one another to challenge, discuss, and debate spellings and parts of speech. It’s a sport of sorts. Banter and fun.
Sometimes we can cross the line when dealing with people who aren’t fixated on proper language and accuracy. Not everyone is energized by the opportunity to learn when a word is capitalized or fixated on dashes and ellipses. My background is numbers and math, so I feel special when the syntax big dogs consider me worthy of corrections and explanations. Bring it.
I too can feel an itchy need to make an unimportant correction. Like when I read on an agenda, “They are going to present the program.” My mind rolls. They are. They’re. Not there or their. Which is more about being Type A, than about it mattering if a little handwritten agenda has the right grammar.
Reminds me of a meme I saw where a devil was showing an afterlife newcomer the lake of fire, saying, “This is the lake of lava you’ll be spending eternity in.”
The newcomer said, “We’re underground so it would be magma.”
The devil said, “This is why you are here you realize.”
Good to go ahead and embrace if your (sic) the type to see mistakes. Then try to point them out in a way that doesn’t pounce with glee about finding one.
This is the opinion of Nancy Williams, the coordinator of professional education at UNC Asheville. Contact her at nwilliam@unca.edu.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Nancy Williams: The sport and art of pointing out others’ mistakes
