The writer spends more hours poring over his query than he ever wants to spend at anything. He’s read it so many times he never wants to see it again; just looking at the opening line sends an ache through his brain and a cringe down his spine. He’s ready to send it in just to get it off his hands, make it someone else’s problem for a while. After excruciating deliberation, he clicks send with the certainty of someone who’s sealed his own fate.

And what happens next? He rushes to open the file again, scour it one last time, indulging in the masochistic quest for those one or two typos that somehow slipped through his fingers. He spent hours probing and trolling through the fur of his story, seeking out the fleas he could feel crawling just beneath the surface. Somehow he knows he didn’t get them all. He’s so certain of their presence he would be more disappointed not to find them at all than to have them escape him yet again.

Settling into his chair, he starts filling out his application for the nearest fast food joint. Sitting in hers, the editor holds his query in her trembling hands, each tremble stronger with another thought of how good this story could be, how perfect for her magazine, how perfect for her readers.

But wait. Deep within the query lies a flaw. A comma hangs loosely in front of a sentence with no conjunction — a place no comma should be. Anyone who has taken a journalism class knows that a rogue comma can slice into a submission like a dagger, leaving in its wake a deep wound that bleeds its infection, creating a window through which the words’ life escapes, a tiny gash that spurts life and leaves a withered and dying story. The editor shrugs her shoulders and tosses the query into an overflowing bin. “Oh well,” she says simply. “Maybe next time.”

The writer uselessly wonders why his story — so dynamic, so relevant, so necessary! — would be thrown in the trash with queries of lackluster ideas and uninspired research. But he knows the mantra of journalism school: “Typo” spelled backwards is “death”. Figuratively, of course.

Except, maybe not. Like the 8th-grade teacher’s proclamation that immature behavior will not be tolerated in high school, the school system’s teachings can sometimes mislead. The truth is, the editor in this story, if truly excited by the query, would not have thrown it out. In academic settings, it is oft repeated that a single typo is like a bullet to the heart of a query. True, a published typo can cripple the credibility of all things from publication to writer to idea, but in the beginning stages, a good idea, solid research and an instant rapport with the editor are all far too precious to lose at the hands of a spliced sentence, and it seems most editors are keenly aware of this. Does that mean spotless syntax goes unnoticed? Not at all. It does, however, mean that story, voice and character—above all else—are what makes a writer, and her query, indispensable to most editors.

Brian Doyle lives with his wife and three children in Lake Oswego, Oregon, a lakeside community where the mountains stand tall and strong above the flat waters. He is both a writer and a practicing editor, serving as editor of the University of Portland’s Portland Magazine and striving to infuse his own stories with humanity, truth and humble brilliance. As an editor, Doyle prizes voice and story above all else, debunking the insistent hammerings of the myth that a typo will kill a writer’s chances and replacing the myth with his own unrelenting emphasis on voice and story.

“Voice is crucial,” Doyle says, explaining that storyteller and story are often deeply intertwined and sometimes one in the same. As an editor, Doyle says his job is to “catch the story as it goes by.” He presents himself as a type of filter through which stories flow, some of them passing and others sticking resiliently to the mesh. As far as he’s concerned, the fineness of the mesh is determined not by how many copy mistakes are present in a submission, but by the quality and potential of the story itself. The commonly perpetuated fallacy of editors — sitting hunched over at a gargantuan desk, red pen poised over copy, looking for that single mistake — neglects much of the actual demands of the editor’s task. In reality, she must be looking out for the interest of her readers, her magazine and herself. Oftentimes, a simple typo will not sway the editor’s decision one way or another. When it comes to an editor’s interests, factors such as voice, professionalism and story are much more important. What Doyle is looking to catch, for instance, is just that: story. He goes so far as to insist on structurally complete articles as preliminary submissions, forgoing queries altogether. When reading the submissions, catching typos is not of high concern.

“The content of a story—the meat of it, the bone of it, the truth, the ambition, the zest of a piece — is far more important to me than the smoothness of the craft,” he says. “A well-written piece about something that doesn’t matter is not going to make it, but an awkward piece about something that matters enormously will,” he says.

In fact, Doyle seems to expect a few copy mistakes on the part of the writer. “Fixing a piece is not hard,” he says. “That’s the editor’s job.”

Kathleen Holt, editor of Oregon Humanities Magazine, opposes the typo myth as well. “I don’t think any editor, personally, would throw out a query just because of one typo,” she states.

In the interest of her magazine, however, Holt emphasizes that she must be very careful about which queries she accepts. If and when there are copy mistakes, she says, she takes into account the types of errors and looks at them not as nails in the writer’s coffin but rather as clues about what a given writer will be like to work with. “There are different kinds of typos,” she says. “The small ones, like ‘it’ instead of ‘is’ [simply mistyping a letter], are different than ‘it’s’ and ‘its’ [displaying an ineptitude with grammar].”

“The it/is one—I still do that,” she confesses. “It happens all the time. That doesn’t worry me as much, because those are real typos, those are easily fixed,” she adds, echoing Doyle’s sentiments that simple typos are editable but style, voice and story are not. “The ones that worry me,” she says, “are the clues that the writer might not be paying attention to detail.” She refers to grammatical mistakes — not knowing the difference between the contraction of “it’s” and the possessive “its”, for example — as classic mistakes that make her somewhat wary. A plethora of typos, she says, often belies inexperience and unprofessionalism, which can translate into a negative editing experience for her.

As a magazine that does not pay kill fees — Oregon Humanities pays on approval of the query — Holt must be as certain as possible that a writer will be professional and pleasurable to work with, meeting deadlines with quality content and copy. There was one time, she remembers, when she went against her better judgment and accepted a writer despite a query with telltale typos. “I took a chance and I regret it,” she says. “The writer turned in a sloppy query, and it turned out to be difficult just getting copy from him. There’s nothing worse than being in the 11th hour of publishing and the story is just not coming together.”

In retrospect, Holt sees that particular query’s shortcomings as indicative of the writer’s inexperience. In working with an amateur, the editor shoulders a heavy load and must often play the role not only of supervisor but also of teacher. Not all editors feel they have the time, resources or desire to hold a writer’s hand through the process, and the best way a writer can show independence and dependability is to make her copy as clean and concise as possible, starting with what is often the first correspondence with an editor: the query.

So what makes a query successful? A professional presentation, including an overall clean copy, is important, but one simple typo is not going to kill the writer or the story — editors make mistakes themselves and will often understand a simple copy error on the part of the writer. As Holt demonstrates, a writer’s presentation of her self and her work in an overall honest and professional manner can make all the difference — and remembering this might prove more important for a writer’s own sanity than all the lessons of J101. Editors want to work with writers who are personable, flexible, passionate, and adept at spotting dynamic stories and telling them in captivating ways. These qualities don’t always come in one package; editors are often happy if a writer possesses some of these qualities, a few being more important than others. If an editor finds a writer whose query exhibits a remarkable combination of these qualities, she would do herself, her readers and her magazine a disservice to throw it away.

A writer’s search for the typos that will deflate her chances is a ritual as old as, well, word processing. Before the hard drive, the writer was content to cross his fingers and wait. Now, he has the curse of maintaining a copy of his work virtually identical to the one submitted, and with that copy there is no wait. He can uncross his fingers and point exactly to the mistakes, the errors, the loopholes and typos that will seal the envelope of the rejection letter. But succumbing to the typo myth, indulging in the search for his own petty flaws, is not only self-torture but in virtually all cases based on false assumptions. The rejection letter would not be sent for one single typo, or even just a few. As Holt says, “it would have to be more.” An unsuccessful query is more than the sum of its typos; conversely, a good query requires more than spotless copy. After the query is sent, the time searching for that omitted letter, that misplaced capitalization, is time the writer might better use searching for his next story. A query with absolutely no errors, after all, is no equal to a query with engaging story, charming style and undeniable allure.

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Ally Burguieres is a writer based in the Washington, D.C. area. Her work has appeared in several print and online publications, including washingtonpost.com, Hi Magazine International, and Flux Magazine. A life-long fan of grammar and language studies, she is currently pursuing an MA in Linguistics at Georgetown University. 

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