* * * * *
                                        
  While the Bible might be the literal Word of God, it would have behooved Him
                to have created Xerox a bit sooner than He did.
                                        
My calligraphy [1] has gotten to the point where I'm now doing actual
illuminated (illustrated) pieces (although other people do the illumination—I
just add the lettering). The main problem I have now is that the writing is
so slow that it's very easy to make a mistake. 

In fact, I made two mistakes on the piece I just finished. 

Mistake number one: I was supposed to write “whose continued and exemplary
service as a chirurgeon has brought comfort to so many.” But in going so
slow, I wasn't paying attention to what I was actually lettering, and wrote
instead “whose continued and exemplary service to so m” before realizing my
mistake. 

Oops. 

Not having a small knife [2] to scrape the mistake away (nor even the more
modern Liquid Paper™ [3]) I decided to carry on and rewrite that particular
sentence to read “whose continued and exemplary service to so many as a
chirurgeon has brought comfort.” 

Okay, so not the best wording, but when it's hard (or impossible) to fix
mistakes, you roll with it. 

Mistake number two: the word was supposed to be “Companion” but I had just
finished writing “Ch” when I realized it wasn't supposed to be “Champion.” 

Oops. 

It's “Champion” now. Hope that's okay. 

Who would have thought that going so slow would be so error prone? 

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/08/14.2
[2] http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/tools/errors.htm
[3] http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/liquid_paper.htm

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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