On reminders that no academic is perfect (or the humbling power of Grammarly).
When editing a paper, I ran Grammarly and found 100+ suggestions to correct titles, typos, and more in the bibliography generated by a well-known citation management package.
When I dove deep, I found typos in the titles of top-ranked journals.
Some errors were attributable to changes in how we write, a reminder to keep up with current grammar standards.
Other errors were attributable to the style guide, not everyone agrees on where to put commas and full stops.
Most errors were sloppy, a reminder that top scholars are human too.
None of the errors changed the contribution of the paper, a reminder that even good science has glitches.
As I do editorial work in the coming week, I'll keep these reminders with me.
I'll remind authors to carefully edit their papers, nudge them to pay attention to detail, and give them one more chance if the issues are mechanical and possible to address.
We all make mistakes, the question is how do we help others learn to do better.
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