I’m headed to the farmer’s market this morning with my wife. One of my favorite weekend traditions.

We arrive and I split off to find the two items I love most:

Vegan cheese. And vegan pastries.

(Yeah, yeah. Cry ‘meat and dairy’ all you want, ya goblins. This stuff is delish.)

Anyway.

I roll up to the vegan pastry counter to peruse the shelves for my favorite item.

Bingo!

Peanut butter miso cookie. 🍪

“I’ll take one of those, please.” I point to the cookie.

Then I remember that my wife would probably be really upset if I didn’t get her something, too.

“Ah, and one of those too.” I point over to the cardamom buns.

“Which one?” the cashier says.

“Ah, the cardamom bum.”

..

…

Bum.

BuM.

BUM.

I said BUM and not BUN. 🤦🏼‍♂️

The cashier makes weird eye contact with me, grabs the buN, and stuffs it in a paper bag.

Why did I say “bum” and not “bun”?

Answer is simple: “cardamom bums” is what I call my dog, Aggie. Like, literally, that is what I call her verbatim. It’s because the cowlicks on her little doggo butt cheeks look like rolled up cardamom buns.

​​As I’m trying to figure out how to explain this to the cashier, she rings me up and it’s on to the next customer.

Okay, so maybe she didn’t think I was being crass.

Phew. 😅

But the whole thing gave me a real internal spike of anxiety.

Not dissimilar to how I feel when I’ve run copy — seen by thousands or even millions — that I discover, months later, has a glaring typo.

Oooooof.

Two things I took away from this experience after royally embarrassing myself:

1. Carefully choose your words and be a great editor … the devil is in the details.

And

2. The devil probably isn’t in the details, and if you have a typo in your copy, you’ll probably be just fine.

BUT.

For certain clients or markets, a typo, incorrect word, or — gasp, bad research! — could be a huge red flag and could lose you the job or the credibility in your copy to a prospect.

Something to think about next time you’re writing copy … or buying vegan pastries.

Now I’m gonna go see if there’s anything left of that cardamom bum—er, bun.

Lol.

David Patrick