I was so proud of my sixth-grader-to-be the other day when he read a postcard giving directions to camp and noted a misspelling. “They misspelled ‘through,’” he said after barely a glance at the card. “What,” I inquired, “did they spell it t-h-r-u?” But as I was about to explain that informal spelling to him, he said, “No, they used the wrong form: t-h-r-e-w.” Sure enough, there it was: something to the effect of going “threw” some little town to get to the camp.
This is the sort of error businesses and organizations who communicate with the public really want to avoid in order to retain credibility and professionalism in the eyes of their clients. It’s a mistake that might come of simply not knowing the difference between “through” and “threw” or because, as can happen to any of us, as you’re typing the message, three other things are going on in the office at the same time — maybe one of which is your coworker telling how her son threw a great pitch at tee-ball, and your mind picked up on that use of the word and it got dropped into your message. It happens to the best of us!
Look for a good proofreader and pass every ounce of public communication past him or her before it goes public. A brief postcard would take a proofer 15 minutes or less — and you’d pay a small fee for a great return!
By the way, “threw” is the past tense of “throw”; “through” (informally “thru”) is the preposition for going into and then out of something.
