Once upon a time, I spent ten years as a hypnotist. I offered the standard watch swinging services: weight loss, smoking cessation, confidence, phobias, etc. Unlike my colleagues, I had no interest in talking about my client’s mother. Sit down, shut up, I hypnotize you, you achieve your goal or you don’t. For those who didn’t, I never deployed the industry standard accountability chaff: “I’m a great hypnotist but you’re a lousy subject.” I based my work on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale. I’d hypnotize a client, and then work my way through the Scale’s twelve graduated tests—until the client either “failed” a test or achieved the weird ass dozen. It was no-fault hypnosis; given my abilities and yours, this is where you fall on the scale and here’s what I can do for you. All major credit cards accepted.

The scale starts with simple ideomotor suggestions, such as “your extended arm is so heavy it must fall to your side” (Victorian speaking style optional). It quickly moves into the realm of the genuinely odd, as the hypnotist works to create cognitive distortion. “You will forget the number six as you count down from ten,” “your name is now Esterhazy,” “every time I look at my watch you will cluck like a chicken.” From there, the hypnotist attempts perceptual effects, such as positive hallucination (“you will think your mother is sitting next to me”). Test number twelve, the highest level of susceptibility: negative hallucination. “When you awake from trance, you will not see me.” Yes, subjects can cheat, but there are ways to differentiate between “social compliance” and genuine hypnotic response. And I don’t want to repeat myself by explaining that particular piece of the puzzle again.

Gotcha! Or not. As the test’s existence proves, not everyone is capable of the same level of hypnotic response, to a given hypnotist, on a given day, in a given social situation, having taken a given hypnotic drug, under a given (or implied) threat of violence. But the truth about trance is that all of these bizarre hypnotic effects—from ideomotor suggestability to negative hallucination—are induced versions of a naturally occurring phenomena. Someone yawns. You yawn. You don’t see your keys, even though they are, literally, right in front of your eyes.

As a professional writer who generates more than 5000 words per day, it’s the latter which I find most intriguing. My prose is bedeviled by negative hallucinations. I see words, punctuation, spelling and spacing that aren’t there. For example, this morning I wrote “If you recall, President Bush gave GM some money ($9.4b) and told them to come back later for more ($4b). The second tranche (as the gourmands would says) depending on sorting out the United Auto Workers (UAW), convincing bondholders to swap debt for equity and rationalizing their brand portfolio.” As THE gourmands would SAYS? Of course I know that the correct version should be “(as gourmands would say).” But I didn’t publish it that way. And I didn’t see this riotous mistake until four hours later, on an iPhone, in an amusement park.

Mistakes like this, which usually manifest themselves far less egregiously (fun zayn moyl, in Gots oyer), are often called “typos.” It’s an archaic term, linking us back to the days when spell checking meant never having to say you were sorry (especially to Samuel Johnson). Writers would blame misspellings, lost words, incorrect usage and suchlike on those mechanically minded oafs known as typographers, laborers who somehow failed to perfectly translate perfectly written words into a perfect plateful of hand-assembled dies. The word “typo”—short for typographical error—has become a useful euphemism for any unintentional grammatical mistake.

If you think about the mental process involved, bad grammar is actually a badge of honor, rather than a moment of laziness and/or ignorance. After all, negative hallucinations only occur in the deepest levels of trance. If you think of it that way, the above mistake indicates that I was so focused on what I was doing, so deeply involved in my literary pursuit, that my grammar paid the price. What’s more, I remained so deeply engrossed in the writing process that I couldn’t properly proof-read my own copy until later, when I emerged from this quasi-religious mental state. Indeed, if my copy had been perfect, it would have indicated a lack of intellectual horsepower.

Yes, well, perhaps not. A deep trance state is not always caused by the supernatural mental prowess of a genius deploying his God-given talent for laser-like focus, although I like to think that’s the main possibility. Sleep deprivation and simple tiredness are equally capable culprits. Whether disordered of or not, attention deficiency is another possible gateway to this seemingly stunning hypnotic effect. A couple of nagging children will do the trick. Alcohol is another possibility: you’re too relaxed to see something as insignificant as a “typo.” And no way can I can write stoned.

In any case, writers develop techniques to spot “typos” (now in quotes!). Reading my copy out loud is a remarkably effective prophylactic against deeply embarrassing grammatical failures—even though it’s more than slightly disconcerting for family members who already call me “the nutter in the attic.” I also find that simply leaving my copy for a later re-read works a treat. Unfortunately, I write for the internet. So I can’t do that. Fortunately, I can come back to my copy later and change it with near-infinite ease (which raises a whole ‘nother set of problems). But the best way to avoid the negative hallucination pitfall is to hire a proper proofreader. Provided, of course, they are not prone to pensiveness. Good luck with that, Jeff.