How to Catch Typos on Your Blog

This blog is not out to win any design awards, but I do value its efficiency. The CSS is only 1.8k and the site — depending on whether or not I have images loading on the page — loads pretty fast. The biggest part of the digital footprint I can't figure out how to get around is the font which comes in at 172kb... I wish I didn't like it so much.

There is one aspect I really like and have come to appreciate however: the typo link at the bottom of each post. The markup is simple, using the trusty mailto protocol to initiate an email so that the visitor can inform me about any typos.

My setup does a few things that make I think are neat

• The mail goes to [email protected], allowing me to easily filter typo correction emails from the rest.
• The subject is pre-filled to inform me the email is about a typo and what blog post it's associated with, so that the visitor doesn't have to include this information.
• The body of the email is pre-filled with similar content. The idea is all they'll have to do is explain the typo.

The markup looks like this:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=I found a typo in: ______&body=I found a typo in this post: ____">Find a typo?</a>

It's a tiny technologically unsophisticated nicety, but one I put some thought into and have come to appreciate.