Dear Ed,
I accidentally had a typo in my cover letter, and I realized it
the moment after I sent it off—and it’s pretty easy to detect. Is there any way to cover for this? Would a “sorry about that” e-mail just make things worse? Ed, help me with some damage control!
Megan, Chicago
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Dear Megan,
You could send a quick correction e-mail, which would show you can catch your own mistakes, but, unfortunately, it probably won’t make a difference. If it was a slight offense, something that was clearly a typo (interxship instead of internship), and not a gross misspelling (itnersip instead of internship—Ed’s really gotten that before), it may be overlooked. Sending an e-mail recognizing the error could just call extra attention to it. But getting the name of the editor or magazine wrong is probably an uncorrectable mistake that no apology e-mail can fix.
But you can learn from it. Even if you proofread every cover letter you write multiple times, it never hurts to have someone else with strong editing skills give it a once over. When you’re so involved with something you’ve written, no matter how eagle-eyed you are, it’s easy to miss a glaring error, so another pair of peepers can do you good.
In the meantime, apply elsewhere and hope the cover letter with a typo went to a forgiving editor!
Love,
Ed