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How can we imply that we did not notice our typo on a writing like essay? Consider a friend of mine reads my writing and says "There is a spelling mistake on your essay.", so in this situation can I say

"Ahh, it escaped my eye. Thank you."

"Ahh, it escaped me. Thank you."

I think "I couldn't notice it" seems like that it can be used for someone else's works.

For example I think we can say:

"I couldn't notice there is a logical mistake on the story."

and I think we say say also, if there is a sentence like that,

"It escaped my eye there was a logical mistake on the story."

Am I right?

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    I can't help but notice that the two phrases you are using are very similar to a few idioms used in common English. "It escaped my eye" is very similar to "It escaped my attention", and as I've already used, "I couldn't notice" is very similar to "I couldn't help but notice". The first statement pair is very similar in meaning, however in the second statment pair "I couldn't notice" would imply the opposite of the idiom "I couldn't help but notice"
    – Sidney
    Jan 8, 2015 at 19:35
  • @Sidney Thank you for your answer.I have just seen another sentence on the dictionary that "it escaped me" , is it a right sentence also?
    – Mrt
    Jan 8, 2015 at 19:42
  • "It escaped me" is correct; it implies the same thing as "It escaped my eye" and "It escaped my attention". Both are syntactically correct, however "It escaped my eye" is an uncommon usage.
    – Sidney
    Jan 8, 2015 at 19:45
  • @Sidney I typically read "it escaped me" to mean I couldn't recall it, like "Her name escaped me." For it to mean overlooked, it would have to be "It escaped my attention" in my dialect.
    – ColleenV
    Jan 8, 2015 at 20:02
  • Yes you can. It's not a common expression but it makes perfect sense and I doubt I would give it a second thought if you said it. I might even find it a clever turn of phrase.
    – EllieK
    Jan 21, 2022 at 20:22

1 Answer 1

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I would say

"Ahh, I missed it (when I checked my paper for mistakes). Thank you!"

In this context, missed has definition from Collins Dictionary:

  1. to fail to meet, reach, attain, catch, accomplish, see, hear, perceive, understand, etc.

Another phrase you could use is "overlooked it" where overlook means "fail to notice". For example,

The typo was easy to overlook because it wasn't highlighted by the automatic spell checker.

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  • Thank you.It would be interesting if I say :"I looked over your essays but I overlooked some mistakes"
    – Mrt
    Jan 9, 2015 at 0:20
  • You could also say something like "It was just an oversight, thanks for pointing it out."
    – Venkata Narayana
    Jan 22, 2022 at 5:18

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