The transition successfully brought nine desperate business entities under common management for the first time.
Writes Amy, “It took me a second to realize that the author meant disparate.”
Which brings us to one of the underlying reasons for why editors exist: to keep you and your company from accidentally sounding ridiculous.
Thank goodness for Amy’s sharp eye.
Posted in Land of Typos, Why editors exist | no comments »
Was flipping through some files from last year and found this correction I made in the book Spooky Michigan, part of Globe Pequot Press’s Spooky series.
No task was too big for Con Culhane. He even damned the Two-Hearted River so he could use it to drive logs to Lake Superior.
Damn that typo!
These are the kind of mistakes that send a chill up your spine because they’re so easy to miss. I remember spotting this one in my second pass through the book and catching my breath as I realized that I’d missed it on my first go-round. (Refer to the previous entry, “Don’t pass on the second pass.”)
This is also a particularly terrifying mistake because it falls in the category of “accidentally naughty typos.” You’d be surprised how many of these show up in otherwise innocuous text.
And for a copyeditor, that’s spooky!
Posted in Land of Typos | 3 comments »
Yes, this is an old story that hit the news about two years ago. I thought about it after Wednesday’s scheduled shuttle launch was postponed yet again.
Just your basic typo . . . printed in about 500-point type. The shuttle’s name is not “Endeavor,” but “Endeavour”; its British spelling reflects the fact that the ship is named after the HM Bark Endeavour, a 10-gun Royal Navy bark commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand in 1769-71
USA Today had the best headline for this story: “Houston, we have a typo.”
Posted in Land of Typos, Why editors exist | no comments »
In most cases, the first pass consists of slowly, carefully scrubbing the text to enhance readability and to ensure correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style.
The second pass is usually done at a “reader’s pace” rather than an “editor’s pace,” and it consists of catching any snafus, typos, or awkwardnesses that were missed — or introduced — during the first pass.
Copyeditors skip the second pass at their own peril. Recently, for example, I discovered all the following typos during my second pass through a document.
Had I not performed the copyeditor’s customary second pass and caught these typos, my client would have been justified in gently (or not-so-gently) declining to use my services in the future.
Posted in Editorial process, Land of Typos, Why editors exist | 1 comment »
“The report further suggests that the reliance on debt financing further exasperates the issue and that capital needs of the antiquated system are growing faster than revenues.”
I believe the author meant that debt financing would exacerbate (i.e., increase) the issue, not exasperate (i.e., frustrate) the issue.
I always get a little flutter in my stomach when I catch these kind of “gotchas” as I’m copyediting. They’re so easy to miss.
Posted in Land of Typos, Why editors exist | no comments »
OK, this is a good one … from venerated publisher Oxford University Press. Oxford just published a book called Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: A Casebook. Here’s a description of the book in Oxford’s online “Literature Newsletter”:
This book provides a series of essays by Jane Eyre that are lucidly and passionately written, and carefully researched and argued while still being accessible to the general reading public.
Oxford is even better than I thought if they were somehow able to summon one of fiction’s best-loved heroines and convince her to write a series of essays. Go Oxford!
Posted in Land of Typos, Oxford University Press | no comments »
Cherished correspondent “J” sent in this classified ad from today’s Washington Post.
Minimum Qualifications: College degree in English or related field or equivalent experience required; may have advanced degree in one of these fields or in science. 57 years of experience in copyediting scientific subject matter and knowledge of all aspects of production (electronic editing, proofreading, and page layout) is necessary.
I’ll make a note to call them immediately on my 85th birthday! (Get it? That’s because I have roughly 10 years of experience now, and they need 57 years of experience, so I’m 38 now, so I need to add 47 more years to get 57 years of experience, which takes us to 85 … oh, never mind. It wasn’t that good of a joke anyway.)
Posted in Land of Typos | no comments »
From an information technology proposal:
We will bring the lesions learned over the past 10 years to ensure success on this effort.
Talking about lessons learned in proposal text is enough of a cliche. But lesions learned? That’s just gross.
Posted in Land of Typos | no comments »
This isn’t exactly a typo, but more an example of the type of corporate writing that makes me want to vomit.
We understand that as change accelerates beyond the fundamental ability of organizations to anticipate it, only one competitive differentiator can help companies stay ahead — innovation. By enabling this constant flow of technology and innovation and facilitating this exchange of ideas and best practices relationships with the world’s leading business and technology companies and our clients, we combine thought leadership with the strengths of our partners to expand our technology and vertical offerings that bring innovation to the marketplace.
Best practices? Thought leadership? Vertical offerings? Give me a break. If you want to sell me something - even a sophisticated IT service - tell me in plain English what you are offering and what it will do for me.
This type of vague, hot-air-filled promises just don’t cut it.
Posted in Land of Typos | no comments »
RepMan writes about the lastest absurd result of a public figure/head honcho neglecting to run copy past a proofreader or editor before releasing it to the masses.
It seems a company called TextTrust–which hawks “the Internet’s highest quality web site spell checker”–sent out a press release full of–you guessed it–typos. The misspelled words included independent, accommodation, and definitely, which were spelled independant, accomodation, and definately. Ouch.
TexTrust’s PR manager immediately accepted responsibility for the incident, but as RepMan writes, “the damage had [already] been done. TextTrust became something of a water cooler joke.” He goes on to articulate one of my main points as to why copyediting your work is essential to maintaining your company’s reputation: “If he/she can’t get the spelling correct in what was probably a critically important press release, can he/she be trusted with other assignments?”
Posted in Land of Typos, Spelling, Why editors exist | no comments »
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