Editing is Fun

My favorite part about this week was the Power Point list of reasons that editing is fun. Not only was it fun to look back at everything we’ve learned this semester, there were also some good points made that I can apply. I really liked how it pointed out that editing is like solving a puzzle. I have applied this “game” to other classes before, especially math. But I never thought about making an editing assignment a puzzle to solve. Anytime I solve a puzzle, whether it is in a video game of a math assignment, I always feel good about myself knowing that I’ve accomplished something. The other reason that editing is fun is because your job changes constantly so you never have to be bored. I have had some very tedious and dull jobs in my lifetime. It makes you dread going to work every day because the minutes can seem to drag on like hours. I prefer a job that requires thinking and effort in order to do it well. Being an editor accomplishes both of these as well as allows you to find ways of being unique and creative in your work.

For this week’s editing mistake, I wanted to use my roommate’s choice of words. He said this new device he bought “kills all your dead skin.” If the skin is already dead, then how could you kill it? Everyday language is not edited though, so I will tell about the real mistake I found. This piece of work appeared in the Desert News:

He also wasn't a head a coach. Ever. Not at any point in his career. Krystkowiak, even if briefly, can say he was. Yes, it was for only two seasons and they happened five and six years ago, but that's still two more than Boylen brought to the table.

There isn’t really a way to make that first sentence work. These weekly editing mistakes have really been fun.

One Last Hurrah!

Well, folks. It is finally here. The end of the semester is just at the end of this blog posting. Over the last four months I have learned a lot. This class has not only helped me to become a better writer, but it has helped me be a better student of grammar. This past week on web pages has made me look at the website I view more in-depth. For the the web page assignment I chose to analyze ESPN.com. This website does an immaculate job at perfecting modular design and following layout formats as described in our readings. The stories on their pages, however, do not follow the best web designs. The titles do not touch the stories and the images are in weak places. I can't help but think that some news websites alter their story layouts so they do not look completely like news stories.Although I won't be designing web pages, I can still learn to appreciate the different layouts in the news I read.

Here is a funny grammar fail that I found. Hard to be scared of a guy who has this abomination for a tattoo.

Page Design

Being an English major, I haven't ever really taken any design classes. This was all new territory for me. But even so, I really enjoyed it, and found a lot of it very useful and interesting. Who knew there was so much to learn about putting a page together.
The most educational thing for me was learning about what designs just don't work. Before I just thought that as long as you had some pictures and some text, it was alright, but when I started reading about designs that really don't work, I realized that the look is almost more important than the information. I began to notice more why certain stories in the newspaper appealed more to me than others, and it wasn't just how interesting the story sounded, but how interesting it looked.If it was a story with no pictures, or a really long leg, it didn't look iteresting at all, but if it had a picture, especially a big picture, I was immediately drawn to it. The same goes for books or websites. We all know that we judge books by their covers, even if we shouldn't, and that visual element catches the reader way before the actual content does.
The editing mistake I found this week is one of my biggest pet peeves. I got a letter from one of my friends that said, "I'm doing good." Maybe it's just the English major in me, but is it really that hard to say I'm doing well?

Good Photos

I do broadcast news, and images and video are extremely important to worry about when doing a story. I liked reading about the good and bad photos because it reminded me of the things I look for when I'm filming a story. It's not exciting to have a bunch of people sitting or standing around in a photograph. It's better to have them participating in an activity. Instead of showing someone holding an award, you could show that person doing the activity that he or she got the award for.

Good photos also need to be cropped well. If a photo is cropped too tightly, you lose important aspects of the scene. If it's not cropped tight enough, the reader will be too distracted with the background. It's important to make sure a story has good photos to go with it because readers are attracted to the visual elements of the page. If a story doesn't have an attractive layout, the story may never get read.

Now to tell you about the last editing mistake for this semester. I was anchoring Weber State News, and a couple of the stories had horrible grammar. I have no idea who edited the stories, but they should have changed the wording. It was hard to read. If the editor of that show had read through the scripts, they would have realized words were missing from some of the sentences. Luckily, I was able to add in the words myself, but this shows editing is important in both print and broadcast settings.

Art Balance

This week I learned writing with a hangover is the worst feeling this side of breaking a leg. In terms of editing, however, I learned all about the intricacies of page design. The most important, in my opinion, aspect of page design is to scatter the art. Scattering graphics, art and photos around the page doesn't dull the reader into a mild coma, but allows for less confusion when reading. If an editor clumps all the art in one general area the reader gets confused. The reader, if the art is clustered, will constantly be distracted by the seemingly random graphics, and they rapidly lose interest. If the reader struggles to keep track of the story's progress, then you might as well have not written the article.
If an editor refuses art balance, the page will look lopsided as well as confusing. Lopsided papers, while not necessarily a major grievance, just look weird. I have a hard time reading visually strange pages because I can't get the odd look out of my head.
Balancing art anchors the page. With a good dominant picture and with proper placement, the page will lend itself to being read easily.
I found an editing mistake in a brochure proclaiming that chickens shouldn't live in coops, but nice hotels. Because, you know, chickens totally need to be pampered to make eggs. The brochure said, "Spare chickens by stopping a bus." I'm guessing it was supposed to be abuse, but maybe we should all stop buses. For the chickens.

A Great Typo Hunt

I re-learned that you can’t judge a book by its cover. “The Great Typo Hunt,” by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson not only sounded dull but looked dull. The title seemed a bit presumptuous and subtitle, well: “Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time,” seriously? And the picture of a desert on the front cover left me feeling just as desolate. However…I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I must really be a “word nerd” after all. I found myself laughing at their ostentatious attitudes and contrived antics. And to have a love story woven through made it that much more palatable. And when I got to the picture of Canal City’s sign without the first “C,” I laughed really hard and then immediately wanted to send it to every student I know. At first I felt like America must be losing its general intelligence with all of the written mistakes we make. But then I realized we are just focusing our intelligence into other areas, which makes me want to work harder in my field to motivate others toward a stronger appreciation of their language. This book not only motivated me as I searched for typos around me every week, but I was excited, like it was Christmas morning every time. (Yes, I am a nerd.) In the end, these authors became less dull and more like my heroes.

Brought to you by Freelance Whales & Terrible Internet Connection

I've noticed with most news sites that the design mirrors print news, which is professional and doesn't offend me. I think Facebook's page design frustrates me the most because it's constantly changing; one day a feature will be in the right hand corner and the next day it doesn't exist. The design of a web site is going to be whatever the website's coordinator wants to be, and it may not please everyone, but there's ways to make the design pleasing to all involved.

What I'll take away from this class is a stronger admiration of grammar and vocabulary. I liked being able to relay what I've learned to friends who edit websites and articles. The vocabulary lists have also helped me to educate my brother so he can stop using words he learned from "Jersey Shore".

Hippa Lay?

I went to a chiropractor the other day, and the secretary asked me if I wanted to see their new HIPPA notice which was covered in clear contact paper. I could tell by the look on her face when I said yes that she was not used to that answer. It was entitled “HIPPA Notice of Privacy Practices.” I just thought it would be interesting to find a mistake in such a formal, highly-produced document. So I began reading. I carried it with me from room to room as I had various therapies on my neck to treat headaches. Each person that observed me reading the HIPPA notice, as if it were a doctor’s office magazine, gave me the most delicious sideways glance to see if I was crazy. Half way down the page it stated “Federal lay determines the amount of usage…” I laughed out loud and received a few more sideways glances. When I returned it to the secretary, she was looking at me even more strangely as I’m sure she couldn’t understand what I found to be so funny about a technical document. When I explained that I'm in an editing course and on the hunt for typographical errors she quickly asked, “Did you find one?” I pointed out the misspelling of the word law, and as she processed the sentence, she blushed, then quickly turned away from me as she said under her breath, “Thank you.” I was more than happy to be of service.

Jumping

While writing for the student newspaper at Weber State University, I noticed a common trend that can be considered an incorrect format in my opinion - jumping. Almost every story I have written as well as read has jumped onto another area of the paper. These stories frequently have very little text or information when the jump is completed. As a result of this, I frequently lose my place and get frustrated. It might be more prudent to include a new headline or some sort of description to go along with the jumped story. This can help a reader to keep track of the story and help pull readers into reading a story that was already past on previous pages.

This weeks editing mistake is terrible. Whoever designed and or edited this sign needs to be fired. Every word in this sign with the exception of exit is misspelled. It should read as follows:
Business
Rothschild
Schofield
This is yet another example of an obvious lack of editing. If the person who made this sign simply looked and it, people around the country would not be making fun of exit 185 on highway 51.

Week 10

Transitions. I remember in junior high english when my teacher would assign us our paragraph homework. This would entail looking at the first sentence and identifying what the purpose of the paragraph is and then writing a paper why all of the sentences correlated or did not correlate. Then, we had to identify the transitions and whether it was a good transition or not. This assignment brought back some of those memories. 

Anyways, enough with my boring memories let’s get on to business. The website highlighted on the transitions paper was very well done. I liked how at the very bottom it had the transitional expressions. This really helped when I was doing the assignment. I liked how it showed that if it is a similarity transition then you say something like, “also” or “in the same way” to bridge the two paragraphs together. It also had the example that if there was an exception/contrast transition then you could use, “but,” “however,” “in spite of,” etc. It was genius.

Below is my editing find. I found it on another website. I thought it was funny. I personally would consider never using them to make a sign for me.

Week 12

I had difficulties with this week’s assignment. It did not click that the blahblahblahblah in writing headlines assignment was actually showing how big the headline was suppose to be. I thought the blahblahblahblah meant I did not have to pay attention to it. Silly me.

As for finding headlines, I enjoyed doing this because it played into my news time each day. I am amazed at how proficient headline writers are. Most of them use the right words to describe what the story is trying to portray. I definitely should never be headline writer for any type of newspaper. 

Below is my editing find. It was on a website. I am sure you are all seeing what is wrong with the graphic below.

Week 13

I read “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” for my book report. I will have to admit that when I first started reading the book I was not very fond of the author. She seemed hostile about editing mistakes other people make. She would constantly share stories about others editing faults. 

Her first attack was on a sign that said, “CD’s, DVD’s, VIDEO’s and BOOK’s.” She was pretty upset about this one. I get it, the apostrophe really should not be there, and yes, I agree with her. I was just surprised how hard she was on everyone for their mistakes.

The more I read the more I appreciated her passion for punctuation and proper english. At the end of the book she pointed out how if we do not take a stand on the implementation of punctuation it will become a lost art. It will become an art of :) ;) :-(, instead of an art used to help the writer express emotion through the words written on the page. 

Now, on to my editing find. I was at church reading a newsletter and I found myself editing the whole thing. I was putting commas in and changing the words around. I hope whoever wrote it was not sitting behind me. I would have felt bad.

Week 14

       When I first started reading the assignment on layout I thought “isn’t this an editing class?” Well, it is an editing class and despite the fact that I probably will never be a journalist, I found the layout reading very informative. 

I read the newspaper often and it has never crossed my mind that it took so much effort to organize each page. There are specific places for the pictures, headlines captions, and stories. They strategically plan each placement. I like how the newspapers do not just throw a picture on a page, they carefully figure out what would be most appealing to the readers eye. They also figure out how to place all of the text to keep a good flow for the reader. 

On top of making sure the reader will easily be able to follow the story, they are careful in their choice of pictures. There was a specific part in the reading that talked about dominant photos. I love how they are sure to have the pictures different shapes so that the reader can visually see what is the most important picture and story. On page 54 of the reading, they really hit the point home to me. The layout on the right looks so much better with an assortment of sizes rather than just one size fits all. 

Now, on to my editing find. I was driving down Harrison a few weeks back and saw a sign outside of an insurance office that said, “walk in’s welcome.” It’s true. Every time I drive past it I see it. If only they knew to take out the apostrophe. 

Last week of school! :)

Recently, I had the chance to facilitate a focus group that critiqued different university websites. Now, when I look at any website an hour and a half of people picking apart tabs, colors, pictures, and font flash through my head. So to say the least as I was critiquing a website for this weeks assignment all I could hear was voices from that focus group saying, “I like those tabs” or “yuck why would they use yellow and black – it looks like a bumble bee. Now, the more I go online the more I avoid bad websites. 

The website I highlighted for this weeks paper was lynda.com. I am truly impressed. It was not only organized and uncluttered but it also used several principles from our recent reading. For instance, the website incorporated the principle of large to small. The top boxes are all large and then as you scroll down the page everything breaks up into smaller boxes and columns. Pretty impressive. 

It also used a principle I spotted in the chapter that talked about logos and sigs. The principle was, when incorporating graphics it is imperative that the graphics compliment and correlate with one another. And correlate they did. The graphics were all complementary, organized and well done. Overall, I was impressed with how well it was laid out. 

Now on to my editing find. Does critiquing your own work count? I hope it does. I was writing a paper this week and reading through it afterwards. I couldn’t believe how many editing mistakes I had made. Of course it was all of the little flaws like dangling participles and missing commas. I know my skills are improving, but sometimes it feels like I took two steps back. Happens, right?

The Last Post

I love to play piano and I have recently been visiting http://www.spiremusic.org/ to download sheet music for next to nothing. It’s a site that I’m familiar with and I find it very user friendly.

Below the logo and company name in the top left corner, the nonprofit status is listed. This is one of the first things a site visitor would notice. The categories at the top are primly placed above the art so they can be easily noticed and utilized by the reader. The thing I love most about this site is the dominant art which is both interactive and user friendly.

At the bottom of the page are three square-ish boxes: a performance calendar, newsletter sign up and “Find us on Facebook.” As a site user, these three squares are a letdown. The squares are SO boring! The problem could be remedied by something as small as spacing them differently. Another option is to make them into links and place them at the top of the page with the others, lessening the clutter at the bottom of the page and focusing more on the art.

Apart from the boring squares at the bottom, the background is pretty boring and could be more visually interesting without being distracting. The logo (the cartooned treble clef in the top left corner) could be better utilized by making it slightly more prominent.

Overall, the site is extremely user friendly and visually interesting. There are a few things that ought to be changed to better the visual aspect of the site. The art in the middle of the page is dominant and eye catching as well as user friendly and visually interesting.

My editing mistake for the week was, again, found at my work. We have an in-house phone directory (just one sheet of paper) that is poorly formatted. It's scattered and hard to read. Also, area codes exist only on some of the numbers, on others it is assumed that they are (801) area codes.

Web Design, Shmeb Design

I have a hard time WANTING to learn as well as understanding story and web design. It is not something I am remotely interested in, but i understand it is good for me to learn. So I did my best to learn from the readings and my own observations. I decided to dedicate this blog to what I learned from a website I frequent often.

Bravo TV Website

http://www.bravotv.com/

This is a site I frequent often since my guilty pleasure is watching The Real Housewives franchise series. I can’t always watch the episodes for lack of time, but they do have the videos on the site, so it is a good website to kill time at the doctor’s office on my cell phone. I think the website could be a lot better technologically speaking, but as far as a layout, it is fairly good.

As far as the website’s layout and design, it is aesthetically pleasing to me-someone who is not a layout and design pro. So from my standpoint it is great, there is a slideshow of visuals and lots of bright colors. It also isn’t too overrun with ads that usually seem to clutter most websites. I think they could utilize a lot more of their space and not make the site so choppy but a lot of their work is done in the rectangle format discussed in the reading.

I think the art supplements the pictures and does not confuse the text. The pictures are place in the appropriate places, with little room for confusion. It adds motion to the page as your eye starts from the top and works its way down. It takes advantage of optical weight by using a larger, dominating picture at the top and the text and pictures get smaller as you scroll down the page. The site’s visual strategy is effective in use of text paired with pictures.

Of course I had more to comment on in the assignment but I thought I'd throw it out to all of you to see if you agree with what I wrote about this site.

Just a quick grammar fail for this week's post.

Story Design

The design and layout of a story is yet another piece included in making the story attractive to the reader. By now we have learned all about the lead. It is the first part of the story. It gives a preview and determines whether the content of the story is interesting enough to the reader. There is also the headline. It needs to tell about the story and why it is important without giving away too much information. We also learned how to fit the headline with the rest of the story. But there is a lot more to it than just fitting the headline in with the article. Another design that must be taken into consideration when designing the story is how to format the text. It can be formatted either vertically or horizontally. If there is art included in the story, such as a mug shot or photo(s), then their placement in addition to the placement of the text and headline can either make or break the readers attraction to the story. I really enjoyed learning about the different techniques involved in formatting stories in order to make them the best looking. The journalism field certainly requires talent in a wide variety of areas, not just writing.

The editing mistake I found for this week is from an article that appeared in the Deseret News. The paragraph goes as follows: The intentional burn was lit by a duck club in order to rid the wetland area of phragmites. Phragmites are an invasive plant the grow so densely, they can choke out native cattails, reeds and grasses, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. “…an invasive plant the grow so densely…” doesn’t work.

Working with Writers

I thoroughly enjoyed the reading about working with writers. I have a tendency to get high and mighty when I edit another's work, so these rules and steps really helped a lot. Here are five rules that I composed to work in conjunction with the others.

1. Understand the material you are editing. If we understand the material we are editing, it would make it easier, and possibly less necessary, to edit.

2. Make sure writer understands your edits. I have edited many papers for friends and family and they have asked e about my edits. If the writer understands the edits that you made, they might be able to know what mistakes they are making.

3. Correct only what you believe is wrong. Work with the writer when trying to determine what is really correct. You may make an editing error that might have been intentional.

4. Take yourself out of the editing element and try to understand the message. As editors, it is important to understand the content we are reading. Instead of being critical of every mistake, maybe we should look at the message rather than the way it is written.

5. Look to the writer for help when editing. The writer can be a good source to use when trying to figure out how to effectively edit their story.

Here’s a funny grammar mistake:

Placement

This week, the struggle of story design clashed with my want for the semester to end. Doing the story design homework made me realize how much work an editor puts in. I always thought editing just searched for and eradicated grammar errors. Editors have to scour stories for libel, grammar errors and word confusion, and that still isn't enough to satiate the hunger of the typical editor. At least, I'm assuming it doesn't. I never knew that editors decided what picture to choose for an article based on how much emotion and power the picture has. I also found out, to my eternal indifference, that editors have to decide where to place the picture. This placement is decided by the type of article and how many columns the article has dedicated to it. If it's a one column, vertical story, the only picture that seems to work is the mugshot. Front page stories usually get treated with one large horizontal photo. Then there is the placement of headlines to fit in with the photo selection. I thought headlines last week were brutal, but I guess aligning it with the photo would make them easier to write. The error I found this week comes from craigslist. Under the pets category, it said, "Free cats for cheap."

Story Design

Reading the article on eReserve gave me a pounding headache, but I must say, I now understand story designs and layouts better than before. From the reading, I deduced that placement of text and art are visually based. A story design is dependent on what looks good and appealing. Although I won't be producing and determining page layouts in the future, I can use the elements and concepts I learned from the readings to understand the workings of page layout and appreciate how hard editors work to make the page visually pleasing. I was writing a history paper this weekend when I noticed that I was doing the one thing that I hate doing: WRITING IN PASSIVE VOICE!!!! despite the fact that I read every sentence in my head during and after I write it, I still noticed a few sentences that contain the dreaded passive voice. So I cant seem to fund my own grammar fails so i have resorted to looking online to find other's fails. Here is one that I found on CollegeHumor.com. Instead of highlighting the mistake, I editing the picture as it would normally appear. Can you spot the FAIL? Is this really what our 2nd graders are learning?

Story Design

I had no idea so much work went into laying out a page for a newspaper. I was the a&e editor for The Signpost for a day, and I had no idea picas and design were such a big deal. Reading the handout on EReserve helped me to better understand the rules of newspaper layout. I thought it was interesting how you should never format an article in the shape of a square because that's the most boring shape. It also makes readers feel like the story is longer than it actually is. I was also surprised the article said that in the typical newspaper only 30 percent of the stories run with art. I thought artwork would have been required to run with each story. It's important when laying out a page to make it look clean, aligned, and balanced. If a page does not look attractive, the reader will not take the time to read the stories on the page.

The editing mistake I found this week was in my brother's essay. He wrote, "I have always wanted to sea the see." He confused the words sea and see. He's only in sixth grade, so the mistake is understandable. It made me laugh when I saw it, so I thought I would share it with you.

Working With Writers

Much of this week was spent on editing work from other people, such as writers. Below is a list of original tips when working with writers.

1. Coach an aspiring writer as much as possible. This should not just be a specific time. Writers often have ideas on a spur of the moment notice, so make yourself as available as possible.

2. Balance an open mind with realistic expectations –A writers writing is not your writing, so be aware that there will be differences, however with realistic goals that need to be achieved remind your writer about the path that you want them to take.

3. When either one of you mess up, talk about it together –No one is perfect, so when mistakes do happen, fix the problem together.

4. Maintain a positive attitude at all times –As a writing coach or any coach for that matter, staying positive will help the understudy focus on the task at hand.

5. Edit you work over and over again –When coaching a writer, I would recommend that the writer analyze their work at least four or five times to check for inconsistencies, grammatical errors and style.

This weeks editing mistake had to have been done on purpose. There is absolutely no way anyone could have missed this. I don't know if this is would be considered an editing mistake or if the employee was subconsciously correlating the new "hiring shifts" with the food at Taco Bell.

Tips for working with writers

This week we learned a lot about how to work well with writers. I think this is really important stuff to know, cuz all the editing skills in the world won't help you if you don't know how to work with people. Here are the tips that I came up with for being a good writing coach:
1. Take an interest in the writers’ outside lives. Obviously when it’s crunch time you don’t want to sit and ask how their kids are doing, but there’s always ways to find time to find out a little more about the human behind the writer. The better of a rapport you can get with your writers, the better team you’ll make.
2. Encourage a little creative wiggle room. Newspapers have been changing a little bit recently to keep up with the times, and I think a little more creativity in the writing would go a long way. I think so many journalists are afraid of stepping away from what they know works, but after a while, the conventions get boring.
3. Leave your bad mood at home. This is hard, but I think it’s essential when you’re working with someone else’s work. If they see you’re in a bad mood, they may assume that it’s because of their writing, and this’ll cause problems.
4. Read writing outside of work. The more you read, the better editor you’ll be. You’ll find new things that you like, and some that you want to stay away from.
5. Love what you do. This may seem like a duh thing, but I’ve seen too many people who quickly become frustrated with editing. Editing can be just as fun and creative a process as writing. It can lead you to discover something new. Go about it with enthusiasm, and it’ll rub off on your writers.

Now onto the editing mistake. I found this from a news release on the website Rotten Tomatoes: "The Tomb would be directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, King Arthur), and is about an architect who must escape from the super prison that helped design." It should read, "who must escape from the super prison that he helped design." It doesn't make much sense if you leave out the 'he'!

Know Your Stuff

I really liked the assignment involving learning how to become a better writing coach. Coming up with my own five tips was educational. I need to work on a few of them myself.

Being a good writing coach is really important. To accomplish this, you must know how to write. These are my five tips.

1. Know your stuff. Know the basic mechanics of various aspects of writing such as editing, grammar and punctuation.
2. Offer to help. Offering to edit other people’s writing will keep you on your toes and help them with their writing abilities.
3. Read. Read material from different forms of media. This expands your personal vocabulary and writing style.
4. Write. How can you be a writing coach if you don’t write?
5. Keep up. Keep up with the changes going on around you. As a journalist, I rely heavily on the AP Stylebook. I have to keep up with the changes made in the Stylebook.

My editing mistake for the week is actually a mistake I made. A few weeks ago, we had an assignment dealing with headlines. I wrote this as one of my headlines: "Bill Proposes Allowing Concealed Weapons On Campus Grounds." Dr. J reminded me not to capitalize the first letter of each word. She said to use downstyle. Her exact wording was: “Use downstyle where you capitalize words as you do in a sentence. Don't do what the stodgy New York Times does.” Her response was helpful and educational. Thanks Sheree!

Working with Writers

While reading the section on working with writers and thinking through the assignment, I came up with some of my own editor's tips on working with writers. I gathered these from my experiences of having papers edited.

5 Tips I Came Up With

1. Don’t act like a know-it-all. Nothing bugs me more than when someone editing my paper acts like they know everything about the subject I am writing about.

2. Watch your tone. You can say all the right things but the way you are speaking could rub the writer the wrong way. You may be in charge of their writing, but not their life.

3. Keep margin comments brief. Don’t get too marker-happy and scratch out all their hard work.

4. It is not your job to rewrite the story. If the story is not what you are looking for in your paper, talk to the writer and have them fix their own work. Don’t go over their head and fix it yourself.

5. Don’t edit the paper until the writer is finished or they ask you. Don’t ask for the paper and start marking it up. Wait until the writer is done, then edit it.

So there you have it! Now when any of you are editing my papers, please have this printed out next to you while doing so.

The editing mistake I found this week was driving on 4th south in Salt Lake. I tried to take a picture but I was driving and didn't want to die. It was a church reader-board that read "Have your life saved BUY Jesus." I thought it was amusing.

Book Report

If any of you don't have The Elements of Style, I suggest you get it. This reference book is very insightful on the intricacies and common mistakes that people make while writing. It is very much a book about grammatical issues as it is about style. In my opinion, it is a more useful and convenient tool than the AP Stylebook, although the stylebook is very helpful. For example, The Elements of Style uses concise information to stress a point. "The colon is more formal than the dash, but separates with less power than the semicolon." There are also examples of improper and proper usage. This can be especially helpful for visual learners like myself.
This weeks editing mistake was taken in our own student services center in the Weber State University main campus. This is an example of a careless mistake. "No Deposet" is not correct. It should read "No Deposit". A simple run through of this flier would have probably eliminated this mistake, so make sure to look over work over and over again until you are satisfied of the result, or run the risk having it posted up as an example of poor editing.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

I had the opportunity to read “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”, by Lynne Truss for my book report. It was definitely a good read with a lot of great insights. It also helped me realize how much I’ve taken punctuation for granted. Simply omitting or changing the punctuation can drastically change the meaning of what has been written. This is just one example given in Truss book:

“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

Compared with:

“A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

The book also gives a good definition of punctuation and what it is for, comparing punctuation to traffic signals. Punctuation leads us on the correct path through written words. It tells us when to slow down (such as with a comma or semicolon), when to stop (such as with a period of question mark), and when to notice something (such as with quotation marks).

With the popularity of text messaging and social media today, proper punctuation is not taken seriously. Lynne Truss makes the call for punctuation sticklers to unite, and use proper punctuation even when sending a text message to your friends.

Now for the editing mistake this week:

About 7:45 p.m. Saturday, police responded reports of shots being fired at the Far West Motel, 410 N. Main. Officers arrived to find that 52-year-old Gregory Nance had been fatally shot. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

This appeared in a Deseret News story. It was breaking news so they likely posted it as soon as possible without properly editing and fixing all of the mistakes.

Rewind

I am going a little backwards on the blogging topic, I am going back to commas. If you recall, I stood up proudly and typed,

"My name is Mary Capron. And I am a comma-holic"
(ok, it wasn't those words exactly, but something to that effect)

Anyways, I found myself engrossed in my book I read for the report called "Eats, Shoots & Leaves". While reading it, I stumbled upon this gem of a rule as to how to use commas. I would like to share it with all of you.

"The big final rule for the comma is one that you won’t find in any books by grammarians. It is quite easy to remember, however. The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it. More than any other mark, the comma requires the writer to use intelligent discretion and to be simply alert to potential ambiguity."

I copied this from my report. That is why it looks funny.

How dumb do you feel now? You were using commas this whole time like an idiot. Just kidding. But really, she has a good point. Just be smart in your comma usage and you cannot go wrong!

That's all I have for today. I am all written out. That book report took it out of me.

Oh, editing mistake.
I got a thank you card yesterday. (I know it is horrible I'm calling this woman out after how thoughtful her thank you card was but oh well) The whole card was really nice and sweet and gushy but the whole time she was meaning to say "YOU'RE" (9 times) she wrote YOUR. It was hard to read about what a great person and friend I was when I was thinking about the bad spelling the whole time.

I am going to hell for sharing that.