Over on my book review blog, I talk about a book which was so riddled with errors (including missing commas, typos, missing semi colons, a lack of fact-checking and plain odd sentences) that it completely put me off the text and I felt compelled to mark them all up and then write them all down …
Category Archives: Errors
Capital or lower case?
When do you use a capital letter to start a word, and when do you use lower case?
This is one of those things that has changed through the years. Think about Dr Samuel Johnson’s Twitter-feed for example – it’s partly effective because of its use of capitals. But nowadays, it’s “less is more”.
Of course, we always use a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, and traditionally we use one after a colon, too (although this is no longer set in stone – the rule is: be consistent).
Proper names are still capitalized, so: Liz, the city of London (when referring to the place as a whole) but the City of London when referring to that specific region of the city.
Some words are capitalized (or not) to distinguish between an abstract and a concrete use of the term. For example, the Methodist Church as an organisation, but a Methodist church as a building. In a similar way, State is capitalized when you’re talking about a particular state – New York State, or the State of New York as an entity, but when talking about the states of New York and Wisconsin, no capital. And when you’re referring to something you’ve mentioned before, such as the University of Birmingham, you call it “the university” thereafter. The same with people: Prince William, but “the prince said”, etc.
Although this isn’t strictly a “troublesome pair”, the rest of them are here.
On the humble apostrophe
I wasn’t sure I was going to write anything on the apostrophe, as it seems such a basic thing that people like me who work with words tend to go on about (we don’t really roam the streets, Sharpie in hand, looking for hapless greengrocers … )
But then I noticed more and more confusions, and a friend or two mentioned that they still weren’t sure, so: the humble apostrophe.
Turning to the dictionary, an apostrophe is “an exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person or personified thing.” Oh – not the one we want. OK, it’s “a punctuation mark (‘) used to indicate either possession or the omission of letters or numbers.” That’s better.
Let’s move on to Hart’s Rules, which, oddly enough, contains the rules of English. The following information is summarised from Hart’s. Please do pay attention to all but the ones I mark as terribly hard – they are the ones where you need to know there’s something funny about them and you’ll need to look them up. That’s what we all do, just to check …
The apostrophe is used in two ways – to show possession (ownership) and to mark where letters or numbers have been missed out.
Possession
Easy …
– Use an apostrophe and an s with a normal single noun or indefinite pronoun to show possession – the girl’s job, the box’s contents, anyone’s guess.
A bit harder …
– Use the apostrophe and s combination for plural nouns that don’t end in s – people’s opinions, children’s toys.
– Do NOT use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns: hers, its, ours, yours, theirs – theirs is the kingdom of heaven, a friend of yours, give the dog its dinner (it’s easier to remember the “its” rule if you think of it belonging to this section).
A bit harder still …
– Use the apostrophe alone (no s after it) after plural nouns that DO end in s – our neighbours’ gardens, other countries’ borders.
– In compound and “of” phrases, the apostrophe (and the plural, in fact) go after the last noun – my sister-in-law’s son, the King of Spain’s estates.
– Use an apostrophe and s with personal names ending with an s, x, or z sound – Charles’s, Dickens’s, Marx’s and Jesus’s.
Ever so hard (to be honest I sometimes have to look these up and I don’t often see them used correctly) …
– Use an apostrophe and no s when talking about time passing – in a few days’ time, a few weeks’ holiday. But if it’s in the name of a war, no apostrophe – The Hundred Years War.
– A double possessive (making use of both “of” and an apostrophe) may be used with nouns related to living beings or personal names – a speech of Churchill OR a speech of Churchill’s. But it’s not used with nouns referring to organisations, etc. – a friend of the National Gallery.
– A double set of nouns – apostrophe and s go after them if they are acting together – Broomfield and Dexter’s “The Rules of Grammar” – but not if they’re separate – Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s tragedies.
– Apostrophe and no s for a singular noun that ends in an s or z sound combined with “sake” – for goodness’ sake, for old times’ sake (times here is a plural so has the apostrophe after the s). This is the one I have to look up. Maybe you should save this blog post for those purposes.
Believe me, there are more obscure rules, for example those dealing with Greek names. If you need to know, ask me!
Plurals
Just – don’t. If you really, really need to differentiate, you are just about allowed a small, occasional one, only in examples like – dot the i’s and cross the t’s, find all the number 5’s. But that’s it. And there’s not one with numbers any more, although this has changed in the last decade or so: the 1980s not the 1980’s.
Contractions/omissions
Easy …
Use an apostrophe when a letter or number has been missed out: won’t, we’ll, bo’sun, ’70s, it’s warm out today.
A bit harder …
Don’t use an apostrophe before a word that’s been shortened but is now in general use – flu, cello and phone, not ‘flu, ‘cello and ‘phone.
If the apostrophe replaces the beginning or end of a word, it has a space before/after it to make the word stay separate – rock ‘n’ roll. If the apostrophe replaces a letter in the middle of the word, no space – ma’am, o’er.
Madly hard to remember …
An apostrophe is used before the suffix when an abbreviation functions as a verb – KO’d, OD’ing.
References
Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th rev. ed.) Oxford: OUP, 2008.
New Hart’s Rules Oxford: OUP, 2005.
Why bother? The value of proofreading
A while ago, I asked people what they’d like to see me writing about. One that came up there, and has come up since, and before, and whenever I mention I’m a proofreader/copyeditor, is … “why bother?” Why can’t people just express themselves however they want, with whatever spelling, grammar and punctuation they fancy?
I have to state my own view here; that’s all I can do. And furnish some examples, many drawn from a discussion I had with peers in the copyediting business, on a forum to which I belong. I fall in between the prescriptive and descriptive camps when it comes to spellings, grammar, etc. and their (inevitable) changes. I glory in new words and word-formations (I’ve been slightly obsessed with the -gate suffix for more years than I care to recall) and I find it fascinating to see how language changes with time. I don’t think it should be fixed, nailed down and not allowed to change. But I still care deeply about clarity and precision of expression. And, in my opinion, if you don’t know the rules and how to apply them, if you don’t *care* about the rules and how to apply them, then the clarity of what you’re expressing can easily be lost, and your meaning may not come across as you intend it to.
Please note, I am not criticising those who don’t know the rules, or have difficulty applying them. How could I, when my own clients include people whose English is not their first (or second, or third) language, dyslexic people, people who’ve not been taught at school or college how the rules work. I like a laugh at a dodgy shop sign as much as the next person, but I wouldn’t point out those things publicly in this blog, or ever want to make people feel I’m mocking them. But if you are not sure what to put or how to write it, there are reference materials all over the place, and people like me and my colleagues, who can help out.
So, some examples (thanks again to the Copyediting-List folks for providing some of them)
— A purple people-eater is purple and eats people, but a purple-people eater eats only the purple ones.
— Here’s a fascinating link showing the importance of word order:
— Here’s an example of how important language is in the legal field. And it’s not just in the legal field – while many students are not marked down for grammar and punctuation these days, a friend who lectures in speech and language therapy does, as a mistake in someone’s notes can cause many problems down the line.
— On a similar note, haven’t we all got colleagues or other people we communicate with who may not have great written language skills? Doesn’t it devalue their opinions a little in your mind, when everyone’s laughing at the latest email or sign?
— This is a long one, but it shows the importance of punctuation!
Dear Jim:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?
Anne
Dear Jim:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Anne
— Capitalisation matters too, in this great example from Andy Mabbett:
One area of capitalisation that divides even experts in the field is around species names. There are many types of black-headed gulls, and lots of little gulls, but only one species called Black-headed Gull (and it has a brown head!) and one species of Little Gull. Consider:
“Is that black-headed gull a black-headed gull?”
“No, that’s a little gull. The little gull on the railing is a black-headed gull.”
vs.
“Is that black-headed gull a Black-headed Gull?”
“No, that’s a Little Gull. The little gull on the railing is a Black-headed Gull.”
— A classic: Let’s eat Grandma!/Let’s eat, grandma!
— Lynne Truss did well out of this one: Eats, shoots, and leaves/Eats shoots and leaves.
— This one comes in various forms and with various names… I would like to thank my parents, the Pope and Mother Teresa.
Publishers and other purveyors of words have style guides, academic departments ask their students to reference books read in a certain way, and proofreaders and copyeditors (and copy writers) use reference materials such as the ones I’ve discussed before, to make sure that what they produce is clear and consistent. We do this, I think, on behalf of the reader, so they’re not distracted by mistakes, howlers and inconsistencies. My aim in my work is to help the writer express themselves clearly and accurately, so their readers can read their texts simply and easily, using their brainpower and concentration to absorb the concepts of the text at hand, or just enjoy a work of fiction without having to puzzle over the word the author meant to use.
So – why bother? Do you think I should? Do you think we should? And have I answered the question?
Copyediting and proofreading
As promised a couple of posts ago, I will now attempt to distinguish between copyediting and proofreading.
I have used New Hart’s rules: the handbook of style for writers and editors, which is one of the reference tools recommended by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, in setting down these distinctions: any errors, however, are my own.
Copyediting means making sure the copy conforms, first, externally, to accepted forms of word use, spelling, grammar, etc., and any style guide the client might use, and second, internally to itself. The second point is very important and involves checking the author has spelled names the same throughout, referred to people in the same way, arranged rooms described in a house in the same way each time they’re mentioned, etc. That’s a bit like being a continuity person for a film or TV programme, and when there’s a lot of that, it’s called a substantive edit. For example, in a novel I’m copyediting at the moment, I’ve had to pop backwards in the text and insert suggestions for something being mentioned at one point, so it can be referred to later on.
So, copyediting is actually what people usually think of when they think “Liz is running a proofreading business.”
But proofreading is something altogether different. This involves checking a text is ready to be published. Making sure the text starts on the right page, that paragraphs don’t have a trailing word on the next page, that diagrams or tables aren’t split, that the right chapter heading appears at the top of each page. Really, this is making sure the proofs, the final copy before publication, can be published as they are.
Sometimes I do both. I’m working on a non-fiction book at the moment, where I’ve already gone through a copyedit and made sure all the sentences work OK and all the capitalization is consistent. I’m awaiting a copy of the PDF, which I’ll check over for picture captions being correct and the text appearing nicely on the page.
Of course, there’s always an opportunity for people to mix up copyediting and copy-writing. Hopefully, this piece is spelled and punctuated correctly; I haven’t written it half with copyediting and half with copy-editing and I’ve included a citation for the book I’ve referred to. So I’ve copyedited it. The actual writing of the piece in the first place? That’s copy-writing.
Reference
New Hart’s rules: the handbook of style for writers and editors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
On sparing your blushes
I was at a networking event the other morning, chatting with someone about how I explain what I do. I realised that, in essence, “what I do” comes down to “saving people from embarrassment”.
– If you’ve prepared advertising leaflets, PR material or promotional goodies to give out to people, the last thing you want is for them to be laughing at your typos rather than marvelling at the products and services you provide.
– When you’re in your PhD viva, you want the discussion to be about your central hypothesis and results, not the glaring error on p. 523.
– People who read blogs (and I discussed this with a few people) do notice spelling and grammar issues. Even if it’s a personal or creative blog, you’re still putting your brand out there. If someone notices a lack of attention to basic questions of clear and error-free writing, are they going to trust your attention to detail in other matters? (before you start foaming at the gills about writing ability, see below)
– Your web page should be there to advertise you and your services/products. Sure, no publicity is bad publicity, but do you really want your URL bandied around the internet as a “funny” on an email to people’s friends and colleagues?
– Readers notice mistakes in novels and it disrupts the flow of their reading and jolts them back into the real world for a moment. As a creative writer, you want them to inhabit your world, not the world of people who scribble out grocers’ apostrophes with a marker pen!
I could go on… but, a word about writing ability. Yes, there are lots of people out there who don’t know the rules or have issues such as dyslexia. I am not criticising their ability or their right to express themselves in writing – of course not! But, if you know you have an issue or grammar/spelling/sentence structure isn’t your forte, get in touch with someone like me who can help you with that. Attention to detail encompasses knowing something is a little awry and calling in someone to fix it, not just writing the piece perfectly the first time.
LibroEditing proofreading, editing, transcription, localisation 