On Corporations and Open Content

two favourites: Morning Bulletins:
The story, by reporter Daniel Burdon, said ”more than 30,000 pigs were floating down the Dawson River”.

What Baralaba piggery owner Sid Everingham actually said was ”30 sows and pigs” not ”30,000 pigs”.

Amanda Hess Correction:
This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have
sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black
men who have sex with men.

Ben, don’t feel too bad about duck/goose confusion. Remember when, in Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” the department chair held a goose by the neck and declared “a duck a day” until his department received a budget.

When I was a newspaper copy editor, I came across this sentence: “Guy Lombardo’s orchestra will play songs such as ‘Boo Hoo’ and ‘Seems Like Old Times,’ which were written by Lombardo’s wife, Carmen.” A copy editor can benefit from even the most ridiculous bit of trivia from the junk drawer of the mind, so I was able to change the word “wife” to “brother.”

While in most substantial documents one can find a minor error or two, the context of some errors makes them even more noteworthy.  In a document (distributed across multiple campuses in our university system) that was, of all things, a “Report of the Writing-Discipline Committee,” there are two whoppers.  First, it gives some best practices in a numerated list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7.  It later refers to “the seven principles listed in the section”… oops.

The second howler, in a portion of the document that attempts to describe writing samples that meet the proposed expectations for 100′s level writing (as opposed to exceeding them), is as follows:

“Mechanics (grammar, punctuation, spelling and documentation, if needed) are mostly accurate.
and paragraph transitions are sound, but the sequence of ideas may occasionally be awkward.”

What is not easily seen in this reproduction of the language is that there is a hard return after the period, so there is about half of a blank line before the continuation with the lower-case “and” on the subsequent line.

Errors in mechanics in content exhorting against errors in mechanics are always classic.

Speaking of commas, all those in the second sentence of the first paragraph should be roman, not italic, as they belong to the sentence and not to the publication titles – at least that’s the case in UK English. Onscreen it’s a little hard to tell the difference but magnifying the page confirms they are italic. Ironic, eh?

Hi,
I’d be curious to see if jffoster concurs, but I believe the general rule concerns how the vowel is spelled. If “y” is part of a composite symbol for a vowel sound, you just add -s. So the plural of “boy” is “boys,” because the vowel sound is spelled “oy.” If the vowel sound is spelled just with “y,” then change “y” to “i” and add “es.” Thus the plural of “party” is “parties,” since the vowel sound is spelled “y.” (If you phrase the rule this generally, you also explain “try-tries,” “imply-implied,” and even “deny-denial.” in each case, change “y” to “i” and add the suffix).

On edit: just thought that there are exceptions to the above rule: pay-paid, not pay-*payed. Not sure why pay is different with the preterite form of the verb)

I once had to correct the phrase, “the papal sea”. It brought to mind visions of old Italian men floating around on their miters paddling with crosiers.

In the town we frequent in Mexico, they’ve actually changed some of the major street signs to read phonetically to assist Spanish-illiterate gringos. Cholla Bay thus became Choya Bay. Ah, well.

Many years ago, I was working at a small southern school with an even smaller literary magazine, and I had the opportunity to do some light editing, proof reading, cover design, and other minor tasks. One of the editors, who was very ambitious for the magazine, had been badgering Thomas Pynchon’s agent for a piece, and as short-short stories were then in vogue, our editor finally succeeded in getting for us a three paragraph story. He was EXTREMELY excited, and felt this would put our magazine on the map. At least 6 of us proofed and re-proofed the entire issue, anxious that it be letter perfect. Finally the printer’s delivery truck pulled up and we all rushed to see our prize. About an hour later, I got a call from a colleague asking me to come over immediately. She pulled one of the crisp copies, redolent of fresh ink and paper, and flashed the great writer’s story at me, where, in 35+ point bold type, we proudly proclaimed the new short-short story by THOMAS PUCHON. For a moment it appeared the entire staff was going to throw themselves out the third story window, but cooler heads prevailed, and we all lived to carry with us this moment of stinging, searing defeat. Good judgement, as they say, comes from experience, and experience mostly comes from bad judgement. Now I proof big type even more carefully than text.

US style varies by publisher, it seems, judging by the wide variety of opinions about what’s “right.” Most US typesetters (I believe) prefer to keep the comma in the same style as the preceding word, simply because a switch from roman to italic or vice versa looks odd, and it’s essentially impossible to imagine a real-world example in which the reader could be misled.

Doesn’t “adumbrate” mostly mean foreshadow? How did they manage that?

Some years ago, the local (Richland, WA) paper reported that the county had approved a public power tax.  Unfortunately, the editor neglected to note the dropped “L” in the headline that read: “Pubic Power Tax Approved.”  Spell-check would not have helped in this case.

The “Industrial Workers of the World” is often rendered as the “International Workers of the World.”

Years ago, when I worked in a continuing education department of a large research I state university, we put out a widely distributed tabloid size paper listing our non-credit classes and evening/weekend credit classes.  A LOT of people proofread this publication.  We sent one out with University mispelled at the top of each page.