Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Bad Wording from the World of Copy Editing

Came across this* in a story I was editing yesterday:
The American workforce is becoming more diverse. Experts project that next year ethnically diverse individuals and women will make up 70% of all new hires.
Set aside the logical problems with this passage. I reworded it, anyway, so some of the problems you see in it might be mine. But, that said, can you see the wording that I thought needed fixing?

The term that I changed was "ethnically diverse individuals." The writer was talking about the individuals that make up an ethnically diverse group. She did not mean that each individual has diverse ancestry.

(*As always, I did some rewording to disguise the passage.)

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