Copy Edit du Jour

"Our office handles a full range of podiatric needs including sports medicine and deformities of the foot such as Bunions, Hammertoes and Neuromas."

Changed to:

"... bunions, hammertoes and neuromas."

Classic example of overuse of capitals. Though I almost like the idea of Hammertoes as a proper name - a former ballet dancer turned hard-boiled detective? (Couldn't be any worse that the current prime-time lineup.)

Tumbleweeds Can't Edit

A day after I posted about an error in the Los Angeles Times, my friend Carolyn Howard-Johnson blogged about another error in the Times — a mix up of "descent" and "decent."

And that reminds me: A Times business story I was reading last weekend had "fun" in place of "fund."

The L.A. Times has laid off a lot of people in the last few years — partly out of necessity, partly to compensate for some bad business moves. The paper's downtown office, once bustling and exciting, now seems a prime location for tumbleweeds.

The inevitable result: typos.

Copy Edit du Jour

Some proofreading catches send a chill down my spine -- usually because I almost didn't catch them at all. Only on a second reading did I notice the error in this passage. Even then it felt like a fluke that I caught it. Here's the sentence:

Guests sipped signature cocktails and nibbled hors d'oeuvres into the wee
hours until the evening winded down and they went home with gift baskets teeming
with treats from local merchants.

The catch ....





















I changed "winded" to "wound."


"Winded," 99% of the time, means out of breath. The proper past tense of the verb "to wind" is "wound." Webster's New World does allow "winded" as a past tense, but calls it "rare." And in copy editing, we never opt for secondary dictionary choices, much less "rare" ones.

That was almost the one that got away.

Yikes

From the main page at latimes.com today. Their layoffs are showing.

Okay .... NOW I'm going dark.

Copy-editing Catch of the Day

In "Rescue Me," Dennis Leary somehow makes his abrasive character endearing.

change:

Denis

I realize that, linguistically, that's not very interesting. I'm just so ... damn ... proud I caught it.

I Appreciate the Vote of Confidence

Typo scouting is not my thing, though you wouldn't know it from looking at my blog lately. I'm not looking for typos, but, like this promotional e-mail for Luxor Las Vegas, they keep finding me.

What does this spike in typos in my little world mean? Does it mean that copy editing, my most marketable skill (unless break dancing makes a comeback, and we all hope it will), is becoming obsolete? Will I soon be sitting in a dump atop a stack of VCRs along with a lot of other badly dressed white people arguing about hyphenation and/or who gets the cheese stuck to an old pizza box?

If corporations' and publications' quality standards keep heading in this direction, call me Junkyard Junie.

From the front page of Los Angeles Times' Business section today

Oops.

Spellings Sew Sneeky

I get why people type "sneak peak" instead of "sneak peek." None of us are immune. (I, for one, make a ton of typos.)

What I don't get is why professional wordsmiths, like the writer and editor behind this AOL News link, haven't learned to double check the spelling before publishing it to a

professional site. It's like "lead" in place of "led" -- an issue proofreaders know to watch out for.

Moments in Copy Editing

"The student body here is very diverse," said John Doe, the school's director of academic programs and outreach. "The student body is a clear reflection of the Los Angeles populous — a testament to our commitment to diversity."

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I changed "populous" to "populace." Now, I realize this may have been obvious to many of you. But bear in mind that the passage appeared near the end of a very long and tedious story and it slipped by at least one editor before it got to me.

Aaah, sassifyin' ...

(As always, the excerpt was disguised to keep me outta trouble.)

I Swear It's Not Schadenfreude

... But I love it when top publications make typos. I love it because my own typos dog me. Lots of them. Some for years. Some likely forever (like how in the first printing of "Grammar Snobs" I had written "tachometer" when I meant "odometer").

Then there are the typos I should have caught as an editor or copy editor -- flubs that appeared under another writer's byline, making her or him look bad even though it was my job to catch them. Nothing like letting people down ...

So when the big boys make typos, I see it not as a chance to laugh at them but a chance to laugh off my own mistakes. The wilier errors are twice the salve because they prove that I can catch mistakes -- at least sometimes.

With that in mind, here's a passage from an article on the New York Times website today.

The sweeping living room is a reflection of Ms. Robinson’s deep interest in early 20th-century American art; she started her career in the early 1970s at Sotheby’s. Most arresting is a life-size oil portrait by Ron Sherr of Ms. Robinson. It it she wears a strapless black dress, much like the one Madame X wore in John Singer Sargent’s famous 1884 painting, and the same choker worn by the little elephant in the drawing in the study.

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The typo is "it it" in place of "in it." And it got past someone -- several someones -- who get paid a heck of a lot more than I do for their copy-editing and proofreading skills.

Aaaaaah.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

"it doesn't faze me" = 612,000 hits
"it doesn't phase me" = 1,740,000 hits

Some of the latter are, no doubt, people explaining how to use the word "faze." But one appears to be a bona fide error by an AP writer that got past an AP editor then past a Charleston Daily mail editor.

Either way, I'm shocked that the "phase" version occurs almost three times as often as the one with "faze."

Oy

This was in my e-mail in-box today:

Dear Subscriber,

Coming soon, you can expect a little more out of your Los Angeles Times subscription. That’s because in addition to the award-winning content you already get, you’ll receive our exclusive monthly newsletter, “Above the Fold,” in your email.

Each month you’ll receive premium articles, reviews and exclusive sneak peaks of upcoming features. And look for exclusive perks in each issue designed especially for you.

Yup. They wrote "sneak peaks."

Great Moments in Copy Editing

" ... enjoy an appetizer of Shrimp Louis or Lump Crap Cocktail ..."

And here's what's not so great about this moment in copy editing: I didn't catch the typo. One of my colleagues did -- after yours truly had read the document.

Yikes.

Every Time a Major News Website Makes a Typo, an Angel Gets Her Wings

I love it when the big boys of the journalism world make little typos — not because the typos are egregious or even funny, but because they help me put my own skills in perspective. So here's a headline from the main page at today's LATimes.com:

A Boston University medical student charged in the hotel slaying of a masseuse and the robbery of a another preyed on women he found through Craigslist and investigators are looking for other possible victims, authorities said.

When I was city editor at a community newspaper, I assumed I stunk. Little typos like "a another" would get past me all the time. I was always apologizing to reporters for letting those boo-boos appear under their names.

I had no idea.

The place I worked at was very low-budget (think: full-time, work-their-butts-off reporters making $425 a week). So there weren't many layers of editors — usually just me and a lone overworked copy editor. Sometimes just me.

Now I freelance at a better-funded place. And now I know. Every piece that goes to print is edited in the computer twice then proofread on the page by at least two different people. No fewer than four people read each story. And this is marketing copy — not even the serious editorial stuff in which typos are most taboo.

I don't know how many layers of proofing/editing the Los Angeles Times now applies to its Web headlines. (Hell, these days they're lucky they can afford those little pads and pens for their remaining reporters.) But I'm sure they still have a decent number of people trolling for these types of boo-boos.

Yet some still get through.

Ipso facto: Maybe I didn't stink so bad after all.

Words Are Out to Get Me. No, Really.

I’m not paranoid. I just happen to know that a well-organized cabal of sinister words is out to get me. They’re out to publicly humiliate me by proving that my copy editing skills are somewhere between those of George W. Bush and those of Dan Quayle.

For example, yesterday, after twice going through an article I was copy editing, I took one last look at the document and saw this: “Lisa enjoyed math class more then history.” That’s right, that evil little “then” got past me twice. I know the difference between “then” and “than.” It’s simple. Yet this sneaky, evil little bugger almost made a fool out of me.

Here’s another I came across not long ago. “The golfers come from such places as Buenos Aires, Argentina; Caracas, Venezuela; Bogota, Columbia; and Sao Paulo, Brazil.” Catch it? If so, you’re doing better than spell check and better than I did on a first read. It’s Colombia. Not Columbia.

If there’s a leader of the conspiracy, it’s “lead.” Like some kind of evil twin, “lead” likes to stand in for “led,” knowing full well that the metal “lead” sounds exactly like the past tense of the verb, which is spelled “led.” The dastard.

Occasionally, “lead” will recruit new words for its evil cause. Take “peddling,” which recently tried to pass itself off as “pedaling.”

These are ones I caught. Have others gotten past me? Will any of these get past me tomorrow? Are they concocting ever-more-clever ways to get past me, for example, by using words like “complement” and “judgment” to create a diversion while they slip a misused “there” past me?

Not if I remain in a state of cat-like readiness -- a caffeine-fueled, edge-of-my seat mindset characteristic of one of those Jason Bourne movies. If, every time I enter a document, I look under every pronoun, stare down every past participle, then those sinister little words can’t take away my job or my self-respect.

But what’s most important is knowing, deep down in my heart, that I’m not paranoid.

Spellcheck 'Stick-It-to-You' Du Jour

A story I'm proofing about home electronics contains the sentence*:

"Blanasonic's ENQ Blu-ray player featuring CR-Live technology boasts true-to-life colors and lifelike surround effects in one of the slimiest models available—just 49 mm."'

I assume the writer had typed "slimest" in place of "slimmest," and spellcheck, being the true friend that it is, figured "slimiest" was the best alternative.

And, once again, I prove that I can't be replaced with a machine (yet).


* As always, I changed some details to disguise the passage.

Great Moments in Copy Editing (First in an occasional series)*

I've been doing some freelance copy-editing/proofreading work lately. I don’t want to say for whom, because that would make it rather uncool of me to share this incriminating little tidbit:

In an article about lighting fixtures used in interior design, today I corrected not one but two instances of the term "wall scones."

Mmmmmm ... wall scones.


* I changed this header after realizing this could be an ongoing thing.