The Bloody Red Pen

Mar252008

The The Impotence of Proofreading

In case you missed a memo, let me remind everyone that I earn my meager wages working as a proofreader. That means I’m a professional nitpicker, or, as the various people who are beholden to my demands would say, “a big pain in the ass who holds up the process over minuscule stuff that nobody cares about and who doesn’t understand the aesthetics of the piece.” Yeah, whatever. Adding a comma or making the capitalization in that heading consistent with how it’s done in all the other headings is not going to affect your precious aesthetics; on the contrary, I think consistency will make the piece more pleasing.

You’ll forgive me if I come across as hostile, but the sad truth is that I don’t often feel very appreciated by my coworkers, and no one outside the biz is ever impressed when I tell them what my job is. Hell, few people understand what it is that proofreaders actually do; some even go so far as to wonder why we’re necessary when Word has a perfectly good spellchecker built right in. As an answer to that argument, allow me to present the following explanation of why spellcheckers can’t yet replace a real, literate human eye, and most probably never will unless there’s some kind of major breakthrough in AI tech… which I’m not too worried about:

Feb272008

Declining Linguistic Standards in the Modern Urban Setting

So, I work on a block of buildings that are roughly a century old, and one of them is currently undergoing extensive renovations. That means the nice, peaceful plaza where I like to sit on pleasantly warm days isn’t very inviting right now, what with the constant beep-beep-beep of delivery vehicle back-up alerts and the crash and boom of broken masonry, wood, and metal being dumped down a ten-story-high disposal chute into a giant dumpster below. I’m frankly eager for the whole thing to be over with.

That said, however, the situation does have its amusing aspects. Like the signs I noticed on the building’s front doors today, the ones that warn passersby of “Undry Paint.”

“Undry.” In my day, we used to call that “wet.” I guess times change.

Jan292008

Today’s Dose of Copywriting Brilliance

“…the convergence of business and technology has fundamentally changed the way businesses and government are doing business.”

You know what that sentence needs? The word “business.” Really, I think it’s a vital concept that’s noticeably missing. Surely the writer could shoe-horn that in somewhere?

Dec282007

Something That Bugs Me: “Bare” vs. “Bear”

You remember the character Cyclops in the X-Men comics and movies, how if you take off his magic sunglasses, his “optic blast” superpower sprays everywhere, uncontrollable, until he shuts his eyes? That’s what it’s like to be a professional proofreader sometimes; you just can’t help but see the errors people make when they write, even when you’re not on the clock and you’re just out and about in the real world, trying to mind your own business. The really annoying thing is that you tend to see the same damn errors over and over again, too. Stuff that really isn’t that hard but which, for some reason, consistently trips up otherwise intelligent and well-spoken people.

Case in point (you knew I had one, didn’t you?): I was just perusing some reader comments over at the Tribune web site and I see that someone thinks that “Draper [City] has a huge cross to bare.” (Italics mine.) So… that would be an undressed cross? Perhaps you mean one that hasn’t been varnished or painted? Or perhaps the expression you’re really searching for is “cross to bear.”

It’s very simple, people: “bare” means naked. You bare your body, you bare your soul. “Bear” means “to support, carry, or endure.” You bear your load (which is what that old cliche about cross-bearing is getting at), you bear children, you grin and bear it. See how easy? Sheesh…

Dec272007

How Could They Let This Go Out on the Air?

My corporate overlords have shuttered the offices this week to give all us serfs a much-needed rest, so the last thing I want to be think about during my time (as Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High would call it) is anything that remotely resembles proofreading (which, if you’re new around here, is what I do for a living)… but man, sometimes I just can’t help it. Like when I see a caption on my local news broadcast that’s listing various things you can do to maintain healthy skin and among the bullet-pointed suggestions is something called “Excersize.”

Excersize? Could they possibly have meant exercise? Come on, people, this is not a difficult word! And even if it is beyond the mental capabilities of the interns who are writing the news and the blond-and-blue-eyed announcer-bots who are reading it, doesn’t the text that appears on-screen ever pass through a spell checker?

I don’t expect much from local TV news — too much of the average 20-minute broadcast is devoted to sports, weather, and pointless “cute” banter for any actual news to make it through — but this sort of thing is really just intolerable. Excersize? Good lord…

Oct092007

Another Boring Gripefest About Work

In the last couple of days at work, I have proofread 29 — that’s twenty-nine — two-page documents that are all composed of the same damn blocks of standardized text, just arranged in different patterns. Which means I’ve been essentially reading the same document — and marking the same damn mistakes — over and over and over.

At this point, I’m thinking it’s a good thing that the New Proofreaders’ Cave is on the first floor, instead of up on the fourth where we used to be. Management should be commended for being so insightful…

Jul182007

Something That Bugs Me: “Loose” vs. “Lose”

Here’s another of those trivial things that no one else seems to mind, but which drive me certifiably bats: people writing the word “loose” when they really mean “lose.”

I don’t know if this is just a Utah thing, or if people from other parts of the country do it, too, but it certainly seems to be endemic in these parts. I see it all over the place: in comments on the Salt Lake Tribune‘s web site (which is actually what inspired this post today), in e-mails from friends (no offense, kids), and in letters and diaries written years ago by dead relatives. I could understand it if folks were simply spelling the word the way it sounded when spoken, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Utahns pronounce “lose” with the proper “z” sound (i.e., “looz” ) in conversation, but when they write it down, they frequently use “loose” (i.e., “looce”), and I gotta tell you, as somebody who spends all day correcting written mistakes for a living, it’s maddening.

So, let’s have a little remedial lesson, shall we? “Lose” is a verb, as in “to lose,” as in “I hope the Utah Jazz don’t lose the big game.” (Don’t worry, they probably will.) “Loose,” on the other hand, is an adjective, a descriptor of something else, as in “That screw is loose,” or “She’s a loose woman.” Now, what’s so tough about that?

Feb272007

How Do You Torture a Proofreader?

It’s been a while since I posted any examples of especially bad prose encountered during my day job as a mild-mannered proofreader at a major metropolitan corporation. I was beginning to think that I’d never again find anything dunderheaded enough to bother sharing with my Three Loyal Readers.

I was wrong. Check this out:

A period is defined as the amount of day’s/weeks it takes…

It’s not Egregious Corporate Speak in the sense of being a conglomeration of marketing buzzwords and other jargon, but it definitely appears to have been deliberately designed to give me a headache. The thing I don’t get is why more than one day requires the apostrophe while more than one week does not. Does someone think there are different pluralization rules for different time periods?

Oy.

Aug092006

The Value of Proofreading

[Ed. note: just a quick reminder that in my day job, I’m a proofreader with a large corporation that is peripherally attached to the IT industry…]

Just between you and me, it’s not easy picking nits for a living.

Jul142006

The Benefits of Reducing…

It’s been a while since I encountered any notably bad copy in the course of my day job as a proofreader. I was beginning think I’d jumped the gun by creating a whole blog category for material that seemed to be on the wane. Then this morning I encountered the following gem, which isn’t technically “egregious corporate-speak,” but certainly does have a problem:

This self-guided overview… focuses on the benefits of reducing re-key of data and order accuracy.

That sounds great, doesn’t it? I can certainly see how reducing order accuracy would generate all kinds of benefits…
ADDENDUM: Here’s another example from the same document:

The Query Operators section [of this document] is useful in providing guidance on getting better search results; particularly valuable when searching.

Yes, I can see how it would be…