Pet Peeves

Audio Blog: 

Quattro - Pet Peeves.mp3

As a proofreader, I review a lot of copy. That should go without saying. The overwhelming majority of it is written well. There will always be errors in copy, such as spelling, grammar or syntax mistakes. I can accept that it’s my job to fix them. However, there are some things I see repeatedly that make me want to buy stock in any company that makes red pens.

These are they (in no particular order). I tried to give examples to show what I mean.

Non-hyphenated words that should be hyphenated — “The steel reinforced block is used to make an industry leading tool designed to eliminate waste producing effects.”

Overuse of the word “to” — “I’m going out to buy food, to see some people, to rent a movie and to pick up my medication.”

“Express written consent” — How quickly do you want that consent?

Industry jargon — Jack Lilienthal wrote a brilliant piece on this. I suggest you read it.

Too few commas — “The Internet is a great tool for researching papers on WWI WWII countries’ GNPs and other useful information for my term paper.”

Dashes — I think I can write a book chapter on this. There are three kinds of dashes: A hyphen, an en dash and an em dash. The hyphen is one we all know and love. That is commonly used to break up words at the end of a line that continue onto the next line, or to connect two adjectives to form a compound adjective such as “green-blue car.” The en dash is used for ranges, such as book pages or years. For example: 1980–1989. The em dash is used to denote a break in a sentence for dramatic effect — like this — and then return to complete the sentence. Just because an em dash doesn’t look nice and neat like an en dash or a hyphen does not mean you can eliminate them in copy.

Postal abbreviations — The two-letter abbreviation for states is only designated for mailings. You should not write “We are located near Dayton, OH.”  OH, really?

“Over” and “Under” — These both denote location. For instance, “The plane is flying over the ocean.” is correct. Writing “People over 40 don’t use text messaging.” is incorrect. I hope people older than 40 can explain to you how to properly write that previous sentence.

THE USE OF ALL CAPITAL LETTERS WHEN THERE IS NO NEED FOR IT. — I DON’T NEED TO EXPLAIN THIS TO YOU, DO I?

Using “i.e.” instead of “e.g.” — One means “for example,” and the other means “that is.”

• “I enjoy music from hair metal bands, e.g., Poison, Quiet Riot and Whitesnake.”
• “Whitesnake is a hair metal band, i.e., a genre of music characterized by copious amounts of hair spray, guitar hooks and melodious, radio-friendly harmonies.”

These are just the tip of the iceberg for me. Don’t get me started on errors in newspapers, billboards, bumper stickers, scoreboards, TV scrolls and practically every page on the Internet.