Sunday, April 26, 2009
Week 4, Chapter 4: Revising and Proofreading
As you go about your usual business this week, keep your eyes open for errors in spelling, grammar and/or punctuation. What did you find, what is the error, what would be correct, and where did you see it? For example, last winter I was at a professional development seminar. The speaker had a slide with two incorrect apostrophes in the same phrase. The phrase as written on the slide was “plaintiffs attorney’s.” Because the plaintiffs possess the attorneys and both nouns are plural, the phrase should have been written, “plaintiffs’ attorneys.”
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An article in Saturday’s Leader Telegram caught my eye before you posted the blog assignment. The article was about a flier handed out to Hudson bars asking them to not serve an accused drunk driver who injured someone last month. One of the lines read, “Many bars informed their workers about the flier but did not post it, but many bartenders said they would call police if they saw Sanderson in their bars”. It seemed like a run-on sentence with too many ‘buts’. I would try breaking the sentence in two and add a little clarity. “Many bar owners informed their workers about the flier, but did not post it. Several bartenders said they would call police if they saw Sanderson in their bars.” A few weeks ago I saw an article where the journalist used the word ain’t. I could understand young writers making mistakes but where is the editor to catch that?
I really don't have much time to read much and my job does not involve much reading. However, the team that I work on is newly formed at United Health Group and our Process Instructions were pushed through too fast into production. The writers did not take their time proofreading or even just a simple spell check. I haven't seen anything so far this week, but if I do, I will let you know.
Because I have jobs and am going to school full time I do not get much of a chance to read. Although, at the Plaza there have been memos sent out to each department explaining some new rule corporate has come up with. Many of the memos must have been sent out to fast and not looked over because there are many, and I mean many spelling errors on the most simplest words you can think of. Alos in our employee handbook there is typo after typo.
As I commented in last week's blog, the amount of errors in typed publications seem to have significantly increased. My best example this week will have to come directly from class on Tuesday night. The author states in two examples "Jeff Jones asked for a 10 percent salary increases." and "Kelly Keeler, production manager, presented a plan to stagger hour." I would stress that this would be a sign of too much trust in spell check and not enough emphasis on proofreading.
The error I found in spelling was ironically in the chapter 4 slide presentation. The sentence read: Jeff Jones asked for a 10 percent salary increasey. Changing increasey to increase would be the proper fix. You would think a presentation on writing would be error free. I guess that just proves how easy missing a grammatical error can be. I also encounter many grammatical errors at work on documents that are posted. Most of the time someone will make a correction on the sheet. There is a great deal of truth in having more than one person proof read a document.
The best example of a spelling eror was on Jay Leno the other night. He showed a number of missprinted adds that people or business's have put out to the public. One that cought my eye was a add in a local paper saying "It's just god food". When It was supposto say it"s just good food. When I watch adds like this on Jay Leno, I just cannot figure out how someone doesn't catch this before it goes out to the public. I would think expecially after it goes out to the public someone is either in alot of truble or may have even got fired.
Well, usual business this week was taking care of my father while he is recovering from heart surgery. The town here is so small that they do not have a local paper or news channel. The only grammer that I have been exposed to while I am here is that I am home schooling my son while we are away. He is seven years old, but very advanced in reading and writing. This week while he was doing his daily short story, I noticed that every time he wants to use an apostrophe, he uses a comma. Its very intersting that he knows where it goes, but uses the wrong punctuation. His stories are great though!
I am not much of a ready but when I am at work, I usually read everything that is posted by my manager. I usually notice all the mistakes the first time I look at it, since she is always in a hurry to get things done. However, I went to work one day and saw a cake order that was due the next day. The message was suppose to say "You're Great," but instead my manager wrote "Your Great" onto the cake. When the lady came to pick up her cake, I noticed the mistake never got fixed so I fixed it for her. The next day when I saw my manager, I brought it up to her that she had used the wrong "your" on the cake, but I fixed it for her. Since, everyone is used to using contractions, I just tell my manager that if she is going to use "you're" then she should say "you are" instead of "you're" because she gets confused.
This week reading an article in an Outdoor Life magazine, the auther was writing about tips to show us how to succeed in the turkey woods. It was a well writtin article, but towards the end he started a new sentence closing out the article. It said, "to my fellow turkey hunters and their families, good luck this season". The error I found was at the beginning of the sentence, the word "The" was not capitalized. After that error I went back through the article and noticed that there was nothing else wrong with it. No spelling errors, no typos, no grammer issus. Overall, it was a great article and I look forward to reading more articles from this individual.
A good example of finding spelling errors would be on signs of restaurants. In a lot of cases, I usually see that something is not spelled right or letters missing from the sentence. Just a few days ago, I saw an error on a sign outside of a restaurant. The sign said "We have week specials going on now." The sentence itself had an error, which should have said weekly and a letter missing in the word specials. Errors like these are very typical and happen all the time.
I found an error in my Health Care Law and Ethics Test. The question asked what areas state governments controlled, and the correct multiple choice answer was written, “Licensing and interstate regulations”, but it should have been spelled “intrastate”. The federal government controls interstate regulations.
I also found an error in a notice I received. In most of the writing reevaluation was spelt correctly, but in one part it was re-evaluation. The hyphenation didn’t belong in the word reevaluation.
In an advertisement in the Tradin' Post, I noticed the following sentence: "Click-Through To Advertisers Web Sites!". The word Advertisers should be marked as a possessive.
There were two spelling errors I found in sports news. A major spelling error was on the uniforms of the Washington Nationals. While playing the Marlins, a few players on the Nationals team were seen wearing Natinals jerseys. The other spelling error was on the t-shirts of 2007 college basketball champions, West Virgina. The correct spelling is West Virginia.
http://www.faniq.com/blog/Washington-Nationals-Misspell-Jerseys-As-Natinals-Blog-22464
On behalf of Rita Cheatham: "A few weeks ago, I found an error in our Medical Procedures I book. At the end of each chapter there is a review test that we complete for our class assignment. I found an error in question #6 at the end of chapter 2. The question was, “The type of manage care organization that offers the patient flexibility when making a choice of going to a contracted or non contracted physician at the time services are needed is a/an:
a. POS
b. HMO
c. IP
d. EPO
e. POS
As you can clearly see here that the answers for (a, and e), both could be correct. They are exactly the same. Our teacher said that if I really wanted to, I could write to the author and let them know about it. I haven’t done this yet. Do you think that I should really make a big deal about finding such an error, or just let it go, knowing that people do make mistakes now and then."
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