More News Release Gaffes

I am still amazed every morning at the spelling and grammatical errors I read in news releases that cross my desk, supposedly written by professional journalists. Is this more evidence of the "dumbing down" of America? Is this the quality of graduates that journalism schools are producing? Did spell check break? Was the copy editor napping?

Or am I just too damn picky?

Everyone makes mistakes, I understand that. I do too, all the time. That is why you have proofreaders for manuscripts and books and copy editors for magazines and newspapers and Denise for this blog. And it's why you do those things BEFORE you publish the piece.

Before I met and married the love of my life I used to date a copy editor for a (formerly) great metropolitan newspaper. I would routinely, sometimes daily, dissect the incorrect phrasing of an article or point out the spelling and/or grammatical errors of articles in the paper (that were not in the sections she edited) and she always wondered aloud why I didn't get a job doing what she did.

Anyway, here are the gaffes that came across my desk yesterday morning, along with my snarky remarks.

"...hadn't been in her basement for two weeks, and low and behold she had water in it." Well, now this one makes sense because the basement is "low" in the house, right? However the correct phrase is "lo and behold" which is still rather conversational for a news piece. By the way, "lo and behold", means "look and behold" not "get down and behold", lol.

"What it did, it shook the house and jared the sheet-rock and made it crack." Is that Jared, the Subway Sandwich guy? Is he now "Jared the Sheetrock"? More likely is that the writer meant to write "jarred the sheetrock" though simply stating that it cracked the sheetrock would have been sufficient, given the context. Oh, and yes, "sheetrock" is one word, not hyphenated.

"...determined that it needed to be demobilize and..." Let's just forget about those silly grammar rules that say verb tenses should agree. In other words, if you use a past tense verb in one part of the sentence, any other verbs must be past tense as well. Otherwise you sound like...well, we'll leave that part out of this.

Interestingly, I just received the November 2009 issue of The Writers Network News (a free monthly newsletter available from Zebra Communications) and it has this little piece on proofreading:

Why the world needs editors and proofreaders

Many, many years ago when I had my first newspaper job I had to both write and proofread my articles. I covered a local wedding and wrote "...the bride was draped in Chantilly lace, except I didn't catch myself, and the story ran "the bride was raped in chantilly lace..." and THAT's how you really LEARN. Alvin Guthertz

The Writers Network News is an excellent resource for writers. Go check it out!

I think my desire to read proper English (especially if it is written by professional journalists and writers) is perfectly natural, but Laura Miller has an article up on Salon that says I'm stuck up and should just get over it.

What do you think?

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50 Useful Blogs for Writers

Over on The Word Blog, Randy Ray has compiled a list of 50 Useful Blogs for Writers. He's broken them down into 21 blogs of Writing Tips, 10 Word of the Day blogs, and 19 Grammar blogs.

Plus, if you read down into the comments, there are links to some other blogs for writers that might be of interest.

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A Quandry

Do I want to buy it...



...or take it out on the water?

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Artwiculate

Here's another suggestion my brother sent me that is of particular interest to people who enjoy words and expanding their vocabulary.

Artwiculate is a Twitter-based word of the day competition. To play you just use the word of the day in the proper context in one of your tweets. Other tweeters vote as to how effective your use of the word was in your tweet. You can earn points when people like your use or retweet it. But for wordsmiths, the real fun is in constructing a tweet using the word in the best way possible and in seeing how others use the same word of the day.

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Georgia Flood Disaster Slide Show

Last Sunday I was out in some of the hardest hit communities that were devastated by the Georgia September 2009 flood with our team of Community Relations specialists. These hardworking folks blanket disaster-affected areas from sunup until sundown with recovery information by going door to door. They took me to a mobile home community that had homes in one section that were completely submerged by the flood waters. Here is a small slide show I created using some of the photos I took from that area. The sights, sounds and even smells are heartrending. News media reports are that 10 people lost their lives by drowning as a result of this flood.

"Georgia Sept '09 Floods"

Create a free slideshow with Picnik!

This is my first time using Picnik to create a slideshow, so I hope it works when I post it. If you do not see the photo captions in the top right-hand corner of the screen, roll your mouse over the slideshow photo area and a "Captions" button will appear at the bottom. Left-click that once and the captions should appear. Then roll your mouse off the slideshow area so the menu will disappear.

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Grammar Gaffe

It's a sad situation when AP posts something like this;

"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given too someone ..."

They have since corrected it, but it hit me like a slap in the face this morning when I was reading their news releases that were coming across my desk.

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William Safire's Rules For Writers

William Safire, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and newspaper columnist for the New York Time, former speech writer for President Richard Nixon and wordsmith of deserved renown, passed away Sunday at the age of 79. I always liked his Rules For Writers and present them here for your reading pleasure and edification.


* Remember to never split an infinitive.
* The passive voice should never be used.
* Do not put statements in the negative form.
* Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
* Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
* If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
* A writer must not shift your point of view.
* And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
* Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
* Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
* Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
* If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
* Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
* Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
* Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
* Always pick on the correct idiom.
* The adverb always follows the verb.
* Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

William Safire 1929 - 2009 R.I.P.

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Lark Or Owl?

Are you a morning lark or a night owl? A morning lark is up early in the day, rolling out of bed full of energy and ready to tackle the work of the day. A night owl finds higher energy levels and the ability to form sensible sentences out of words to be easier later in the day and into the evening.

I know a lot of writer advice begins with something that reads like this; rise at 5am while the day is young and begin writing. Do not stop until you have reached _______ (number of) words.

Let me tell you, if I rose at 5am to write, I'd still be struggling to reach three words by the time lunch rolled around. I'm a night owl and always have been. Mornings are not kind to me and the feeling is mutual. Cindy is a morning lark, or as I like to call her; Tigger. She bounces out of bed with boundless energy, fully awake and mind racing. It took a few years, but I finally convinced her, through a series of grunts, groans and sign language, that asking me any kind of question that required me to think was pointless if I hadn't at least had my hot shower and some time to adjust to the ungodly light outside the windows.

Unfortunately, most of my adult life the jobs I have held and/or family responsibilities have required me to wake and work the opposite of my cycle. And I can adjust, but it is difficult. Most of the time, if I'm looking at you, talking and maybe even smiling before noon, you can be sure I'm wishing I was still in bed sleeping soundly instead. No offense.

If I were making my living as a writer and I lived alone, my normal waking hours would be something like 11am until 2am. I love sleeping in late and being up working at night. That just happens to be my body's natural circadian cycle. Up in time to make lunch my first meal, run a few errands during the afternoon and then sit and write for hours through the evening and night past the witching hour. Ah, that sounds SO nice. Well, not the living alone part, but you know what I mean.

So are you a lark or an owl?

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National Punctuation Day 2009

Don't fear the semicolon!

Today is National Punctuation Day. For both writers and readers, punctuation is an important part of any group of words.



Celebrate National Punctuation Day; take an ellipsis to lunch.

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Proofreading

"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out." - Author Unknown

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In The Light Of Day - Grammar Correction

This is a lesson. A lesson to me. A lesson about writing a post (or anything) late at night and submitting it with only a cursory eye toward editing.

In spite of knowing better than to do the above AND in spite of being fairly aware of and conversant with the standard rules of grammar (thought I do not claim to be an expert or master of them), I wrote the following in yesterday's post - Barnes & Noble; Pulling In The Welcome Mat?:

Even the straight back wooden chairs were few and far between and each of them were occupied.

"...each of them were occupied."

God, how it hurt my eyes and my sensibilities to read that line this afternoon in the light of day.

I ignored and overlooked a simple rule; a singular noun requires a singular verb. With the singular noun "each", the plural verb "were" is woefully incorrect. If you removed the words "of them" you can easily see that the resulting phrase, "each were occupied", violates a proper rule of correct grammar and the basics of what obviously sounds right when spoken. I, in writing late at night and in a hurry, fell victim to the mistake of paying more attention to the words "of them" and using the plural verb "were" instead of focusing on the real noun "each" so that my verb would be the singular "was."

If you look at the post now you will see that I have made the correction. You may notice that instead of just correcting "were" to "was" ("...each of them was occupied") that I went a step further. Simply correcting the verb would have rendered the sentence grammatically correct, but removing "of them" completely makes for a better sounding sentence; one that is more pleasing to the eye and sensibilities.

In addition, part of my error, I believe, was mentally referring back to the plural noun/verb found earlier in the same sentence. It may have been better to write them as two separate sentences:

"Even the straight back wooden chairs were few and far between. And each of them was occupied."

But I liked the flow of the sentence as it was originally written, so I only changed the last part of it.

I read spelling and grammatical mistakes on blogs and webpages every day, usually many times a day. What makes me cringe even more when reading them is to see that the people penning the errors have identified themselves as journalists or writers; people you would expect to know better. I very seldom see an acknowledgment or apology for the mistake. This is mine.

Mea culpa.

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Write While The Heat Is In You

"Write while the heat is in you...The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled."

Henry David Thoreau 1817 - 1862

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50 Tips To Improve Your Writing Skills

Over at the Dumb Little Man website they have a list of "50 Tools that can Improve your Writing Skills" which, as I glanced over them, looked to be helpful for those of us who want to polish our writing. In addition to the tips or tools, some of the ones I looked at included simple exercises to reinforce the advice.

Here are the 50 tips (without the links; you'll need to go to the actual site for those) for your perusal. This makes a good one-year plan if you learn one tip per week and even allows you a 2 week "vacation."

1: Branch to the Right
2: Use Strong Verbs
3: Beware of Adverbs
4: Period As a Stop Sign
5: Observe Word Territory
6: Play with Words
7: Dig for the Concrete and Specific
8: Seek Original Images
9: Prefer Simple to Technical
10: Recognize Your Story’s Roots
11 Back Off or Show Off
12: Control the Pace
13: Show and Tell
14: Interesting Names
15: Reveal Character Traits
16: Odd and Interesting Things
17: The Number of Elements
18: Internal Cliffhangers
19: Tune Your Voice
20: Narrative Opportunities
21: Quotes and Dialogue
22: Get Ready
23: Place Gold Coins Along the Path
24: Name the Big Parts
25: Repeat
26: Fear Not the Long Sentence
27: Riffing for Originality
28: Writing Cinematically
29: Report for Scenes
30: Write Endings to Lock the Box
31: Parallel Lines
32: Let It Flow
33: Rehearsal
34: Cut Big, Then Small
35: Use Punctuation
36: Write A Mission Statement for Your Story
37: Long Projects
38: Polish Your Jewels
39: The Voice of Verbs
40: The Broken Line
41: X-Ray Reading
42: Paragraphs
43: Self-criticism
44: Save String
45: Foreshadow
46: Storytellers, Start Your Engines
47: Collaboration
48: Create An Editing Support Group
49: Learn from Criticism
50: The Writing Process


Dumb Little Man - Tips For Life is a site that offers tips, advices and tools that can "...save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane."

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It's What You See

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

Henry David Thoreau 1817 - 1862

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Here, This Is For You

"Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else."

Ivern Ball

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Write In American English

Trolling the online postings for writing jobs I've noticed quite a few ads now contain wording that requests, in effect, the candidate be able to "...write in American English." I believe this is generally for two reasons; even though the entity may be located in lower Slobovia, they want it to appear that they are actually in the good ol' US of A OR the entity wants to be sure that no matter where YOU may be located in the world, you have the ability to write as if you're a red-blooded American. It's all about marketing, presentation and packaging.

That might be an area that e-mail spammers and scammers should consider giving a little extra attention to in order to be more successful in passing off their crap as the real deal. We've all received those "official" e-mail notices which purport to be from some government agency or private business (such as a bank) that contain such mangled "English" wording, goofy grammatical errors and strange syntax as to be immediately identified as fraudulent.

Here's an amusing example of an "official" e-mail supposedly from the FBI that is chock full of misspelled and misused words, twisted phrases, mangled verb tenses and just plain weird ideas about how America's top law enforcement agency ("a biggest security company here in Washington D.C") actually works. That doesn't even count the strange date format that makes it appear this missive has traveled from the future (either September 12, 2009 or December 9, 2009) and the fact that it originated from and refers the reader to a Gmail address.

[Washington Field Office Banner with FBI Seal linking to FBI Home]
Anti-Terrorist and Monitary Crimes Division.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION.
J. EDGAR. HOOVER BUILDING WASHINGTON D.C
12/09/2009

ATTENTION: beneficiaries,

We received an email, Just to let you know that the said fund has been confirmed in your name, the funds are right now in our custody in your name waiting to be release to you, we have verified and investigated that you are the right beneficiary to claim the funds, all we need from you is verification and proof due to the amount involved.

As a biggest security company here in Washington D.C we are to serve and to protect our citizen. The only advice we can give to you as at this time is to try your best to comply with the required document so that your funds will be release to you in your favor, this funds are rightfully yours. You can obtain the document from our branch Office in New Jersey.

We have done our verification on your FBI Identification Record with our Social Security Number, the only document remaining now is the Diplomatic Immunity Seal Of Transfer(DIST) Which should be issued to you from our branch Office in New Jersey, you are to contact the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) New Jersey to obtain the above required document, find bellow their contact email address: ( fbi.vision2020@gmail.com) Contact this people immediately to obtain the document.
Furthermore, be advice that according to the United State Law and also the FBI rules and regulations, you are to obtain the document from the FBI in New Jersey where the fund was transferred to. Also Note that you are to take care of the Document to be issued to you right away, because due to how important and secured the document is, it is not issued just like that. You are to take care of the document by sending to the FBI New Jersey right away,That is the only way the FBI New Jersey will issue you the document, because they are going to issue you the Authentic/Original copy of the document.

You are here by advice to Contact them through the email address above to acquire from them on how you are going to send the fee to them. Note that you are to do this immediately if you really want your fund to be credited to your account and also if you don't want any action to be before you. We have already informed the New Jersey FBI about the present situation, so go ahead and contact them immediately. Your fund is now on our custody and will only be release to you with the confirmation of the required document. After that the fund will be release to you immediately without any delay.

NOTE: We have asked for the above documents to make available the most complete and up-to date records possible for no criminal justice purposes.

WARNING: Do not fail to produce the above requirement in the next 72 hours, legal action will be taken immediately by arresting and detaining you, justificated and if found guilty, you will be jailed. As terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering is a serious problem in our community today. The F.B.I will not stop at any length in tracking down and persecuting any criminal who indulge in this criminal act.

Faithfully Yours,
FBI Director
Robert S. Mueller, III

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Three Stages Of Truth

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

[Schopenhauer, German Philosopher, 1788-1860]

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Music While Writing?

The June issue of The Writer magazine had a small sidebar article on writers listening to music while writing. It made me think about the presence and effect of music when I'm writing.

I like to listen to music while writing. If I'm writing something non-fiction I can listen to just about any of the songs on my laptop or, when I'm home from the road, the CD's I own. What I mean to say is anything with lyrics in songs I enjoy. Admittedly though, there are times when I get SO into what I'm writing that I don't consciously hear the music or songs. I have had occasion to suddenly realize that I slid right through several songs and never realized they had played until I looked at my playlist.

But when I'm trying to create something fictional or especially if I'm writing dialog, I switch to either music only or to no music, no sounds at all. Complete silence. I need to be in my own head to "hear" my characters and what they are thinking or saying. But sometimes I listen to music that I think my character would listen to, in an attempt to get inside their (actually mine, of course, lol) head. Sometimes I listen to music that I feel helps set the "mood" for my scene setting or to get ME in the mood for the scene I want to write.

Do you listen to music while writing?

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Pullin' a Palin

The Urban Dictionary has just added a new phrase:

Pullin' a Palin

1. Quitting when the going gets tough; abandoning the responsibility entrusted to you by your neighbors for book advances and to make money on the lecture circuit.

2. Bizarre move that will damn ambitions for higher office.

I bet when people saw Jade they were convinced that David Caruso was pullin' a Palin.

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Digital Organization

I feel sorry for anyone who has to go through my laptop after I die, trying to look for all my writings. I have them spread all over the place in little snippets and larger files in so many different locations. I surprise myself sometimes when I come across a file and ask myself, "What is this?" as I'm clicking on it and then light up with recognition of some story or even piece of a story. It may even be something as small as a few words of an idea, but whatever it is I've forgotten it was there and it's like discovering something new all over again, lol.

So, if you're the person to whom the duty falls of searching my laptop for my words, be sure and look everywhere because unless I "clean up my act", so to speak, there's no telling where you might find the things I've written.

Yeah, I really need to get my digital life a bit more organized.

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