As we grow more proficient in any pursuit – be it bowling, baking, or barbecuing – we are continually setting new alarms to avoid problems. This is particularly true in writing and editing. Once we realize we’re prone to mistakenly writing l-e-a-d when we mean l-e-d, we tag that duo in the hope that an internal alarm will always remind us to get the lead out. So proofing our work gets increasingly easier as our alarm system expands.
Look for errors or weaknesses in the following sentences and consider whether you have a wake-up call set on any of these issues.
Don’t worry about staying late today, I found someone that can help me setup for tomorrow’s breakfast meeting.
A) We need a semicolon or period instead of a comma because each segment is a complete sentence – and we have no conjunction like and to join them. (This common error is called a comma fault or comma splice.) B) We should have two alarms set on the word that: one because its preferable to use who or whom if we are referring to a person, and two because the word that can often be deleted. Here, we want to make it who can help me. C) We need to watch out for words like setup and callback. Sometimes they are correct as one word, but sometimes, as here, we want two words: set up.
I liked Tom’s talk on “How to be a Team Player”, but he distracted me both times he said “irregardless”.
A) We have to remember that many short words in titles are lowercase because they are prepositions (like of), articles (like the), or conjunctions (like and). But more significant words, such as nouns and verbs, get an initial cap even if they are just two letters long. Be is a verb, so it’s wrong in lowercase. B) And we should set a loud alarm on the common error of putting a comma or period outside quotation marks. Some punctuation marks, such as question marks and exclamation points, can go inside or outside, but periods and commas always go inside. So that alarm would have alerted us to two errors in the sentence.
My parent’s anniversary party was wonderful (thanks to months of planning by my sister and members of my family.
A) Make sure you have an alarm set on apostrophes, where errors are rife. Here, we obviously are speaking of both parents, so the apostrophe goes after the s (parents’). B) Our sister is part of our family, so we need my sister and other members of my family. C) And a really easy alarm to set is the one for parentheses. When we proof our work and come to the beginning of a parenthetical section, we should skip ahead to see if the closing parenthesis is there (and if it is placed correctly next to any punctuation). Here, we need a closing parenthesis after family, and it comes before the period because it is enclosing a section of a sentence, not an entire sentence. So the ending would be (thanks to months of planning by my sister and other members of my family).
In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm is a writer, editor, and writing coach. His 100+ Instant Writing Tips is a brief “non-textbook” to help individuals overcome common writing errors and write with more finesse and impact. Learn more at http://www.normfriedman.com/index.shtml.