The need to carefully review all changes.
Even the most experienced editors need to look over their edited content before publishing: too often, corrections beget more mistakes. Here’s a great example.
At the beginning of the month I was looking around my college’s website, and saw new material about an “Emory University Style Guide.” That was a nice surprise, and so I applied an editorial eye to that content, never doubting that it would be perfect.
Alas, not so. Take a look.
Original:
This guide refers to resources that include:
• The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) | With its detail and depth, this is our general go-to style for most university communications.
• The Associated Press Stylebook (AP) | With its emphasis on simplicity and brevity, this is our preferred style for online communications.
• AMA Manual of Style (AMA) | This is our go-to style guide for medical and scientific references.
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Webster’s) | This is the dictionary we primarly use.
Well, I’ve always been taught not to put a colon after include. That’s the first thing. The second thing is the nasty misspelled word. Do you see it? Take a look at the very last sentence. It’s primarly.
Normally, I would just roll my eyes (it’s the “communications” office, after all), but, seeing how it’s my very own college and it’s embarrassing to think that they’d be caught with not one but two mistakes on the communications page, I thought I’d send an email to the person who I hoped would be in charge, so she could effect a change.
Well, someone changed it all right, fixing the original issues, but in doing so that person created yet another mistake. (All the contact information you see was added after I sent my email, evidently so anybody else’s emails would go to the really right person…) Take a look.
Rewrite:
The Emory University Style Manual also uses select items from the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook (see addresses, state names). Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, is the manual’s preferred dictionary.
If you have questions that not addressed in these sources, please contact:
Susan Carini
Executive Director 404.727.7816
Emory Creative Group
[email protected]
Karon Schindler
Executive Director 404.727.5680
Health Sciences Publications
[email protected]
For editorial style on the web
Jill Hennecy
Online Content Manager 404.502.2559
[email protected]
You just have to reread your material, folks, after you’ve made changes. (What, you don’t see the mistake? Read that “If you have questions…” sentence again.)
As for me, I sent another email about two weeks ago, and, as of today, the mistake hasn’t been corrected, so I thought I’d use it as an example of what not to do.
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