Saturday, February 27, 2010

Copy Edit the World (Part I)

"There's this malaise in the country, there's a sense of hopelessness and a sense that people are so beat down," he said. "(Scott-Heron) says it in 'Winter in America' that no one's really fighting, that everyone is just shrugging their shoulders and just taking it."
- The Spartan Daily; http://media.www.thespartandaily.com/media/storage/paper852/news/2010/02/25/Features/Disc-Jockey.Cooks.Up.Soundtrack.For.Social.Change-3879412-page2.shtml

Since the writer is inserting their own words into someone else's quote, his or hers clarification or addition should be placed in brackets, instead of parentheses.



"One time, I woke up at 3 a.m. craving beef noodle soup, walked down some stairs and made a turn at the corner, and lo and behold, there was a beef noodle soup cart."

I believe the "lo" being referred to is a type-o is suppose to be "look".



As we are a community where people live, we think its important that just like out in the world where there are laws that prohibit harassment and assault, that it's the same in our resident halls," Stephanie
Hubbard said.

This mistake is the improper use of "its" and "it's". In this case, the writer used "its" when he should have used "it's" since he wasn't trying to show possession. By adding the apostrophe (since "it's" is a contraction of "it is"), the sentence can clearly translate into "As we are a community where people live, we think it is important...".



Louann Padilla-Pino, a sophomore business administration major and Spartan cheerleader. "We've lost two coaches, we've lost teammates for different reasons and we just really pulled together as a team."

The first sentence of this paragraph is a fragment. Perhaps the writer could have inserted "Louann Padilla-Pino... stated, 'We've lost two coaches....'"

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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMarch 2, 2010 at 10:22 PM

    Some good catches! +6 points

    Note: "lo and behold" is correct.

    ReplyDelete

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