It’s time to declare a war on bad grammar, misuse of words and cringeworthy punctuation and capitalization.
In today’s fast-paced media environment, perfection seems to have been traded for speed, making room for these unwelcome villains on the pages of publications everywhere.
But who is enemy #1? Do all editors loathe the same mistakes, or do we each have our own list of offenders? What are the most common and egregious editorial errors?
I decided to find out by taking an informal poll of my editorial colleagues at TMG. Starting a conversation about grammar with a bunch of grammar nerds was like swinging a piece of yarn in front of a kitten. They pounced. And it turns out that while we do share some of the same pet peeves, our #1 annoyances vary.
What follows is a compilation of our nails-on-the-chalkboard moments.
1. Two spaces after a sentence is wrong.
This is an inarguable fact that I will defend loudly and at length even outside of work and with family members.
This common mistake is what started a grammar rant fest over email among our editorial team, thanks to a Slate article articulating the error. Interestingly, most editors feel strongly about this rule, even though many people outside of publishing may have no idea this argument even exists (hence the “education” of my family members).
2. Enough with the misused quotation marks.
One editor summed it up best: “I can’t even begin to describe how much this irks me. Irk might not even be a strong enough word. Quotation marks are not meant to be used for emphasis. If you tell me your eggs are ‘fresh,’ I’m definitely not buying them.”
3. Quit abusing your apostrophes.
Misusing apostrophes is so wrong and, sadly, so common, that an entire blog is devoted to it. If a word is plural, it does not require an apostrophe. You don’t pet your dog’s. You don’t eat at restaurant’s. You don’t shop for car’s. An apostrophe shows ownership. You groom your friend’s dog. You eat at your neighbor’s restaurant. You shop for your husband’s car.
Also, it’s OK—and actually correct—to put only an “s,” without an apostrophe, after a decade: I love the ’80s! I was born in the 1950s.
4. Cut back on the unnecessary capitalization.
Capitalization (for the most part) should be reserved for proper nouns. Capitalizing a word in the middle of a sentence doesn’t make the word more important. Unfortunately, some of us have to bite our tongues on this one because many associations and corporations have internal styleguides that call for capitalization on groups and events deemed important: Annual Meeting, Board of Directors, Exhibit Hall.
5. Step away from the em dash.
One editor summed up this offense: Dash addicts are people who view em dashes as panacea punctuation. An example: “Planning ahead can save you money on your summer vacation—by going online early you can find the deals.”
This editor says: I’m all for using dashes for emphasis or a true pause, but often a simple comma, set of parentheses or even a colon will do. An old professor once told me, “When in doubt the dasher dashes.”
6. “Which” and “that” aren’t interchangeable.
Grammar Girl explains it best when she says to use “which” when you could leave the phrase off the sentence and it would still make sense.
Example: “Your Christmas sweater that has the fuzzy reindeers is in your closet.”
This sentence is specifically describing the Christmas sweater with the reindeers. You may have other Christmas sweaters in your closet or elsewhere. If you removed the “that” phrase, it would change the meaning of the sentence.
“Your Christmas sweater, which has the fuzzy reindeers, is in your closet.” This is specifically talking about the one Christmas sweater you own, which just happens to have reindeers on it. Take out the reindeer clause and the sentence means the same thing.
7. Write as you would talk.
This rule can often simplify your language, keeping your blogs and articles from sounding like bad corporate brochures. Do you really say “utilize” in everyday speech? Should you use “impact” as a verb? And yes, it’s OK to split infinitives and to end sentences with a preposition.
So, those are our rants. For now. What are your top writing pet peeves?
[image: stephenhampshire]
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Seems to me that as long as your audience understands what you’re trying to communicate than this stuff is just fodder for academic debates that the rest of the world doesn’t really care about.
It’s not an issue of being right or wrong, it’s an issue of credibility when someone is reading your content. Sure, you’ve communicated the message, but it calls into question your quality control and attention to detail when someone sees a grammar mistake. In other words, it plants a seed of doubt in their mind and they’ll wonder, in the back of their mind, what else you’re loose on procedurally.
Perhaps it does depend on your audience, but I say writers should always strive to elevate their standards. Writers who do sloppy work and respond with, “Well, you know what I meant,” reveal something about their work ethic and attitude toward quality.
It’s then, not than!
Yeah, what he said!!
@Haterader, the grammar-correcting frenzy I see in blog comments (on video game and sports blogs, no less) suggests that this debate extends well beyond academic types. @Andrew is correct; quality leads to credibility.
@Melanie, you hit most of my top pet peeves, but I’d add confused words to the mix: comprise and compose, than and then, etc.
I’ll second the “confused words” one. My favorite? “We need to flush out this idea.” Do you really? Are you sure you don’t need to flesh it out? Not sure if the plumbing could handle a solid flushing.
It’s good to have rules for consistency as well.
You were born in the 1950s? You look so young.
P.S.
it’s. its. there’s a difference.
Really informative article. I know that I’ve made many of the mistakes mentioned. Hell, all of them. Lol
This is perfect!!! Thanks for sharing it with us. I am going to pass it on.
Thanks commenters for sticking up for quality writing and eloquently defending the importance of it. Writing is my product. Just like people in other industries, I feel it’s vitally important to provide my “customers” with the best product possible, aiming for the highest quality standards.
Oooh, the “confused words” topic could be a blog post of its own. Another one I hear people say too often: That’s a mute (moot) point.
Absolutely agree with all of these points. For me random capitalisation irks me the most. Apostrophe mistakes (although heinous) are mistakes. Capitalisation is often intentional. Just giving a word a capital to make it seem more important drives me batty.
I’m not a fan of those who argue that arguments about grammar are irrelevant. “It’s about usage”, they say. “Who cares about the grocer’s apostrophe?” True, people can usually glean meaning despite the mistakes, but allowing people to assume these rules are unimportant means there will be more times where slack grammar does change meaning and can lead to confusion.
I think, rather than saying there is increasing carelessness in this day and age in grammar, punctuation and spelling, we have to rethink the whole issue. As a poor speller (but pretty OK with grammar) I have always felt there was one standard for personal communications and a higher standard for published work. I used the word published to mean spread to a wider audience. This has always been a distinction used when teaching children. Having to be too careful can stiffle creativity and also inhibits frank communication between those close to one, but to be taken seriously by a wider audience about a topic that seems important, then it is important to be correct. With all the advances in communication, including the one of speed, the boundaries between close conversations and publication to a wider audience have been well and truely blurred. No-one should be inhibited from using technology freely because of difficulties with formal literacy, but on the other hand it is nice if things are right. We need an inventive answer. (By the way I have just used one space between sentences for the first time in my life. A typing course years ago told me two!)
Sorry to be pedantic but in what sense is using a double space anything to do with grammar?
I think words-focused people should be more careful with their use of words.
Thanks for your comments!
@Kimota, well said; I agree on your points as well.
@Anne, you bring up some good points. I don’t want to stifle children’s creativity, but I also think people can be way too lax about grammar and punctuation. I firmly believe that knowing the proper way to use words and sentence structure improves your writing and ability to communicate. And congrats on using one space!
@Chris, aw, well, you got me. But in the interest of a catchy headline, it would have been difficult to add “grammar, punctuation, spelling,” etc. in the head. Plus, I don’t think “editorial” and “style” grab readers’ attention as much as “grammar,” a word that brings up certain connotations for all of us.
Two spaces after a period? Really? Just about anyone over 35 learned two spaces after a period in school and, truthfully, a space has no grammatical impact at all. It is the full stop, and yes I just used two spaces, that makes the difference. “Jakelovesicecream.” and “Jake loves ice cream.” are grammatically the same sentence. I agree that there is an aesthetic difference but that’s about all.
Can we talk about the misused semi-colon now?
@Anne D., thanks for your comments. Please see my comment response above about it not technically being “grammar.” And while those of us over 35 may have learned two spaces, I think it’s fair to say that we have made many changes in writing style and format since then, and I propose we nix the two spaces as well. (Interestingly, your post appears only to have one space between sentences.) I would argue that it’s more than aesthetics. I pause awkwardly, too long, when I see two spaces; I feel it interrupts the flow of good writing. I highly recommend Slate’s article on this topic: http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/pagenum/all/#p2
And by all means, let loose on the misused semicolon! I’d like to hear your thoughts.
How about there and they’re? That one absolutely drives me insane! I think that kids today don’t read enough, and therefore don’t understand grammar and punctuation. I do the two spaces too, sorry! I had a principal with a doctorate in education who absolutely had no understanding of homophones, would hand out memos with spelling and grammar errors and then add insult to injury by reading them to us, word for word. Racked with pain, instead of wracked…there’s another one…
Don’t forget their.
I don’t know why so many otherwise talented writers seem to misspell the same word:
Definate/definately
It’s weird how many people get this word wrong, whether as an adjective or an adverb.
Annoys me blind.
their/they’re/there…
to/two/too…
its/it’s…
then/than…
…are all different words with different meanings. Using the wrong one, like using bad or missing punctuation, can easily change one’s meaning or render one’s words completely meaningless.
@Haterader says “as long as your audience understands what you’re trying to communicate than [sic] this stuff is just fodder for academic debates”, but all too often they don’t, or can’t, understand what you’re trying to communicate. @Andrew Hanelly is right: it’s about the author’s credibility.
The question of spaces after a full stop, however, sits awkwardly within this list. It makes no difference to meaning or clarity; it is merely a convention of presentation, and can in any case be fixed in seconds with any find-and-replace function.
Far better to lose sleep over the things that matter (yes, they *do* matter) – the basic errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation which are gradually sapping our ability to communicate clearly with one another.
(p.s. My personal top irritant: “I could care less”. What you mean is that you *couldn’t* care less. Proof positive that Toby Ziegler was not the intellectual giant he fancied himself to be. Oh, and “same difference”, when you actually mean “same thing” or “no difference”.)
The misspelling I see a lot of recently is ‘lead’ as the past tense of ‘lead’, instead of ‘led’. I blame spell-checkers.
Two spaces after a sentence is a carry-over from fixed font typewriter days.
@Melanie, the semicolon is indeed misused, but nowhere near as much as the poor, abused comma. Why do people insist on inserting a comma between two separate, but connected, grammatically complete clauses? It is laziness. Nothing but laziness. Jane Austen got it right: “The business of her [Mrs Bennet's] life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.”
I often inserted extra commas to signal where a reader should pause a moment, perhaps for emphasis or to take a breath. But then again, my sentences were much longer than they should have been.
I’ve improved.
Writing web content requires making thoughts or information easy and quick to scan and digest. Result? Concise, brief wordsmithing is a useful skill for us to acquire and polish. Does any one else recall the BLUFF writing style with its military origin?
I quite like a bit of Random Capitalization myself. I suppose it comes from reading too much Georgette Heyer in my youth.
The mistake that makes me cringe most is the use of ‘your’ for ‘you’re’. The use of ‘of’ for ‘have’ is another.
“Between you and I.”
Yikes!
I must admit that I get caught up on this one all the time… it just sounds wrong. It sounded incorrect when I first heard the rule at age 10, and I still think it sounds odd now that I’m … older.
End a sentence with a preposition? Never!
Where’s he at?
Hi all,
Thanks for the great additions. So many pet peeves, so little time …
Misspellings, including the word “misspell,” bother me only when they demonstrate the wirter has no idea there are two different words with two different spellings. The best example (and one of my major pet peeves) is “faze” for “phase,” as in: “The baby’s only going through a faze. It doesn’t phase me at all.”
As an adjunct professor of education, I once got a paper using “there,” “their,” and “they’re” in one sentence, spelled incorrectly each time. (It was something like: “There putting they’re books their.”)
Ilene, a trifecta of grammar mistakes in one short sentence! Wow. Thanks for sharing.
Alot, meaning ‘a lot’ drives me crazy.Just yesterday I saw this usage on a writer’s blog.
Also, ‘No I don’t…’ in response to: ‘Have you got…?’ No I don’t got?
I agree with most of the points above too.
I was just thinking no-one had touched on my pet peeves, but @Ben and @Ilene got there first: comma-splice and confusion over subjects and objects (the I/me thing) hit me like a pain, closely followed by misrelated participles. Yuck.
Great peeves! As I writer, I hyperventilate over these an similar mistakes.
Because I use photos to illustrate my articles, I always have my camera with me. I have accumulated quite a photo collection of misspelled and poorly worded signs. Some are funny, but most are downright sad.
Unless I missed it, no one mentioned one of my peeves. It’s most often made orally.
“Debbie and myself are going to the store.”
Another peeve is the improper use of a comma after the word ‘but’
“But, we don’t know everything about it yet.”
Ack.
And I forgot to put a ‘d’ on the word ‘and’ in my first sentence.
Double ack.
RE: Double spaces between sentences.
Word processing software TRIES to kindly suggest that you stop this. The rule was modified over 18 years ago… so it appears that a few people are not keeping current on their punctuation and grammatical skills. I’m over 35, but there’s no age requirement (or limit) for buying an APA Style Guide. If you love your craft, know your craft.
I believe the biggest reason people are finally fleshing out the double-space issue is based on its use on web pages. Placing two spaces between two sentences will draw the eye to these white holes throughout your paragraphs. A better strategy is using white space more aggressively, such as to draw their eye towards a call-to-action or other relevant, useful information.
Cathy, thanks for all your great comments. I think I could have summed up my entire blog post with your one comment, “If you love your craft, know your craft.” Right on, my friend.
Thank you so much for 7 most popular mistakes we can make. It’s good to refresh memory and try to avoid them as often as possible.
- Klaudia
Congratulations, Melanie. This is a seriously well-commented post, showing how well you nailed reader interest. On the two-spaces-between-sentences issue, I want to add this — my writing coach, a veteran journalist of note, persuaded me to start using two spaces after a period because it helps people notice the break between sentences. I do it because I believe he’s right about how it takes away a bit of the visual effort from reading. Something that helps my reader and eases the effort seems worthwhile.
Now I wonder if he spent his career wrangling with editors about his spaces.
My own pet peeve is misuse of quotes. Single and double quotes have different meanings. I said “single and double” and that’s a direct quote. However, I also refer to certain grammar rules as mere ‘suggestions,’ which uses single quotes to call attention to a phrase or place emphasis, or to signal the words have some hidden meaning in the context used.
Thanks for the rant!
Joseph
Actually, two spaces after a period is correct. With computers and software programs came the one space after a period. I still prefer two spaces because it does what it was intended to do, give your eyes a rest. I do understand why it has been changed to one, but old habits die hard.
Thanks for your comment, Rachel. Typographers would definitely argue this point with you. According to the Slate article I linked to above, typesetters in Europe agreed on a single space after periods around the early 20th century, and America soon followed that. Typewriters actually led to the two-space usage, which is what many of us remember and learned. Don’t you love how the rules change year after year?
What it boils down to is space is money. I still use two spaces. (I’m a keyboarding teacher.)
No one has mentioned loose/lose yet! When I see “loose” misused, I have a mental picture of the item being launched from a trebuchet. “I’m afraid I might loose it.” Better stay away from slingshots, then, if you can’t restrain yourself.
The other one I hate is “I feel badly.” Donald Trump corrected Cyndi Lauper (incorrectly) with that one on The Apprentice. Try the sentence with “incompetent” / “incompetently” and the correct use becomes clear.
Thank you for the discussion! I’ll go sit quietly now and calm down.
It’s missing apostrophes that really get to me; for example:
– sport
– stress
– bus
Sheesh. Do they teach kids nothing these days?
My pet peeve is editors who pontificate on the obvious. Apostrophes? Really?
Well, Henry, it’s amazing how many articles and blog posts I still see that misuse apostrophes. I still think it’s quite a common error.
Be still my heart.
Interchanging loose and lose is one of the biggest ones for me and the strange thing is I NEVER saw it happen until just several years ago. Maybe it has something to do with spellcheck?
It’s/its
There/their/they’re
Your/you’re
To/too
These are all 7th grade stuff, people. It takes ZERO POINT ZERO ZERO seconds to figure out which one is right if you’ll bother to engage your brain.
Misplaced apostrophes make me craaaaazy. (this is also 7th grade stuff.) Apostrophes either indicate possession or are present in a contraction such as won’t, don’t or shouldn’t. They DO NOT PLURALIZE a noun! Arggggh, when did this start??
You can pretend all you want that your writing style and using language correctly doesn’t matter, but the bottom line is that it affects (not EFFECTS) your credibility. You can have the best ideas, products or services in the world, but if your writing makes you come across as a lazy, uneducated dolt who will take you seriously?
Monica,
Love your comments and your attitude, my kindred spirit! I wholeheartedly agree that the bottom line is that it does affect your credibility. Thanks for commenting.
Misused apostrophes do my head in! The poor apostrophe is the most abused punctuation mark of them all. Can someone please create an app that sticks tiny darts into the fingers of anyone attempting to misuse an apostrophe? Then the world would be a better place.
My addition:
“For all intensive purposes,” = NO!
“For all intents and purposes,” = yes.
A peach is not different than an apple. A peach is different from an apple.
They are beginning to do away with spelling classes, I guess grammar will be next.
This blog post is quite interesting. Especially, I like the metaphors the blogger used which are very vivid and funny. Actually, to an international student who studies in PR program in New York, it is a little hard for us to write articles in decent English. I am afraid that I will make grammar mistakes. After reading this post, now I get a general ideas of what grammar mistakes I should avoid. I learned a lot and I enjoy reading this post. It is smooth and clear. Thanks!
So glad you found this helpful and interesting. And I always like it when people think I’m funny.
Solid post!
I (sadly) stopped being shocked by the use of compliment to mean complement long ago. Sigh.
Use of key as an adjective isn’t incorrect, it’s just awful.
Misspellings of stationery/stationary
Over usage of the word “ROCKSTAR”
People who think there’s only one space after a sentence make me hyperventilate.
Uh oh, KPage. Be prepared to be bombarded with one space lovers. I still use two, and will always even though they support the one space. Remember, space is money in software.
Hope you have a medic on hand, KPage, because one space is the way it is these days.
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