GOOD EDITING is a rare commodity these days. Grammatical errors and misspelled or misused words pop up with annoying frequency, even in books from reputable publishing houses. Sentences are often wordy and difficult to decipher. These things detract from your writing and give the reader a bad impression of your business. If you are a student, you know that poor editing often leads to poor grades. If you are a writer, you know that poor editing can mean rejection slips. WET Ink Solutions can help no matter what your editing problems.
We offer these editing services:
You don’t have to look far to find humorous examples of poor editing. They are all around us. Here are a few collected over the years from a variety of sources:
From a church bulletin: “Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.”
Another church bulletin: “For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.”
A diner sign: “Turkey or Chicken $6.35; Beef $6.95; Children $5.00″
Used car lot sign: “Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first.”
The following are examples of some of the most common problems we find in editing documents (the parenthetical comments are added):
Misplaced modifiers: Yoko Ono will talk about her husband, John Lennon, who was killed in an interview with Barbara Walters.
Ambiguous pronoun references: Guilt, vengeance and bitterness can be emotionally destructive to you and your children. You must get rid of them.
Spelling errors: To celebrate at feasts, the inhabitants of old England sometimes cut the head off the biggest bore and carried it around on a platter.
Missing commas: Before I make any plans, I have to talk to my wife who is working evenings.
Dangling participles: Being a young woman, older men in my office didn’t take me seriously.
(By the way, if you aren’t sure what the errors are in the above examples, call us. You need our help.)
Word processing programs will flag some errors, but not all. And your spellchecker won’t catch everything either. Here are some examples of words that often get through:
- Its (possessive of it)
- It’s (contraction of it is)
- Your (possessive of you)
- You’re (contraction of you are)
- Their (possessive of they)
- They’re (contraction of they are)
- There (in that place)
- Accept (verb meaning to take or receive something offered)
- Except (usually a preposition meaning excluding, but or only)
- Affect (usually a verb meaning to influence)
- Effect (usually a noun meaning result)
- Were (past tense plural of the verb to be)
- We’re (contraction of we are)
- Where (referring to place)