GrammarPhile Blog

So, how'd you do?

Perhaps after reading last week’s Sheryl’s She Shed blog challenge, you’ve had the opportunity to actually see the commercial on TV. If so, would you agree there’s something suspect about Victor’s indifferent response regarding the lightning strike? There are many theories circulating social media as to Victor’s role in the burning down of Sheryl’s she-shed. Do you have a humorous take on what might have happened? If so, we’d enjoy hearing from you. Let your imagination run wild and post your ideas below in the comments section.

Wow, as you can see, we received a range of answers to this challenge.

There are 31 wrong words, and as many of you pointed out, “chichi-er” could have simply been “chichier.” Inserting the hyphen was my mistake; I put my faith in material I read on the internet concerning “chichi,” instead of looking up the word in Merriam-Webster. Lesson learned? Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it correct!

We were initially looking for 31 wrong words; however, if you guessed 31 OR 32, we accepted you as a winner, since many of you included “chichi-er,” which took the total to 32.

Here is the list the first five people who answered correctly from the challenge we assigned our readers. Congratulations!  We'll be in touch with each of you.

• Tara Bann
• Deborah Baron
• Amy
• Desmond Ballance
• Andrea Isiminger

If you're one of the winners, please send your email address to Conni@ProofreadNOW.com so we can send your gift to you.

And for those of you who guessed over or under in the number of mistakes, here’s the answer key. All mistakes are highlighted in yellow.Thanks to everyone who participated!

Editors and proofreaders have many responsibilities and work extremely hard to make sure that every piece of writing they touch is as perfect as it can be before it’s published. They work hard to fix everything from the smallest of typos to the most egregious errors. However, they are still human. And sometimes they make mistakes; not very often … but sometimes.

Here are the top six mistakes editors and proofreaders make, that you’ll want to avoid making yourself.  

1. Not Verifying the Intended Audience

It’s important to know the intended audience for the document you are editing or proofreading. The intended audience will dictate the tone and voice of a written piece, as well as its overall syntax. And an intended audience will dictate which style guide and editorial guidelines are followed as a piece is being written, edited, and proofread. In addition, the intended audience will dictate what type of information needs to be further explained and what terms and acronyms need to be spelled out, kept abbreviated, or omitted.

With the celebration of the American flag on Independence Day and the recent flap around the Confederate battle flag, now seems a good time to talk about red flags in proofreading — the sneaky errors in documents that are easy to overlook, especially if you’re self-editing.