Unforgivable sins

When I'm editing, there are a couple of unforgivable sins. These are things that make me scream and curse and would make me fire these people if they were my employees. These things are worse than misusing commas, worse than not running spellcheck, and worse than riddling your shitty writing with semicolons and fake em dashes. Here are the unforgivable sins:


1) Know your audience and your employer. I have worked with about a million different companies, and they all have their own rules. Some use the Oxford comma, some don't. Some make up their own bullshit rules about numbers, and some think single quotes are acceptable and even encouraged. Most editors even have their pet peeves, the little things that aren't necessarily wrong but piss them off. When you're the lead editor, you get to be that guy. When you're not, you need to follow the rules. Nothing pisses me off more than to get a manuscript that makes it abundantly clear that the editor never bothered to read the company's style guide.

Sometimes you're not working for a company but rather directly for an individual. In this case, you need to know your audience. Are they British? Then write in British English. Are they academics? Then you'd better sound intelligent. Are they screaming teenage girls who will latch on to any unrealistic fantasy you can conjure up? Then you'd better write Twilight. See my point?

2) Do your research. This is the ultimate mistake. I work with a lot of transcriptionists, and I see this all the time. There is absolutely no excuse for spelling the client's or a company's name wrong. That's ridiculous. Double-check the spelling on all names because you never know when someone's name is going to be Jon instead of John. And if something doesn't make sense, it's probably wrong. So figure it out. I don't understand why I even have to say this. If I were paying someone to write, edit, transcribe, or whatever for me and I received a manuscript with my name spelled wrong, you can bet they wouldn't get paid. It's sloppy and unprofessional. Do your research, and pay attention to what you're doing. In other words, do your job.

I'm so much nicer to people in real life, but stupid mistakes are just so...well, stupid.