Gelatinous blob

This is a great one:


It can affect bone. You can get boneless.


Did you know osteoporosis doesn't just cause bone loss? You literally lose all your bones!

Poop

I see this one a lot when talking about clothes or tailoring, but it still makes me giggle:

He measured my waste at this time.

Jared has aides!

Yesterday was the Orange County Aids Walk.


I wonder what this walk was supposed to aid.

Fed up

I've been sick, and I've had about enough of doctors treating me like a moron. Oh my god. Do you seriously not listen to anything I say? WTF, yo? Yeah, and then you do shit like this and think I'm not going to tear your ass apart?

To help improve the movement of food dow through your GI system:
The movement of food dow isn't so much the problem as the movement of food up.

1. Acupuncture helps food move down the GI track.
This is the one where you lose me. GI track?! Are you a fucking doctor or what?

2. Mind-body techniques to improve bowel function.
My bowel is actually not the part of the body we're talking about.

3. Consider higher doses of ginger. I recommend a product that contains 990 mg of ginger per tsp. Consider 1/2 to 1 teaspoon up to 5 times daily before small meals.
I love ginger. I eat probably 50 grams or so of ginger a day.

4. I would at least explore journaling to provide an avenue to express emotions.
Fuck, really? You're going to tell me to fucking journal? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!

No, he was not fucking kidding me. He included a printout about the benefits of journaling and how to journal. I have to say it again. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! This is your advice? What the fuck kind of stupid doctor are you? Did you not listen to a fucking thing I said? I'm a fucking writer! I spend at least eleventy hours a day writing, often while eating ginger.

And this is after the doctor who told me I was probably just swallowing too much air.

This doesn't even fall into the category of bad editing

Before I comment on this one, I want to say that I'm a big fan of Amy Winehouse, and I was genuinely sad to hear about her death. This in no way is a reflection of her but rather of kickass journalism.

The troubled British singer was known for a stirring, soulful voice that was considered a through-back to the Motown days of music.

I seriously want to through a fit when something like this gets published, especially on a website as big as CNN.

Is our children learning?

This is an actual book title:

Are Your Infant and Children Being Poisoned?

My infant are not being poisoned. I are making sure of that.

The clear whenner

We're talking about the outcome of a court case and whether there is a clear winner and loser in this particular instance.


The reason why they didn’t when, even if they felt they got money, is the amount of court costs.


Really? Really?

Step up

Let’s go onto Step 4.


There are three options here:


1. We're in an '80s step aerobics class.
2. We're teaching a small child to climb stairs.
3. We're waiting for our dog to pee.

Some guy

I’ve been learning a lot lately working one on one with some local Asheville artist’s websites.


"Who are you working with?"
"Oh, just some guy."

It's not just our local NBC affiliate!

This photo caption was included in an article by The Associated Press in The Denver Post today:


John O'Brien, registrar of deeds in Salem, Mass., shows enlarged signatures, supposably by the same person and thought to be fraudulent.(Steven Senne, The Associated Press )


In case you were wondering, "supposably" is a perfectly cromulent word. Uncyclopedia says so. 


I hope the AP has embiggened your vocabulary with its choiceful languaging. 

Numbers are hard

Today's editing adventure:


If you picture an iceberg, you realize that about 5% of that iceberg is visible above the surface, and the vast 90% to 95% is hidden below the surface.


In the scenario where 90% is hidden below the surface, where is that missing 5% of the iceberg?

Feedback

I work for a bunch of different people and companies, so I'm used to having to adapt my grammar standards based on personal preference. It pisses me off, but if the client wants to follow AP style and not The Chicago Manual of Style, so be it. I'm flexible.

Here's where I lose it. If you're going to give me feedback on editing that you didn't like, you'd better make goddamn sure I'm wrong, and you're going to want to state your complaints using correct grammar. Here are some of the gems from a recent "feedback" email:

Drooling

Some girls buy shoes or clothes or jewelry or whatever the hell normal girls buy. I buy this:

Isn't it beautiful? It prints 35 pages per minute and holds 250 sheets of paper, which means it took me about 20 minutes and two reloads to get through printing my current writing project. Contrast that with my old printer that held 50 sheets and did about 10 pages per minute (it's a photo printer). See why this is awesome?

Who did what now?

Here's a fantastic title for a seminar: 

The 5 Most Common Mistakes That Parents Make Who Are Estranged

Perhaps one of the mistakes was poor grammar that hindered their ability to communicate. Generally when you have a noun ("parents") and a subsequent description of that noun ("who are estranged"), you don't split them up. When you do, you risk confusing sentences like the following real-life example:

I overheard one customer talking about her dog that was outside with a barista.

You would think this sentence is saying that the customer's dog was outside with a barista because that's exactly what it says, but you would be wrong. The sentence is saying that the customer is talking to a barista about her dog and her dog happens to be outside. I know. It's absurd. But that's why you don't split the noun ("dog") from the description of said noun ("that was outside").

This all goes back to my Golden Rule of English: if it sounds stupid, it's probably wrong.

This is a life

Today's editing project: an academic text about the economics of popular music. Fuck yeah.

Irrelevant information?

I think I could do an entire blog just on news teasers. Here's tonight's:


Plus, a car, possibly linked to a homicide, is located.


According to the rules of commas, we can take out "possibly linked to a homicide" without changing the meaning of the sentence. Therefore, the teaser for this news story could read:

Plus, a car is located.

Now that's a story worth reading.

Today's fun editing error

I’m a descent proofer.


I'm sure you are. 

If you ignore it, it will go away

In the last couple of days, there has been a lot of talk about how Oxford University is dropping the Oxford comma. Madness ensued. The Twitterverse erupted. I simply refused to acknowledge the story.

Turns out, I was right. Further proof that if you ignore stuff, it will likely go away.

I do, however, agree that we need to do away with the, Shatner, comma.