A. James Editing

Good evening gentle reader,

For those of you familiar with my blog and those of you who aren’t, I am a freelance copywriter who has until recently highlighted errors in news articles. I call it “Typos in the Nuwz…I Mean News.” Perhaps you’ve seen them around the WP blogroll. No periodical has been safe, The Huffington Post, The BBC, Fox News, MSNBC and even AOL News. I’ve critiqued their typographical errors, clarity and consistency. That’s been fun and the pictures are usually pretty, but I would like to add another facet to my blog: typos in books. In addition to being a copywriter, I am also a trained proofreader and avid reader. Do you see where this is going?

My trained eye picks out errors whether I want to or not and I must must perform the appropriate proofreading markage and make a note to myself at the top of the page. I said it was a gift in my last post. I might have exaggerated a bit and perhaps “curse” is a better word to use.

The first installment will begin…tomorrow! Muahahaha! Now I’ve got you hooked! Which book will it be? The blameless author? Which publisher was careless enough to let these bedeviled blemishes make it to print?!

Find out all that and more tomorrow on A. James Editing!

The beating of singer, Rihanna, at the the hands of her abusive boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, is still a hot topic nine months later. You can read all about it in this short article off the MSN homepage: “Rihanna: Going back to Brown after beating ‘wrong.’”

It’s because this topic is still front page news that I chose to highlight a typo in this Associated Press article.

What The Associated Press published:

NEW YORK (AP) — Rihanna said Thursday that she regrets returning to ex-boyfriend Chris Brown after he left her bruised and battered during an February assault, warning other women facing domestic violence to not let themselves be blinded by love.

What copywriter Amber would have written:

NEW YORK (AP) — Rihanna said Thursday that she regrets returning to ex-boyfriend Chris Brown after he left her bruised and battered during a February assault, warning other women facing domestic violence to not let themselves be blinded by love.

The letter ‘n’. Who knew it could be so pesky?

There are, of course, hundreds of thousands of internet resources for writers. One of the multitude that I know about and regularly recommend to others, is Mediabistro.

Mediabistro offers classes for further writing development in the areas of your choice, information and resources, job postings for seekers, and resume postings for employers. I don’t use this site enough but this post has reminded me why I should!

I read this book when I launched my freelance writing and editing career two years ago. Believe it or not I found three typos in the book…I’m not kidding. Don’t worry though, I sent an e-mail to the publisher and made them aware of the faux pas. I can only hope the irony was not lost on them.

Dear Writers of Portland, OR,

If you haven’t heard already, Portland Community College has an incredible line-up of Community Education classes, not least of all their writing classes.

Some of the classes instruction on: freelance writing, memoir, grammar, fiction and non-fiction, and children’s lit. I’ve taken a class from PCC before and I recommend them highly. A lot of their classes (maybe not the writing classes, but I would check on that) can be taken online. So if you’re out of state, you may still be able to benefit from these affordable ($89ish) and informative classes.

Happy learning!
Amber