A. James Editing

In an effort to ease its budget crisis and reduce its $419 billion debt, the Greek government has approved a series of drastic tax increases and spending cuts. The Greek people, however, were not asked what they thought of the plan and are rising up in protest at the cuts to their income.

Much thanks to the BBC for bringing us this important news, but may I offer a soft critique? Hire another proofreader. The few that you have missed some key things in this article.

The three things that I found were the placement of abbreviations, lack of consistency in comma usage and simple grammar. I’ll outline the errors in that order.

The International Monetary Fund is mentioned twice before the abbreviation, IMF, is given. It is common practice in any kind of writing, whether it be thesis, book or online news article, to give the abbreviation immediately after the term first occurs so the writer can then use the abbreviation throughout the rest of the article instead of having to retype the entire term (this might be more important in print media as space per article is very limited).

There are two instances when the author of this article could have used a serial comma (placing a comma after every item in a list) or not. The author used a serial comma the first time, but not the second. Using one over the other is not necessarily right or wrong, but having a lack of consistency in your usage is definitely not professional. Serial comma usage:

The measures include rises in sales taxes, a cut in holiday bonuses paid to civil servants, and a pensions freeze.

No serial comma usage:

Rises in taxes on fuel, cigarettes and alcohol

The last item I noted was a simple grammatical blip; a matter of the word “a” versus the word “an”. In the following case, “An” would be the correct word to use.

A increase in sales tax from 19% to 21%

Good luck to the Greeks in sorting out what is both best for the people and for the future of the country.

As most of you are aware, some Toyota vehicles have a dangerous defect that causes cars to accelerate rather than slow down when the brakes are applied. This new evidence could vindicate Koua Fong Lee of St. Paul, MN whose Toyota Camry hit the back of a car, killing three of its occupants, in 1996. He has been in prison ever since. Read the full Huffington Post article here.

True to form, I found an error in this copy. It’s not a typo this time but a matter of a comma that could have been employed to make this sentence read a little easier.

Attorneys for both the 32-year-old St. Paul man as well as the victims’ families say they’re encouraged by the evidence that the problems went beyond models that originally were recalled.

I would have added a comma after “families” like this:

Attorneys for both the 32-year-old St. Paul man as well as the victims’ families, say they’re encouraged by the evidence that the problems went beyond models that originally were recalled.

That’s all.

If you’re like me you’ve been glued to NBC for the past week or so watching the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. One event that has particularly captured my attention is the men’s figure skating, specifically the performances of Evan Lysacek of Team USA and Yevgeny Plushenko of Russia. My congratulations go out to Evan for his first Olympic gold medal and my professional concern goes out to NBC for allowing a typo to occur in so important an article.

Much had been made about of Plushenko’s transition scores, the mark given for the steps connecting the elements, as well as his other component scores — think the old artistic marks.

Had much been made “about Plushenko’s transition scores” or “of Plushenko’s transition scores”? You’ve got to choose one or the other…unless of course you don’t want to have a perfect sentence. Your choice.

An Idaho woman, Laura Silsby, is under investigation for potentially kidnapping children out of Haiti with her group of Baptist church members. She also has a laundry list of other indiscretions, all financial, that have absolutely nothing to do with the construction of this sentence by The Associated Press:

In the last year alone saw her home go into foreclosure and watched a number of legal proceedings against her and her business wend their way through Idaho’s courts.

You can get the meaning of this sentence as it is, but it could read a lot smoother. Try this instead:
“The last year alone saw her home go into foreclosure…” Or: “In the last year alone, she saw her home go into foreclosure and watched a number of legal proceedings…”

You get the idea. It seems that the author of this piece had two sentences in her head at the same time and attempted (unsuccessfully) to combine them. You can read the article here.

Whoo hoo! So rare to find a news article without any typos. It’s time to celebrate! An article published by The Associated Press on MSNBC entitled “Obama vows to address record deficit woes” has not a single typo. Read it for yourself and then tell me what you think. I couldn’t find a single one.

As a copywriter and editor, it’s my job to find all manner or grammatical errors and smite them wherever they be. What makes my job a lot easier is if there are none to begin with. Such occurrences are worthy of praise. Kudos to you AP. Nicely done!