A. James Editing, Inc.

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.

In a first for Latin America, Mexico City legislators voted to legalize gay marriage. Though it would seem Mexico seeks unity through inclusion, this article is missing something in an otherwise almost perfect article:

Last month, an Argentinean court narrowly blocked what would been the continent’s first gay marriage.

The word “have”. It should be between “would” and “been”. What can I say? It’s a gift. Read the pithy article here.

Off the front page of BBC News, in the article entitled “Apec leaders drop climate target,” this freelance copywriter found a typo.

What The BBc wrote:

But leaders have failed to agree a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum.

What A. James Editing (also known as me) would have written:

But leaders have failed to agree on a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum.

While the aim of my site is to catch linguistic hiccups wherever I find them and not make comments regarding the politics of the day, I would still recommend that you read this article. It’s short, I promise.