A. James Editing, Inc.

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.