A friend visiting Ohio sent me a picture of the menu at a Mexican restaurant there. Living in Arizona, Mexican food is a staple and I’ve read lots of Mexican food menus in my lifetime. I’ve never seen anything like this and as much as I love jalapeno poppers, I don’t think I’d try them at a place that calls them “jalapeno pooppers.”
One would think that when there is a word that is difficult for lots of people to spell correctly, you would look it up to confirm the correct spelling before you put it on a public sign.
Thanks to Stephanie for sharing! Don’t bring your pets, but if you find one there, it better be on a leash!
The best way to improve your proofreading skills is practice. But there are other resources available to help you learn or refresh your knowledge of grammar to improve your proofreading. Here are resources that I use regularly:
1. The Gregg Reference Manual. (Available at www.amazon.com). This book is always on my desk (AND on my Kindle app) and is the first place I go when I need information. There are also some worksheets available if you really want to get your “learning” on.
2. A dictionary. With all that is available online, there is no reason to misspell a word or not know what the word means. In addition, http://www.merriam-webster.com/ not only will define a specific word for you but gives you a word of the day and various quizzes to help you improve your vocabulary. There is always a hard copy dictionary as well. Every desk should have access to a dictionary–either book form or electronically.
3. A thesaurus. I use the one that is part of Microsoft Word, particularly when I’m not sure whether the word being used is correct, such as affect/effect. It also helps if you’re not familiar with a word to make sure that it is being used in the correct context.
4. Black’s Law Dictionary (or a more portable legal dictionary). I have a Barron’s Law Dictionary on my desk so I can prove to an attorney that it is statute of limitationS (among other legal words) or to look up a legal term that I don’t understand.
5. Microsoft spell checker and grammar checker. While this is certainly not the “do all be all” of grammar, it can be helpful. Just don’t rely on Microsoft. As great as the Word program is, sometimes the operator has issues all his/her own. For instance, I have a terrible problem typing doe snot instead of does not. Since both doe and snot are correctly spelled, it doesn’t come up as an error. If I didn’t actually read the document, that kind of error would not be caught. The grammar checker can also be helpful but, again, is not enough.
6. Websites. There are lots of websites, blogs, and other online information available. As with all things Internet, however, the authors of these websites and blogs are not incapable of making errors, so get the information and check it against another resource if necessary. My personal favorite is Grammar Girl (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/). Some other fun sites I have found are Grammar Bytes (http://www.chompchomp.com/) and Grammar Slammer (http://englishplus.com/grammar/), although I’m sure there are plenty of others out there. Of course, I hope Proof That Blog (https://proofthatblog.com/) is on YOUR list of resources.
That’s my short list. What is on your go to list of proofreading resources?
Today I’ll start with thanks and undying gratitude for all those who serve our country so we can be free. I cherish my freedom and am thankful to all members of the armed services who make that available to me, including my dad, who served in Korea.
Now, since it’s Monday, here is another Grammar Giggle from a Twitter post. Enjoy your Memorial Day celebrations–just don’t do anything e-leagle!
In keeping with the theme of the blog post this week, sometimes it isn’t that something is misspelled, it is all the details of a picture that make the difference.
Proofreading isn’t only about grammar, it’s also about how your document looks. Granted, grammar is most important because if someone tries to read your document and it is full of mistakes, they will either quit reading, get their red pen out and make corrections to send back to you, hang it on the company bulletin board with errors circled, email it to their friends, make it a Grammar Giggle, or just think that you must not be very smart or you don’t care very much. None of those options are good. If your document is grammatically perfect but has other issues in the way it looks, it will still be a problem. Here are some things to look for to make sure your accurate document is also pretty:
It isn’t difficult to make sure your document is accurate and looks good. That is the impression you want to give the reader, isn’t it? What specific areas do you have to watch to make sure good work product goes out the door? Leave a comment so others can learn from you too!
My granddaughter brought her yearbook over to show me this weekend. I started thumbing through it and was unbelievably discouraged at the multiple (as in more than one, more than two, I stopped counting) errors. Even if the school itself didn’t put the yearbook together, it has their name all over it and represents their school, so SOMEONE should have at least looked at it to make sure it was correct. Maybe the sixth graders should have proofread it. My son asked me not to post a link on the PTO’s Facebook page, so I will just use it for Grammar Giggles (or perhaps Grammar Groan is more appropriate). But I couldn’t resist using the page that had my beautiful granddaughter’s picture on it (since I had my choice of every page of sixth graders) even though it showcases my number one grammar pet peeve–apostrophes for plurals!
I found this on Twitter and have removed the details to protect the . . . ridiculously stupid. This proves my point that proofreading headings and captions is just as important as proofreading the guts of a document. Apparently, there were many grammar errors throughout this document, but I couldn’t get past the first heading. And just think about what the judge who gets this document thinks. Actually, I believe they think this document is not worth wasting time reading.
Time for some quick tips:
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