Wikipedia:Not The Wikipedia Weekly/Episode 32
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Episode 32 Some of Wikipedia's finest content contributors discuss Copy editing, 'Compelling Prose', and share their thoughts and experiences (and a few 'tricks of the trade'!) |
Date and time
[edit]Saturday 23 August/Sunday 24 August - 0:00 UTC (7pm Sat EDT in US)
Topics discussed in this episode
[edit]Topics
[edit]- Top mistakes editors make when writing and editing – and how to combat them
- Redundancy
- Pronoun referents - particularly "this" at the beginning of paragraphs
- "Being" (ew!)
- What has helped you become a better writer/editor on Wikipedia?
- How to become a good copyeditor of your own writing and others' writing (what is the distinction)
- How to make copyediting "sexy" so that more people want to do it
- What is the difference between writing and copyediting?
Common mistakes
[edit]- Don't repeat words without a reason
- Not: A, although B. C, although D. E, although F.
- When possible, don't mix singular and plural descriptions
- Not: He wrote sonnets (14-line poems) and limericks (a 5-line poem).
- Express yourself in a few words when possible.
- Not: In the new version of the story, A married B, unlike the first version, where A married C. (Write: In the new version of the story, A married B instead of C.)
- Don't shift the viewpoint of verb tenses.
- Not: He couldn't show me anything that can make a difference. (Write "could make a difference". If your viewpoint was the hypothetical "could" at the beginning of the sentence, it's still hypothetical at the end of the sentence.)
- Subject and verb should both be singular or both be plural, except sometimes when the subject is a collective noun ("A bunch of kittens are playing on the porch.") More nouns are considered collective in Commonwealth countries than in the US.
- When writing "X and Y" where X and Y are noun phrases, check to make sure that it's clear which of the adjectives in X also apply to Y. Such problems can often be fixed by writing "Y and X" instead.
- In a list separated by commas, if one of the elements has commas of its own, it will often work best to make that the last element in the list. If more than one of the elements has commas of its own, you will probably need semicolons to separate the elements in the list.
- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:22, 23 August 2008 (UTC)