I just received an email today, which advertised a new “super-premium” skin for the Thesis premium WordPress theme. I enjoy reading about new skins, so I read the email. Lucky for all of you that I did: It gave me plenty of fodder for a blog article!
First, here’s the relevant portion of the email I received:
Below is a shot of the ad, showing my markup. Below that, I’ll explain all the changes I suggest.
I’ll identify changes by paragraph and line number within the paragraph. The first paragraph begins, “We’ve just posted a new skin … .”
- Paragraph 2, line 1: Disregarding the passive voice (“The Times was built … ”), the past tense form “built” is obviously the correct form here.
- The word “broadcaster” is not a proper noun. If the construction were in the form “Person’s Name, Title” then a capital might be more appropriate, but that isn’t the case here.
- “As a former broadcaster” is a dependent clause; as such, it needs a comma to set it off from the independent clause.1
- Paragraph 2, line 2: “ … taken its toll … .” The possessive “its” has no apostrophe; only the contracted forms of “it is” or “it has” require the apostrophe.2
- Paragraph 2, line 3: This sentence is a list of things a news site doesn’t have to be. Items in a list are separated by commas, even if there is a subordinate clause thrown in for emphasis (“worst of all”). Thus, we set off the subordinate clause with commas and conclude the list.3 If the subordinate clause were not there, a comma before “and” is the Oxford or serial comma, and is completely optional.
- Paragraph 2, line 4: “WordPress” is a product name and is capitalized as shown. “Framework” is not a proper noun, so should not be capitalized.
- Paragraph 3, line 3: The comma after “level” once again separates a dependent clause: “while giving you … .”
- The word “all” is extraneous, and describes nothing that went before. All what?
- “[w]ith a kick-ass options panel” is another dependent clause, so again it should be set off by commas. The semicolon is just wrong.
- Paragraph 3, line 4: How in the world does “equired” pass any spelling checker? I’m going to assume one was not enabled; however, reading the copy from finish to start will almost always find errors of this kind.4
- Paragraph 4, line 1: This is the fourth occurrence of The Times in the copy. Personally, I don’t care whether, as a title, it’s capitalized or not, but maintain consistency! (Were I writing the copy, I’d have enclosed “The Times” in quote marks throughout, and probably should have done so in my markup.)
- Paragraph 5: Periods (full stops in the UK), question marks, and exclamation points (or, again in the UK, exclamation marks) are “stop marks.” As such, only one is used to end a sentence. In this case, I understand the double-stop was being used for emphasis, and if you insist on doing that, at least put the question mark last, since you are asking a question.
- Finally, a note on emphasis: In this copy, ALL CAPS were used throughout, so I left those alone; however, my personal preference is to italicize for emphasis. Whichever route you choose, be consistent.
I should mention that while I was writing this article, my use of ellipses caught my eye, especially when I use them at the end of a sentence. So, I did a little research, and discovered I have been using ellipses incorrectly. In the days of the typewriter, an ellipsis was four spaces separated by three periods: . . . . (That fourth period you see marks the end of the sentence, of course.) My errors were, first, not setting off the ellipsis by spaces…thusly, and using an ellipsis as a stop mark…
Modern typography (word processors, for example) are now smart enough to interpret . . . as an ellipsis, and convert it to … like so. (Actually, I cheated, and actually inserted the spaces in the first instance; however, LiveWriter, which I use to compose blog articles, has an add-on to insert symbols, one of which is the ellipsis as shown in the second instance. You do have to type the surrounding spaces, however.) Microsoft Word 2008 (for the Mac) will autocorrect three successive periods to an ellipsis; I just changed the autocorrect option in my version to place a space fore and aft. This will allow me to continue to type “words…more words” and get “words … more words.”
And … I’m guessing that is way more than any of you want or care to know about the ellipsis (and there is more, believe me!), so I’ll just … stop.
However, if you’d like to discuss the ellipsis further, or any of the other “rules” I employed above, by all means feel free to do so in the comments.
Google Wave:
I have 10 invitations for Google Wave available. If you’d like one, either put your Gmail address in the comments, or send it to me via my contact form (hover over the “About” item in the site navigation menu for the link).
Notes:
- Think of a dependent clause as a sentence fragment: It depends on something more (the independent clause) to make it a sentence. ↩
- One sure way to avoid this error is to avoid “its”: Try “taken a toll” instead. (And yes, the colon outside the closing quote is properly placed.) ↩
- You will find some editors who can’t use enough commas: They would insert a comma in front of “and” as well. However, current usage is moving toward fewer commas, not more. ↩
- The reason is, when you read a document backward, you are not reading for comprehension or context; instead, you are merely looking at the words. Of course, you may well miss homophones such as “their” and “there,” but seeing “their” at the end of a sentence might alert you to its impropriety. ↩
Join 728 eclectic readers.
Join the flock: Now 412 strong!
Tami (30)
Mazil (13)
Iris (9)
Bre (8)
Kimberly (4)
krizzlybear (4)
{ 11 comments }
I want to point out that I mean no disrespect to either Thesisthemes.com nor to Greg Rickaby, the developer of “The Times” premium skin for Thesis. In fact, I have a lot of respect for Greg and his design and coding skills. My purpose here was simply to identify copywriting errors and how to fix or avoid them. In hindsight, I probably should have nuked the link in the first paragraph of the copy.
Kes? I hate to say it, but as soon as I read through this, my first question was : Is this a scammer attempting a very bad job at phishing? And considering I’d rate myself as about as computer savy as a brick… that doesn’t look good for the developer of the e-mail if, in fact, this is a valid e-mail from a trusted source. However, if this was not a valid e-mail, it would be something to bounce back to the original company.
As it appears to be valid though… yeesh, they need to proof read before hitting send. Or have somebody else read the copy before doing a mass e-mail. I would have opened this, glanced at it, and then probably bounced it as a phisher back to the company that sent it. For me, if its not a personal e-mail, you’d better have 99% of your ducks in a row before hitting send. Otherwise, it just makes semi-computer literate people leery of the e-mail advertizing a product.
Tzia´s latest blog post is Sorry Guys
In fact, the email is very legit, from a website/blog to which I subscribe. But yeah…I was rather dismayed as I continued to read through it to find as many egregious errors as I did.
I can understand the occasional error; they crop up here as well (although I do fix them as I see them). And as a blogger myself, I know we sometimes hit that Publish button before we’ve done all the proofing we might do on a different kind of document. But this email went a bit beyond the pale.
That could definitely have used a run through the ole Word grammar check! It’s a pity grammar checkers aren’t as prevalent as spell checkers.
My web-usability eye is cringing at the text in those links, they are a bit too long and unspecific.
I wasn’t too keen on the way the links were applied, either, but I know I’ve been guilty of that on occasion. You raise a good point, but not one I’d normally address–at least, not in the context of the current article.
But that does raise an interesting thought: Should we be critical of (to the point of calling out folks) poor online design in matters like that? I think to some extent, yes: A link that extends for a line and a half is clearly “too long” for most sensibilities. And I have a lot of difficulty when I’m trying to link consecutively–will people see that as three separate links, or just one?
You’re making my brain ’splode, Maz!
*is critted by a wall of grammar and spelling*
Oh, wow. They could definitely use a Word spell- and grammar checker, and some common English lessons. Actually, scratch that – I think this is done by spell and grammar checkers.
I have recently noticed that, due to Word’s habit of correcting especially my spelling, I have grown lazier, and at times am not sure how something is spelled, but think “Ah well, let me try, I am sure Word will suggest something.” Doh! This is bad in my book – I want to be able to spell correctly without a spellcheck, thank you very much. As such, I have decided to switch to a writing software with no spellcheck (and fewer distracting bells and whistles too).
I think unfortunately as software grows smarter, we grow more reliant on it, and gradually more stupid *sadface*. And then, one day, we decide to write a promotional email without all our favourite smart tools, and we make a bit of fools of ourselves.
Iris´s latest blog post is NaNoWriMo won!
You know…that’s a very interesting idea. I’ve tried WriteRoom (for the Mac), which basically mimics an old-style monochrome CRT for writing, but recently downloaded a beta of Ommwriter, which has some Zen elements. I know when I’m writing a blog article, I’m always distracted–and slowed–by typos that I immediately correct. It isn’t like they’re going to go anywhere, or the red underline will time out.
I think that’s a good strategy for almost everyone: When composing, just write!, and fix everything later.
Heya… Kestrel… I would… love… a… Google Wave invite.
I promise not to let my love of the ellipse eclipse our conversations.
michaeltlh@gmail.com
Doodlebug´s latest blog post is Happy Thanksgiving
Done, sir! It may take a few days for the invite to actually go out: Google claims they have lots of envelopes to lick. :p
I received an invite to Google Wave. Logged in, looked around and wondered what the heck one does with it! I suppose I should watch the 10 minute video they provided, huh?
At least
There are some public waves available that go into it a bit, but think of Wave as a collaboration tool. Gina Trapani has a lot of online info available at smarterware.org.
Comments on this entry are closed.