While doing my proofreading duties, I often see patterns regarding mistakes people make in the layout. Like most things, when something is done in error once, there is a good chance it may get repeated another time. People are people and mistakes are to be expected. I see this all the time in copy we receive from our clients and customers.

None of that bothers me. What I do find irksome is when I check a job and see that people repeat the same bad habits they learned in English class years before and have no idea that there is a problem. That might be simple spelling errors or an incorrect usage of a word, or lousy grammar. While I’m certainly no expert on the English language, and make a bunch of errors myself, I can say that I worked hard in my English classes. My efforts help Intrigue quite a bit today as there are errors aplenty in copy and texts.

For some examples:
The word is “ask”, not “aks”.
The word is “asterisk”, not “asterik”.
Use “they’re” for “they are” and “their” when something belongs to them.
Using “to” instead of “too”.
Use “it’s” for “it is” or “its” for possessive usage.

Even when people know that they are not great spellers, it is astounding that they don’t think to activate the spellchecker built into their program and run it!

Then there is the incorrect usage of punctuation. The most flagrant ones I see are when inch (or “seconds”) marks are used instead of quotation marks. They look similar but the functions are completely different. Nowadays, most people don’t understand that they are different – but I will flag this every time I see it. When I explain the problem, I’m usually met with some eye rolling and an unspoken “whatever!”

Try reading a newspaper today and you almost can’t find a page that is error free. I see duplicate words all the time, like “the the” or “that that.” Or sentences that were edited and recombined but not re-read and checked for mistakes. Nobody cares that much.

It sure does look like society in general is becoming more accepting of lower quality when it comes to how the English language is communicated. This is not to say that I advocate the usage of jargon and obscure words in everyday life. But people should have a wide vocabulary and be able to comprehend what is being said.

When I was in school, the word “ain’t” was forbidden to be used. Nowadays, it’s a real entry in the dictionary. I used to laugh about that one. But now I realize that it’s no joke – people think it’s a real word and have forced the dictionary people into accepting it as a real word.

Don’t get me started on “lay” vs. “lie”. Even I still find that one annoying.