Editing Detective, Erik Nelson

Errors are a part of the writing process, where after carful editing, the errors get weeded out to create an errorless copy. Although creating errors while writing is frowned upon, it is nearly impossible to be so perfect, as we are all humans that, by nature, create errors. Through readings, errors can be found, and as such here are some that I have found in recent readings.

In the Edmonton Journal, an article was written about the recent death of the Polish PM and a number of other people. In the article, the writer describes how the plane crashed: "Kaczynski died Saturday when his airplane, carrying senior officials and VIPs, crashed in its attempt to land in fog near Smolensk in Russia". When the writer says the plane attempted to land "in fog" it becomes very ambiguous as to what is trying to be said. Because fog is a cloud-like mass near the ground, someone could question how a plane is attempting to land IN it. To clear the ambiguity of this sentence, the writer could just as easily stated the plane was trying to land during foggy conditions.

Another error, although quite minor and easily fixed, was in another article at the Edmonton Journal about Jim Thunder, a Slave Lake man who tried to retrieve a native artifact between 1988 -89. "Thunder, was born May 16, 1950, in Slave Lake, the youngest of the six children of Ned and Isobelle Gladue." A comma lies directly after Thunder for no apparent reason. Quite a minor infraction in the world of errors, yet no stone can be left un-turn in the conquest of perfect spelling and punctuation. Removal of the comma would fix this error.

Although errors are saddening to see, they are almost impossible to prevent because of their slippery ways of sneaking into copies. As Issac Kaplyuk notes in a blog post about editing errors, "Like many a thing in life, making written errors is an inevitable occurrence. The best way to learn from mistakes, is to pay attention to the mistake made, how it was made, why it was made, and then work on remembering those things so that atleast THAT error won't be made again." Through careful reading and analysis, readers can however pick out the errors that remain and then forward them to an editor to clear up such problems - It's just too bad spell check can't do all the work for us.

Image from Maniac World