02 November 2015

Copyeditor needed


My eye was first drawn to the unusual word "renoun" highlighted in the center of the page.  It's a word that would have been familiar to readers of Middle English right after the Norman conquest, but it was replaced by "renown/renowned" about five centuries ago.  (I had to check several references to make sure "Renoun" wasn't an extraordinarily subtle pun based on the name of the engraver or a person involved in the provenance of the stamp.  It wasn't.)

A comedy of errors is produced by the use - twice - of quotation marks for emphasis.  Boldface, underlining, font size, or some other alteration would have been better, but please not quotation marks, which are not only inappropriate, but which tend to suggest the opposite of what is written.

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks will never run out of material.

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9 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 2, 2015 at 11:13 AM

    :-) all that bad copy is certainly attention grabbing! :-)

    I-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. DrabkikkerNovember 2, 2015 at 4:01 PM

    Hmm, maybe someone should start a blog on the peculiar use of two spaces after a period...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MinnesotastanNovember 2, 2015 at 5:39 PM

      You're reading it.

      :.)

      Delete
    2. DrabkikkerNovember 3, 2015 at 3:43 AM

      You Victorian rascal, you :)

      Delete
    3. AnonymousNovember 3, 2015 at 7:03 AM

      I took typing in 1970, in my last year of high school. Two spaces after the end of a sentence is what it was. Still looks better than one space and makes text easier to read, even if you're using proportional fonts. _Especially_ if you're using proportional fonts and you have a sentence ending in an abbreviation.

      Lurker111

      Delete
    4. AnonymousNovember 3, 2015 at 10:01 AM

      i did not take typing, but i was taught that same rule - two spaces after the end of the sentence. and, a comma before the 'and' in a list.

      :-)

      Delete
  3. charlesNovember 3, 2015 at 11:58 AM

    I presume renoun doesn't reverb-erate with you?

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousNovember 3, 2015 at 1:03 PM

    This made me laugh so hard - my sweet 80 year old mother in law loves those quotation marks. So when she sends my husband notes like this, I have to remind him that she probably meant to underline or bold the words in question: Son, you're the "best" son I could imagine. You work "so hard" and are "so considerate", that I can barely contain my "admiration" for you.

    She also randomly changes the color and font of various words, I suspect because she can do so easily with her newfangled computer thingie. Thanks for the "smile".

    ReplyDelete

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