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Pam Nelson: The Grammar Guide

 

‘Fact checking’ archive

Number of comments in parentheses

Dec. 4, 2012: If you see something, say something: The copy editor’s code (1)

The first sentence in a recent news story in the Clayton News-Star, the community newspaper that is delivered to my house twice a week, stopped me. I puzzled over it for a while before going on to finish the article. Here it is: One home and one camper have been burned to a singe in a fire that the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office suspects was caused by arson. The word that stopped me was the noun singe. I wondered at first if the writer meant to write “burned to a cinder,” which seemed to me to be more idiomatic.[.....]

Dec. 2, 2012: What, me worry? When a copy editor reads the paper (13)

My recovery from newspapers has hit a few bumps lately. I haven’t missed the work exactly, but I have seen a few lapses in my local newspaper, which happens to be my former employer, that caused me to cringe, left me irritated and made me wish I were still there to have (perhaps) averted the mistakes. I write today in sorrow that the organization I once worked for had to thin its ranks of more experienced copy editors. We truly are missed. I started to write this post without identifying the paper because I have friends who work there[.....]

July 22, 2012: Life after newspapers: Copy editing skills are portable (1)

I have learned a great deal since I started working for the AICPA‘s magazine and newsletters group about four months ago. We publish the Journal of Accountancy, The Tax Adviser, CGMA magazine and newsletters for certified public accountants. I no longer stumble over acronyms and abbreviations such as GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and FMV (fair market value), and I have an inkling of how our nation’s tax policy reflects our cherished capitalism. But the most important lesson I have learned is that a conscientious, well-trained copy editor who has worked for daily newspapers for more than 30 years[.....]

Feb. 26, 2012: Editing in practice: Jim Fingal, fact-checking hero (2)

A book review from the New York Times gives me a new role model. The book is “The Lifespan of a Fact” by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. It’s about the struggle to get an essay by D’Agata ready for publication in The Believer. Fingal was an intern fact-checker assigned to the essay. D’Agata believed that he was writing Truth and Art and shouldn’t be too bound by Facts. Fingal pushed back with questions and endured verbal abuse from D’Agata as he did his job, as reviewer Jennifer B. McDonald describes it. “The book presents, line by line, D’Agata’s[.....]