I got my submission to the Frontiers in Writing contest back today----
I was told to spell out O.K. (okay) Duh I thought, but what a dumb mistake to make. ( I would point it out in somene elses work as well.
Anyone else make any dumb mistakes that you see in others writing but seem to plague your own?
Shawn
Posted by Chronicles_of_Empire (Member # 1431) on :
Ok should be fine, yes??
Is ok actually an acronym?? O.K.??
Posted by JOHN (Member # 1343) on :
Yes, my best friend will play editor for more and I always type the word “women” when I mean to type “woman.” My friend has threatened to do things with my manuscript the would cause me to seek out the services of a proctologist if I make the mistake again. He also tells me the habit is Freudian; I view woman as a collective group instead of as individuals. I don’t know if I’m buying it, though.
Other than that I leave the “y” off of they a lot, and I type “he’s” instead of “his.” I type fast and carelessly because I’m scared of losing my ideas.
JOHN!
Posted by GZ (Member # 1374) on :
Typos, misspellings, and some grammar things. I have to almost go word for word to be sure I catch it in my own stuff (Trying to put together a final draft is exhausting) – yet they jump off page of other people’s work. If I type “not” for “no” and “writting" for “writing” one more time… (You’d think I could at least get that last one right – dang it, I know better!)
Such are the perils of knowing what you meant…
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
When you know you have problems with something, you can go back and do a search and replace to correct it.
Go ahead and write fast and feverishly, John. Then, before you let your friend see what you've written, do a search for "women" and make sure you fix all the times it should be "woman" and so on.
Search and replace has got to be about the easiest part of rewriting, as long as you have a list of things to look for.
Posted by tri2b (Member # 1442) on :
If that was their only problem, great! Easily corrected. That's what proofreaders and editors are for! Keep the creative juices flowing and don't get bogged down about such a silly thing.
When I type fast I often type keep as kepp, OK is an abbreviation BTW (see:http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxokxxxx.html and other sites as wel on the subject), and run my words together as sometimes the brain is faster than fingers...
Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :
All an all I was pleased with what the judge had to say. Some things were silly typos that I should have caught, others were things like red and white made into red-and-white. I still don't like that one, or understand why the judge thought it should be that way. A new one on me. But very little in the way of suggested word changes ect.
I ended up in a category that did not have enough entries. <sigh> But the comments were well worth the money spent. Also I joined the PPW writers group here in Texas and have found a host of people offering support and understanding. Not that I don’t get that here, but hey I might even be able to get together with some of these people. <yeah>
But my synop, that I thought was awful, got an 8 out of 10. The new one I have been sending out is much improved over that one.
Shawn
Posted by MrWhipple (Member # 1436) on :
My wife is a copy editor and she has some doozies. She was editing a book on the disease of trichotillomania or compulsive hair pulling. People with trich pull their hair to relieve stress. (even in places that would really hurt.) The author was following a twelve step process, not unlike AA or NA. She encouraged her readers to "Share your felines with others on a regular basis". Her favorite is from a juvenile fiction book written for a religious audience. It was about kids that played football and they were all lined up on the side of the field waiting for the 'dick off". How exactly does that work?
[This message has been edited by MrWhipple (edited June 28, 2002).]
Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :
I typed collages for colleagues once, pretty funny. We'd been friends and collages for years.
