My Kind of Conversation

Hey, I’m an editor…

I find typos in restaurant menus all the time. When I eat out, anyway.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

—That’s a common motto in tech writer circles, where we (we tech writers) tell the truth for a living. Marcom is short for “marketing communications.” This comic is a good example of several ways to be insane:

The second panel contains a type that I see a lot of in job posts, and it bugs me. Common versions I see are “at least 3 to 5 years” and “3 to 5 years or more.” Those need only one number!

So what are your favorite plurals to hate?

Last panel, last sentence.

The sentence is grammatical, but the past perfect would be better. “What if she heard me” refers to the immediate past, or at least something more or less right now. “What if she had heard me” allows the event to take place and its effect continue into some point in the past.

Subtle, I admit.

An autolog (or autological word) is a word that’s an example of itself, such as “word,” “font,” and “writing.”

What about this? Second panel at the bottom:

Does it count if it’s words left out?

PS—I just ran into another example of autologicalness (is that a word?):