Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Copyright 2020 Melanie Spiller. All rights reserved.
Editorial Pet Peeves
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
After editing over 200 technical books and more articles, white papers, and abstracts than I care to count, I
find that I have developed a bit of an attitude when I see the same really dumb (and very lazy) writing habits
popping up here and there. I realize that many of the problems stem from having been told in creative
writing classes to “write how you speak,” but what we got away with in those classes only works for a first
draft in technical stuff.
Here are a few of my pet peeves, in no particular order of peevishness.
Spelling errors: Please check spelling. For goodness sake, hardly any programs don’t check your
spelling anymore, and you are really lazy if you don’t just notice the fun little flags and give them a
click. Editors are there to make sure you’ve used the right form of there/their/they’re and so forth,
and that you made sense, not to spell “simultaneous” correctly.
Identify your work as yours: Imagine that thousands of documents grace the desk of the recipient.
Vague nouns like “resume” or “book” for your document name pretty much ensure that the document
will be lost. At the very least, put your name in there.
Heading dyslexia: After you’ve written the piece, create another document and put all the headings in
it without the text. You should be able to see a clear path in your headings from the introduction of
the subject to the conclusion. (Of course, if you created an outline and wrote from it, you won’t have
any problems here.) Then make sure that the paragraphs under each heading keep the promise made
by it. And just as a bonus, try to make sure your heading says what’s in the section. Cute headings are
fun at first glance, but if your goal is to make a useful document, keep that promise too.
While and since: “While” and “since” always have to do with the passage of time, or concurrency. Due
to the evil influence of colloquial speech, you’ll find other meanings in your dictionary, but they are
there to help non-native English speakers, not actually describe the meaning of the word. “While”
always means the same thing as “during.” Please use “although” instead of “while” when you are
about to show an exception to what you’ve just described, and use “as” or “but” instead of “since”
unless you are talking about the passage of time. Also, “whilst” isn’t a word at all, although some Brits
will have you believe that it is.
However: This word means the same thing as “but,” meaning that you are about to display the sad
other side of whatever you just presented. If you can’t substitute “but,” you can’t use “however.” This
word suffers the ignominy of also being a caveat word (serving no purpose but somehow “softening”
the text to come, like “kind of” and “sort of”).
Caveat words: Somehow, probably from academia, we have it in our heads that we need ergo, thus,
therefore, and other such words to soften the blow of whatever it is we’re about to say. We don’t do it
when we’re speaking very much (although my brother likes to say “interestingly” at the beginning of
some sentences), and it just distracts from what we’re about to say in writing. These words have real
meaning, and a careful reader will be thrown off by trying to make sense of what you’ve said and how
you said it.
Gratuitous Latin: For the most part, you should say “that is” instead of “i.e.” (id est), “for example”
instead of “e.g.” (example gratia), and if you really must, “thus” instead of “ergo.” Go ahead and use
“etc.” occasionally instead of “and so forth,” but that’s really the only Latin you need. (Okay, maybe
you need “et al” rather than “and all the other people.”) If you find that you need the Latin, for
heaven’s sake, use it correctly. Loads of people know what it means.
Different and more: These poor words have taken a beating from marketing folks. These words are
comparative. You can’t say that something is “different” without saying what it is different FROM, and
you can’t say that something is “more” without saying what it is more THAN. Bonus: when you say
that “there are 14 things,” you can say that “there are 14 different things” if you really need to
emphasize that they are varied, but often, when you are trying not to enumerate items, you can use
“various” instead. It’s clearer because it doesn’t imply comparison.
Dropping the noun/pronoun: Another hazard of colloquial speech is that we seem to be dropping the
noun. It’s no wonder that there’s so much struggling with conjugating verbs correctly. “Seems like
rain” should be “it seems like rain,” “felt ponderous” should be “the tome felt ponderous,” “took the
train” should be “we took the train,” and so forth, or they are not complete sentences. Heck, when I
was writing this bullet point, I wrote “No wonder there’s so much struggling…” It’s a problem. To me, if
there are enough of these (fiction writers seem to be the worst offenders), it strikes me like a series of
burps. Don’t verbally burp.
These are my favorite pet peeves, and I’m sure you have your own. I’d enjoy hearing about them, and I’ll add
them (if I like them) to my collection. I have a few more, but most warrant more than a paragraph, so I’ll save
them for future blog entries.