to use an a or an e?

While writing a paper this weekend I came across a common problem: whether to choose affect or effect. Generally, I can choose the correct word and forge on, but this time the much-hated green squiggly line appeared under my chosen word and I was forced to rethink my option. So I researched the difference between the two words and thought I would share my findings:

• affect is a verb meaning "to influence." It can be seen with various verb endings (-ing, -ed) and in various verb forms such as gerunds or participles.

EX: The shorter runway affected her performance.

• effect is a noun meaning "a result." It will only be seen in the previous form or with "s" added to the end to make it plural.
  

EX: The effects of the experiment can be seen in published results.

You've Got... bad proofreading skills?

Talk about embarrassing editing and proofreading mistakes! This is an email sent out to the entire UH community by the Office of Student Affairs just today. Pay close attention to the subject line.

Capitalization Quiz

This is more of a comment in addition to the longer discussion Cindy started earlier.

Going over the capitalization quiz, I had issues with "Fulbright fellowship" in number 14:
Last spring, sometime in late March, I believe, Grillbody heard that he had been awarded a Fulbright fellowship.

The quiz says that the word fellowship is not capitalized. I feel that it should be because the two words together represent the proper name of the fellowship.


Which way is correct? Or is this just an example of up/down style?

Same thing, new week

Since we are still in study/quiz-mode, I figured I would post something much like last week. I have another "informational query" if you will. Is the definition for Word style meant to mean the Microsoft Word styles we worked on creating in class? If it is, I have written what I have so far below. If not, what is a word style?!

Word style: A unique set of formatting specifications.

Yet Another Studying Query…

Regarding the terms we have to define in our sample quiz questions, I'm finding we've used them so much in class that they've just become inherent (much like the grammar rules, as I mentioned in an earlier post). So I thought I would try running the definitions I came up with by everyone else. I’m having quite a bit of trouble with these so I’m really hoping for some feedback!

• Style Sheet: A database composed from and kept for a specific document to ensure consistency throughout said document. Items on a style sheet include, but are not limited to, punctuation, special symbols, numbers, and an alphabetical list.
• House Style: The set of preferences an editor must follow when editing for a certain company or publishing house. These preferences include a preferred style manual and dictionary, among others, which all help to avoid inconsistencies.

Innate Grammar

As I fill out my list of items, I realize that I can recognize errors and fix them but can't necessarily explain WHAT the grammatical error is. Does anyone else have this problem? Maybe this is more a question for Pat, because it's a little frustrating!

Quick Comment on Styles

I've been using MS Word 2007 for quite a while now, and the automatic style (called "Normal") is beyond irritating since I always make adjustments when typing papers. However, I never knew how to make changes to the styles. Needless to say, this new tool is useful to me beyond the editing world.

Salaries

I was surfing around on the internet and found this website: payscale.com. It details copyeditors' salaries, popular industries, and popular degrees. It also provides statistics for the particular career. Seventy percent of copyeditors are women!

six-step editing process

Copyediting with the style sheet this past week reminded me of the six-step editing process we were taught in English 308. I realized I was subconsciously integrating the process into my copyediting. Though it has been created with technical writers specifically in mind, I feel it's still helpful so I've posted the link below.

http://www.english.hawaii.edu/henry/308/Technical%20Reading.html

parallelism

A conversation with Chad on Thursday forced me to turn to my book for answers on this topic. When checking for parallelism I tend to just look at the verbs in the item in question. For example, I would check to make sure all of the tenses matched. However, when I referred to the book I found parallelism can lie not just in verb tense, but also in any part of speech in the series. A series is in parallel form only when each term belongs to the same part of speech, which does not necessarily have to be a verb.

Capitalization Confusion

Since I wasn't in class Thursday I'm not sure whether or not this was discussed, so I'll mention it anyway. I felt like I really knew the rules of capitalization until I attempted the exercise on page 164. Some of the words were pretty clear, like lower-casing "Staff Secretary," but others really threw me, "Deputy Undersecretary of the Army" for example. I think the context made this exercise a little bit more difficult. Did anyone else feel this way?

The Letter...

I am mortified that any company would send something like this out to its customers or the general public!!! I agree with Samantha in that I am having extreme difficulty simply copyediting, rather than tearing this piece apart and rewriting (something I had alluded to earlier when it came to editing papers). I'm truly frustrated because there are so many basic grammatical mistakes that it seems almost impossible to even distinguish a starting point!

A few comments and questions...

"One Paragraph, Three Ways" touched on a big issue I have while informally editing friend's papers: maintaining the author's style. When I come across sentences that are poorly written or that I feel need to be rewritten altogether, it is extremely hard for me not to impose my own style. This becomes especially difficult if I run into many sentences that fit this description.

Obviously this applies more in a teaching scenario, as opposed to a professional copyediting setting. However, I am curious as to how to best edit a paper in this situation.

Staff Hierarchy

After discussing the inter-workings of different editing staffs today, I began to wonder where and how certain people fit into the hierarchy. For example, I understood a literary agent to be someone who is proficient in editing skills; however, it seems as though this position is redundant and unnecessary. What is the real purpose of a literary agent, and how would one really be of use in an author-publisher relationship?