When is it okay to use "about" -- How to be more precise when copyediting

Rich Adin recently published a blog post on the vagueness of about. When precision is wanted, he maintains, about isn’t going to cut it.

Adin points out that if you can use a precise date rather than “about 50 years ago,” you won’t make readers work hard for the meaning. His example:

About 50 years ago, John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

If your text has a long shelf life, as do the medical textbooks Adin edits, after a while “about 50 years ago” is going to be inaccurate. The second sentence eliminates that future inaccuracy. Writes Adin, “Generally there is no accurate, laser-like precise meaning that can be supplied by a reader when about is associated with a number.”

I agree with his argument to a point. It’s true that using about is not going to give precise information, but the assumption is that precise information is always needed and that’s not true.

Let’s look at two examples:

One phish the author of this article almost fell for about five years ago was filling out a survey for a bank in return for a small amount of money.—Communications of the ACM (January 2012)

Biden told the audience about 25 minutes into his speech that he was cutting his remarks short because of the fire.—Associated Press (2012)

In the first sentence, do we need to know that the author almost fell for a phishing scam 4 years, 10 months, and 16 days, or whatever the precise date was? If the author can’t remember the exact date, does it invalidate his point?

In the second sentence, do we need to know the exact moment Vice President Biden cut his speech short, or is it more important to know that he did?

Other times, the manuscript needs to be vague. Two of the post’s commentators discuss recipes that give directions such as “Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes.” Such phrasing alerts readers that the dish might be done earlier than 25 minutes.

And then there are cases where the writer or publisher wishes to make a situation look better by not being precise:

Nucleic acid extracted from these samples was combined into 48 pools, with 9 or 10 samples per pool. Samples from pools with positive results were identified, and new extractions from these pools were tested individually. However, enough sample material for new extractions was available for only about half of the samples.—Emerging Infectious Diseases (January 2012)

In such cases, I agree with Adin: factual precision is more important than rhythm and style. But copyeditors may lose the battle to business politics.

As I noted above, Adin works with medical textbooks. Factual precision, especially with measures, is often vital, and he should question the use of about.

But such precision is not always necessary for every manuscript. No matter what type of copy you edit, a few simple guidelines can help you ensure that about, and every other word in the manuscript, is the right choice:

• Know the word’s meaning and standard usage. Don’t be afraid to look them up!
• Be familiar with the word’s current usages, whether they’re accepted or not. You may be working on a manuscript that would benefit from a current but nonstandard usage (e.g., dialogue in a fiction piece). Check the Corpus of Contemporary American English, Google News, Google Books, and other depositories of published writing for the latest trends.
• Know the manuscript’s purpose. All manuscripts should precisely communicate meaning, but the meaning might not be precise information. Is it meant to be?
• Know the intended audience. What usages will they tolerate or not tolerate? Do they demand precise details?

Copyeditors have to think. We have to know when precise information is desired and when it’s not.

“It is the editor’s job to help the author understand what the implications are of the word choices made,” writes Adin, “and provide an opportunity for the author to make alternative choices that may better express the message that the author wants the reader to receive.”

Credits: Copyediting.com

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How to query the article author

One of the most important things copyeditors learn in the process of going through an author's work is to respect his/her writing. This means no matter how many "mistakes" or inconsistencies you find, you have to query in a professional manner. Otherwise, you run the risk of either being a "know-it-all" or just plain flippant.

At the end of the day, diplomacy wins the battle.

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Website copy not smelling too good?

Now, this is not a matter of editorial skills, but this online perfume store could use a proofreader.

I'm neither a big fan of justified text alignment. Note that this is not the only mistake I found in this website's copy. Attention webmaster!

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Non sequitur, anyone?

Throw out any sentence that does not flow logically from the previous one, lead logically to the next one, or sound right.
 
Here the skeptical reader might accuse me of trying to weasel out of my promise to stop at ten tips. This is not the case. I end with logic, because it is the key to good writing, and with the ear, because whatever logic misses the ear may catch. If one sentence does not lead logically to the next, no amount of "therefores" or "howevers" can patch them together. Perhaps the greatest single benefit of the word processor is that it makes it so easy for us to move words, sentences, or paragraphs, so that logic, the DNA of analysis, can unfold as effectively as possible. Sometimes I think that writing involves less creating than listening to what was just created, so that the finished product becomes merely the inevitable outcome of the first thought.

In this process, we need to listen for more than logic, because sometimes our minds fail to explain errors that our ears can detect. Or, to put it differently, it is less important to name the problem than to find a solution. Thus the final test belongs to the ear. If after all corrective surgery a sentence sounds bad when read out loud, get rid of it and write a new one.

Thanks to: Sharon Schuman

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Seriously, redundancy, and other serious matters that need serious attention

The holidays are almost here! But hey, I'm not taking a break being on the lookout for articles that make it on the Internet but desperately need some "juice" to make them sizzle. Truth is, there's no shortage of websites, news items, and written stuff that are passable but can be injected with creativity. Here's a good one meant for Black Friday student shoppers:

Editor's Critique:

As a proofreader, I'm not bothered by the college-style writing. As an editor, I find this article in utter need of creativity and depth. On a positive light, the writer seems to have put a good amount of effort in organizing a readable article meant for readers on the student level. Apart from the redundancy of the word “serious,” this text needed only moderate editing.

Source: 

http://suite101.com/article/black-friday-shopping-tips-for-college-students-a263037

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All clogged up! Using spaces between punctuations

Because we live in "rushing" society (quoted from wildlittlefan), most of us forget to add space in between our punctuation marks. Not acceptable. If you find it annoying, get a load of this article I edited from Yahoo Voices.

There are plenty of mistakes, but the outstanding one is definitely the lack of spacing between the sentences on the last part of the article.

Don't be stingy on the spaces. They actually add more readability to your work.

Source: http://voices.yahoo.com/4-reasons-benefit-online-shopping-6731756.html?cat=7

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Its versus It's and other sordid shenanigans

I took a quick catch-up on the aspect of keyword density again. One of the popular articles I read came from the authoritative site of SEOBook.com. Upon finishing the text, here are some glaring errors that were "spotted!" by me:

Early / primitive search technology was not very sophisticated due to hardward & software limitations. Those limitations forced early search engines like Infoseek to rely heavily on documents for relevancy scoring. Over the past 1.5 decades search engines have grown far more powerful due to Moore's law. That has allowed them to incorporate additional data into their relevancy scoring algorithms. Google's big advantage over earlier competitors was analyzing link data.

Dr. E. Garcia explained why keyword density was a bad measure of relevancy in The Keyword Density of Non Sense.

    Search engines may place significant weight on domain age, site authority, link anchor text and usage data.
    Each search engine has it's own weighting algorithms. These are different for every major search engine.
        Each search engine has it's own vocabulary system which helps them (it) understand related words.
        Some might place more weight on the above domain-wide & offsite factors, while others might put a bit more weight on on-page content.
        The page title is typically weighted more than most any other text on the page.
        The meta keywords tags, comments tags, and other somewhat hidden inputs may be given less weight than page copy. For instance, most large scale hypertext search engines put 0 (zero) weight on the meta keyword tag.
        Page copy which is bolded, linked, or in a heading tag is likely given greater weighting than normal text.
    Weights are relative.

 Source: http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/

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