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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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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Anchor links matter

One of the biggest aspects that impact the search engine rankings is the "value" of anchor links and how pertinent they are to user search. The following is an edited version of Northport Boarding Kennels website:

Our mission is to provide a clean, friendly atmosphere for your pet. At Northport Boarding Kennels, we treat our guests with professional care, knowledge and compassion.

We have found it crucial that pets in our care receive individual attention. Playtime is given the highest priority. A happy dog is much easier to care for!

Whether the stay is for one day, one week, or longer... you can rest assured that your pet will receive the best of care at Northport Boarding Kennels.

Conveniently located just east of the airport, we are open 7 days a week. Northport Boarding Kennels can provide you and your loved pet with affordable professional boarding and grooming services.

Thank you for visiting us online.

When the need arises, be sure to contact us for all your boarding and grooming needs.

---EDITOR'S CRITIQUE---

Missing anchor links

If not mainly for a few punctuation and spelling errors, I find that the web copy for Northport Boarding Kennels is not a heavy editing task. However, I recommend that because readers scroll through the page, they should include bold text and anchored links such as in this last sentence:

When the need arises, be sure to contact us for all your boarding and grooming needs.

When online text has plenty of anchor links throughout, readers will find it easy to click on any part of the website and enroll in their service without having to finish reading the entire homepage.

AP Style versus Chicago

Instead of changing "open 7 days a week" to the more standard "seven days a week," I let go of this since I believe AP style is more agreeable to web writing than Chicago.

Active versus Passive

The universal rule in effective writing is to always use the active tense instead of the passive because it goads action and is more lively. Therefore:

We have found it crucial that pets in our care receive individual attention.

must be changed to:

We find it crucial that pets in our care receive individual attention.

This rule should apply to the rest of the text in this website.

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