Le Mot Juste Web Edit

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GrammarWeb 6:  Find the Errors

Given the popularity of Grammar Web 3, I have decided to write another piece that will challenge your editing skills.  As in #3, there will be 10 errors of all kinds — do your best to find them all and propose the corrections.  Here we go!

“November 11 is celebrated as Rememberance Day in Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Belgium. IN the United States, it is called Veteran’s Day. On the eleventh hour of the elevnth day of the eleventh month, too minutes of silence are observed by veterans, family members who have lost loved ones in war; and by government represenatives of all these countries.

“Ceremonial wreaths are placed at cenotaphs in large cities and small towns all across Canada. Old soldiers from all the armed services stand or sit wearning their medals proudly, their berets or caps sporting a jaunty red poppy. Many more young soldiers are present at these services to, in there camouflage uniforms, accepting the flame of remembrance from soldiers who fought in wars before they — or even their parents — were borne.”

Okay — got ‘em all yet?

Here are the answers:

1. Spelling: “Rememberance” Day:  is really spelled “Remembrance”.

2. Incorrect capitalizing:   ”IN” should be “In”.

3. Incorrect apostrophe: “Veteran’s” should be “Veterans” as more than one veteran celebrates it.

4. Spelling:  second time I wrote “elevnth”, should be “eleventh”.

5. Incorrect homophone: “too” should be the number “two”.

6. Punctuation: the semicolon (;) after “war” should be a comma (,).

7. Spelling based on pronunciation: “represenatives” should be “representatives”. Few people say that first “t” clearly enough these days.

8. Spelling / typo: ”wearning” should be “wearing”. Many people make this error when typing the “ing” ending of commonly used words.

9. Incorrect homophone:  “there” should be the possessive adjective “their”.

10. Incorrect homophone:  “borne” (meaning “carried” or “endured”) should be “born”.

If your score was:

10 out of 10:  You escaped the Grammar Web! You should consider work as an editor.
8-9:  Very good, just get a little bit more focused on the meaning and what is really written, don’t assume it’s right — look closer.
6-7: Not bad. Keep practising and improving your attention to the details.
5 or fewer:  Uh-oh, you got stuck in the Grammar Web!

I can recommend a book called “Difficult Words in English” to help you overcome the problems with homophones and other words and phrases that get confused with each other. It’s by _________________________________ and was published in _______.

WELCOME to Le Mot Juste Web Edit Services
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Le Mot Juste News returns!  Many exciting events have already taken place in November, particularly:

       Durham Home and Small Business Association “Buzz on Business” Trade Show, Wednesday, November 5.  Le Mot Juste Web Edit met at least five prospective new clients, all in Durham Region, including several website developers.  Carol Shetler, Owner and Chief Editor, has followed up to request meetings to discuss prospects for new business with these companies.

       A potential client has turned up at Althea Productions’ presentation of “The Odd Couple”, at the Leigha Lee Browne Theatre, University of Toronto at Scarborough. One of the performers has approached Le Mot Juste Web Edit about helping create a website to showcase this individual’s talents.

     Newsletters from CareerJoy, a career consulting firm, are presenting Le Mot Juste Web Edit with yet another opportunity to help polish a potential client’s message. The changes Carol proposed to the newsletter editor have been approved.

Updates —  November 20, 2008

     Canadian International Council has now become an official client of Le Mot Juste Web Edit upon approval of the changes submitted to their site in September 2008.  Le Mot Juste will assist in content review of their site as needed. 

     Carol has applied to A Web That Works to be a content review editor as a contract partner with the website production team, headed by Ms. Sue Sutcliffe.

       Outside the office, Carol Shetler, Owner and Chief Editor has been busy:

       She is acting as the Props and Costumes Manager for the Althea Productions presentation of “The Odd Couple”.  The production wrapped up a successful six-performance run at UofT Scarborough’s Leigha Lee Browne Theatre on Saturday, November 15.

       Carol is now tutoring two adult students in English Conversation, working with them to improve their speaking, listening, verbal and written comprehension skills in English.  One of her students has succeeded in gaining a new position with a company in Mississauga. He credits the conversation coaching he participated in with Carol for helping him in the second interview and landing him the job.  Look for her ad on www.kijiji.com, Oshawa, “ESL Conversation Coach”.

WELCOME to Le Mot Juste Web Edit Services
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Visit our Home Page for more information about Le Mot Juste Web Edit. Click on the Pages button at right for the site menu.

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Grammar Web 5                   November 3, 2008

Vocabulary Victims - Can this sentence be saved?

I’ve been stunned, appalled and rendered incoherent with laughter (!) over some of the vocabulary choices I’ve seen in Internet articles lately.

My personal favourite of the past 2 weeks is a typo that turned into a very apt word choice: 
An entertainment writer, when writing about the quarrels of a showbiz husband and wife, instead of saying they were no longer having “marital” troubles, he wrote “martial”, an adjective meaning ”like warfare”.  I was thrilled to learn the couple was no longer at war with each other!

Others, including many writing for respected business publications, who don’t want to bother checking their dictionaries for the correct word, have tried to substitute “illusive” and “allusive” for “elusive”, the last one meaning, “tending to slip away or escape”.  If the writer meant “illusory” meaning, like a illusion or fantasy, that is the word he or she should have used.  While the word “allusive” does exist - it means, “containing or tending toward an allusion or suggestion” (my wonderful Concise Oxford Dictionary just confirmed this for me), the author was using it as an unverified substitute for “elusive” in the article.

Please, writers, if you are not 100% sure of the word you are using, respect your readers and go to the dictionary to check it out. I just did!

Time for our quiz:  Vocabulary - Veteran or Victim?

Choose the correct word to complete the sentence.

1. Mr. Jones’ great-grandmother exercised her _______________ privileges over her large family when she called them together for a meeting about her new will.

a.  marital      b. matriarchal       c.  martial       d. matutinal

2.  The _____________ comments made in the story gave readers the idea that the man charged in the slaughter of three dogs in his neighbourhood was a sadist.

a.  elusive       b. illusory        c. allusive       d. allegorical

3.  It is hard for celebrities sometimes to ___________  the way journalists and paparazzi publish photos and articles about them.

a. bear         b. bury         c. bare      d. bier     

4.  The walrus can __________ up to a ton.

a.  wear       b. weight           c.  weigh           d. wide

5. Please give me some _______________ about how I should invest my money in this time of economic uncertainty.

a. advices     b. advise      c. advisory     d. advice

Here are the answers:  1.  b;   2.  c;   3. a;   4.  c;  5.  d.

If your score was:     5  - Great - you escaped the GrammarWeb!
                              3-4  A very good effort - these are challenging words.
                              1-2  Oops - You got trapped in the GrammarWeb.
                                     Get to know and use your dictionary regularly.

Check out words you read in any media if you aren’t sure they were used correctly.  If you find the writer has made an error, let him or her know, and give them the correction. A good writer will reply with a thank-you e-mail.  I just got one of those yesterday!

Now for why these answers are right:

1. matriarchal - means “ruled by mother” - this woman’s family respects her enough to let her tell them what to do in important situations. Marital describes marriage, martial relates to warfare, and matutinal relates to morning.

2. allusive - the story contained comments or suggestions about the man charged with killing the dogs.  Illusory means imaginative or based on illusion; elusive means tending to escape or be hard to pin down; and allegorical refers to a fictional story written to draw comparison with an actual event.

3. bear (verb) -  to tolerate or endure. Bury means to put into the ground and cover up; bare is the adjective meaning naked or unconcealed; and bier is a very old word meaning a kind of platform where a body is laid out before a funeral.

4. weigh - is the verb needed here.   Wear is also a verb, but it means to have a garment on one’s body; weight is the noun from weigh;  wide measures a dimension of size, not mass.  I actually saw this error (wear instead of weigh) in a major newspaper on November 1.

5.  advice - means a helpful suggestion or idea. It is an “uncountable noun”, like homework or laundry. Advices - not correct to use a plural ending for an uncountable noun; advise is the verb to suggest or give helpful ideas; advisory is the adjective describing a group that is helpful e.g., advisory committee, advisory council.

Remember to respect your reader with your writing, no matter where you write!

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GrammarWeb 4                          September 22, 2008

NOTE:  Just a comment, no quiz this time!

Connotations:  “North” and “South”

North American and European economists some time ago adopted what I consider a very negative adjective usage involving these two words.  When an economy or business is going “north” it is improving; but when it is going “south”, it has problems or has completely failed. 

In my view, this is “geographism”:  it conveys to a great many people and countries of the planet (those “south” of the writer’s specific location) that they are less valuable and successful than others. Try telling that to Brazil and India, two countries that are definitely “south” of North America and Europe, and yet have two of the most successful and sustainable-growth economies on the planet right now…

Consider this my petition to stop the use of these two adjectives in economic and business reporting.

Carol Shetler
Owner and Chief Editor
Le Mot Juste Web Edit

WELCOME to Le Mot Juste Web Edit Services
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Visit our Home Page for more information about Le Mot Juste Web Edit. Click on the Pages button at right for the site menu.

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GrammarWeb Quiz 3                                                         5 September 2008

“Why Your Website Needs An Editor”

There are 10 errors in the following passage:  grammar, spelling, word order, text style, spacing or any of several others. If you don’t find all ten, your website needs an editor.

When your surfing the web, you probablyvisit more than 10 sites in a day . How many times did you find errors on those sites? Isnt it frustrating?(I certainly think so.)So, I’ve decided to make a note of the most common errors on websites today. (You should have found six errors already, by the way.)

To continue, the errors I find most often are misuse of homophones (see GrammarWeb 1), and inaccurate word order, which causes misunderstandings that can be unintentionally humourous. Example:  “Our restaurant features two private dining rooms, live music, valet parking, theme nights, an award-winning menu and reknowned wine list with a view of the city centre.”

Did you find all ten errors?   Here they are:

1. 1st sentence:  your should be “you’re”   

2. and 3. 1st sentence: both spacing errors. Add one space after “probably”; take out the space before the period at the end of the sentence.

4. 2nd sentence:  did you find should be “do you find”. The rest of the paragraph so far is in the present tense. Tense consistency is a key to understanding the meaning of paragraphs.

5.  3rd sentence:  Isnt should be “Isn’t”. Accuracy and clarity are suffering due to the inability of web software to allow the use of many punctuation marks such as apostrophes and verb accents in text.

6.  4th sentence, enclosed in parentheses:  spacing before and after parentheses.  Brackets { } , braces [  ] and parentheses ( ) must have a space both before the opening mark and after the closing mark to set off the inside phrase or sentence from the rest of the paragraph. A particular business magazine website, which I visit often, made this error in six out of ten subsections in an article about investing.

7. Second paragraph, 1st sentence:  continue should be in plain type, not italics. Make sure you have a good keyboardist for your site who can switch quickly and accurately between plain type, bold and italics. Use both of the latter sparingly. They are meant to emphasize, not overwhelm the message.

8. and 9. “Example” sentence: both spelling errors - humourous should be “humorous”, whether you are writing for Canadian or American readers, and reknowned should be “renowned”. I have seen both of these in many recent print and online publications.

10.: “Example” sentence:  word order. The sentence as written tells us that it is the wine list, not the restaurant, that has a view of the city centre. I’d be interested to know how they do this! The phrase “with a view of the city centre” should immediately follow the words “private dining rooms”.

What was your score on GrammarWeb 3?
10 - You escaped the GrammarWeb! You should consider becoming an editor.
7-9 - Good effort. Note which errors you didn’t find. Are they all the same type, or was each different?
4-6 - Fair effort. A little more attention to detail will make your site’s content sizzle.
1-3 - Oops! You got seriously stuck in the GrammarWeb!  Ask me to proofread your website text today.

These problems can happen on any website, especially if the person who keys the text into the site pages is not the one who originally wrote it. Choose your web production personnel as carefully as you choose your writers and content.  And if you do it all yourself, get another person who has never seen the text or layout to proofread it before each new post. He or she will invariably spot errors you didn’t catch.

Please comment:  Did you find this information helpful?

Thanks to everyone who has sent comments.

Please note:  If your comment hasn’t been posted, it may be because you didn’t change your keyboard over to Roman alphabet prior to posting a comment. My computer alas, changes Cyrillic text into complete gobbledygook in Roman characters, and I have removed those posts to save embarrassment for the commenters. 

I really do enjoy reading your comments. Take time to visit the rest of the site while you are on this page.  More comments on the other pages and posts would be helpful — and fun, too.

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Let me add a thank-you note to the first three people to comment on this page:  WilliamSpy, Halloween, and Senaysen. Due to a technical glitch (made even worse by my human error!) their comments were unintentionally deleted.  Here below is the text of their comments, which I had the presence of mind to write down before I did the moderation process:

WilliamSpy said, “Thanks for this - good idea!”

Halloween said: “Hmmm, I am tempted to try this.” 

>> Dear Halloween:  Be sure your skills in English or your own language, if not English, are up to the challenge.  Read every kind of written work you can find, and spot the differences. Tutor someone who is learning your language:  they not only need to know what their mistakes are but why they make them, and you need to be able to answer those questions fully. Being an ESL tutor and teacher for several years has done wonders for my editorial skills!

Senaysen said: “I came across. Thank you.”

I thank all of you for your comments and will do much better in future at moderating your comments - faster too.

WELCOME to Le Mot Juste Web Edit Services
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BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN!!   September 17, 2008

Le Mot Juste Web Edit has gained its first two clients. 

First is Canadian International Council, a forum for international relations based in Toronto with member sites across Canada. Le Mot Juste Web Edit has proofread and copyedited several pages of the CIC website to date, and work is ongoing.  Thank you to Jordan Dupuis of the CIC for the contact.

Second is The Carlton Club, in the Ritz-Carlton Chicago.  Text and format changes to the Carlton Club website were submitted on September 17, and are awaiting approval from the PR department of the hotel.  Thank you to Paul Chato of Your Web Department for the initial contact with the Carlton Club, and to Pedro Dos Santos, Managing Director of The Carlton Club for forwarding the proposed changes on behalf of Le Mot Juste Web Edit.

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September is here, with cooler days and nights, and a quicker pace to most people’s daily lives. Just remember, summer is NOT over yet. The Autumnal Equinox, the last official day of summer, is September 22, so there are still over two weeks of real summer remaining. Enjoy!

Le Mot Juste Web Edit has been busy all summer, lining up potential new customers, including:

The Carlton Club in the Ritz-Carlton Chicago

Canadian International Council (site under construction)

Our Chief Editor, Carol Shetler, hopes to hear soon about becoming an editor for these websites. 

She is also going to continue individual tutoring in English as a Second Language (ESL), and is seeking more students for this fall.

Outside the office, Carol just attended the 7th Annual Ribfest at Lakeview Park, Oshawa, on the September 6-7 weekend. She cast her vote for Turtle Jack’s Muskoka Grill for both categories:  Best Ribs and Best Sauce. 

If your town hosts a Ribfest, don’t miss it!  Most locations offer both pork and beef side ribs, BBQ chicken and pulled pork sandwiches.  Many also have baked beans and coleslaw as side dishes to accompany your BBQ ribs and chicken.

Eleven champion barbecue grillers competed at Oshawa’s Ribfest this year, the largest group ever.  Judging by the lineups Saturday night, they all went away happy — and no one went away hungry!

Thanks for visiting Le Mot Juste Web Edit.  Be sure to try GrammarWeb 3, and have a look at the earlier ones, if this is your first visit to the website.

Have a fine September! 

Carol Shetler
Owner and Chief Editor

WELCOME to Le Mot Juste Web Edit Services
Let us help you put just the right words on your site.

Visit our Home Page for more information about Le Mot Juste Web Edit. Click on the Pages button at right for the site menu.

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GrammarWeb Quiz 2                                                      20 August 2008

Verbiage:   The verb “GET”

English is hard to learn for many people as a second or other language because of verbs like “get”. Today’s GrammarWeb will ask if you know what the verb “get” actually means in each sentence.  Choose the best answer for each.

1. Can you get to Toronto from Ottawa in less than 3 hours?

a. find       b. travel       c. visit

2. Did you get a good grade on that test?

a. find          b. understand    c. earn

3.  I don’t get what this chemistry question means.

a. understand    b.  find    c.  believe

4.  I got a really cool iPod Nano for my birthday.

a.  let go of    b.  earn    c.  receive

5.  Get over her, she’s not worth the pain you are feeling.  (expression “get over”)

a.  climb past     b. let go of feelings about   c.  earn a higher score

Here are the answers:        1. b.   2. c   3. a    4. c.  5. b.

How many did you get right? 
 5 -    A perfect escape from the GrammarWeb!
 3-4 - You got caught by a couple of sticky strands of the GrammarWeb — good effort!
 0-2 - Oops, you got stuck in the GrammarWeb!

Why does English use the verb ”get” this way?  English can be very contradictory  — all sorts of wonderful adjectives and verbs exist in English, but in conversation we tend to want to say things as quickly as possible, thus we have super-multipurpose verbs like “get”.

The phrase “get over” is called an “idiom” in English grammar:  the two words combined have a very different meaning than the words separately.

Many idioms are actually metaphors:  one can visualize “climbing over” the obstacle to happiness that the old idea creates, than one can leave it behind and get on with life.

WELCOME to Le Mot Juste Web Edit Services
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Visit our Home Page for more information about Le Mot Juste Web Edit. Click on the Pages button at right for the site menu.

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GrammarWeb Quiz 1                                                         5 August 2008

Vocabulary:  HOMOPHONES

What are homophones?  
Words that sound alike (from Greek, homo, same and phone, sound) but are spelled differently and have different meanings.

Here are two examples I have found often in home decor magazines and articles:

Group 1.   a. pallet        b. palette   c.  palate (all pronounced pal-et)

Group 2.   a. mantel      b. mantle (pronounced man-tul)

Put the correct word in each sentence. Let’s see how many you get right!

Group 1: a. pallet        b. palette    c.  palate

1. The driver used the forklift truck to lift the __________ of metal parts.

2. That dinner was a treat for my ___________.

3. The painter dipped the brush in the colours on her ________________.

Group 2:  a. mantel      b. mantle

1. In fairy tales, we often read that a person put on a heavy ____________ before
going out into cold weather.

2. The fireplace _______________ is often used to hold photos and flower vases.

Okay, here are the answers:

Group 1:  1 - a,  2 - c, 3 - b         Group 2:  1 - b, 2 - a

How many did you get right? 

 5 -    A perfect escape from the GrammarWeb!
 3-4 - You got caught by a couple of sticky strands of the GrammarWeb — good effort!
 0-2 - Oops, you got stuck in the GrammarWeb!

Now what do all these words actually mean?

Pallet:  a sturdy wooden platform with slots in the bottom for the forks of a forklift truck. Used to hold and help lift very heavy objects.

Palette:  a flat tray held by a painter with paint colour mixes on it

Palate:  the upper part of the inside of the mouth. The mouth has both a soft palate and a hard palate. The adjective “palatable” used to refer to just the texture of food: could a person actually swallow it by pressing the tongue up against the hard palate, but now it has become somewhat of a synonym for “reasonably tasty”.

Mantel:  a fireproof shelf built above a fireplace. In the distant past it held useful things for starting the fire, like flint and matches, but now it can hold any sort of decorative items, including photos.

Mantle:  a heavy cloak. Some poetry and literature refers to “snow mantling the ground,” for example.

So please be aware, just because these words sound the same, they don’t mean the same. Please use your dictionary to choose the correct homophone for the sentence.

I’d really enjoy your comments on the GrammarWeb series. Please send in any other homophones which you might find:  often they are unintentionally amusing. Most puns, in fact, are based on homophones. Jay Leno’s “Headlines” on the Tonight Show Monday nights often feature homophone errors.

WELCOME to Le Mot Juste Web Edit Services
Let us help you put just the right words on your site.

Visit our Home Page for more information about Le Mot Juste Web Edit. Click on the Pages button at right for the site menu.

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Welcome to the first edition of Le Mot Juste News!

Ms. Carol Shetler, the Chief Editor, has been busy recently getting her name and business out on the Internet by doing some volunteer work:

• Submitting copy editing changes to the CP24 News Ticker for typos when they are spotted
• Sending copy and layout changes to Canadian Business for an article in their online magazine: “10 Steps to Wealth Creation”
• Doing a fact-check for a travel article about Quebec City for Offbeat Travel.com

Ms. Shetler applied today to join the Community Editorial Board of the Toronto Star, one of Canada’s largest newspapers.

Please watch here for Le Mot Juste Web Edit news updates as they happen.

Please visit our Home Page, About Us and Services pages to learn more about Le Mot Juste Web Edit.