My editing pet peeve - what's yours?

I thought then and than was your big pet peeve.

And to answer your question: Towards. Over vs. more than also grinds my gears. As does said before source. I guess I have a lot of editing pet peeves.

 

I reworked this entire story. We've got no "local horse in the race" so I wanted this to be our lead story in tomorrow's paper. I used a picture from it, too.

But, like I said, I really worked over this story.

 

Backward.

 

I was going towards Indiana, but than their basketball team was moving backwards irregardless.

 

Writers who don't have even the most basic grasp of AP style. Misspellings. Commas before and. Two spaces after a period. Basic grammatical errors.

 

We have one beat guy who CONSTANTLY puts in two spaces after a period. Thankfully, our system fixes that automatically.

 

SURPRISE, Ariz. (AP) — Johnny Smith homered, but it wasn;t enough as the Big Market Bumblefucks lost 17-1 to the Kansas City Royals at Surprise Stadium Thursday.

First, there are papers in the central states that care, assholes. You don't write just for the big markets.

Second, NEVER, and I mean FUCKING NEVER put two proper nouns side by side!!!!

If you can't rewrite the sentence, use the word "on". It's a simple little word, for Chrissakes.

The guy's name isn't Joe Smith Tuesday. It's Joe Smith and whatever he did, he did it on Tuesday. Is that such a fucking difficult concept to understand!?

/end rant

 

My latest among many is a poor photo caption.

There is a photo of a basketball player going up for a layup. No one else is in the frame.

"Susie Sportschick (23) of the SportsJournalists.com Tigers drives for a layup against the Rams."

Really? No shit. Anyone can see that.

Put some effort into it. Tell a reader how many points she scored in the game. Tell a reader how she broke her ankle after landing awkwardly on that layup.

Another is using "right" or "left" to indicate the only man or woman in a photo.

"Coach Johnny Nads, right, starts his 19th season with senior Susie Sportschick returning at point guard."

For crying out loud, he's the only guy in the photo. It's unnecessary unless he looks like "Pat" from Saturday Night Live.
Don't put the obvious because you're too damn lazy to do something other than to use the bad caption provided by the AP or your photographer.


Not using "ly" is annoying, too.

"Johnny got there quick."

No, he got there quickly.

 

I've come to the realization that most AP photogs have, at best, a passing familiarity with their own organization's style. It makes you appreciate all the more photogs who can write a decent cutline.