Writing

When is Fussy Too Fussy?

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

I started a new job a few months ago and was put on a project to update all of the documents on our SharePoint site as they needed rebranding. Sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? Replace a few different old company words/acronyms with the new ones, replace the logo, update colors and voila, update done. Unfortunately for me, I’m also REALLY persnickety about formatting, spelling, and punctuation, so as I find documents that need fixing, I have to fix them.  It’s just not in my nature to ignore them. I’ve tried, and I absolutely, positively can’t do it.

Why is it that so many professionals in business don’t know how to create a clean, professional business document? I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen sentences without periods at the end, confusion around common and proper nouns, commas where they don’t belong, and other assorted issues. I know, I know, you’re all rolling your eyes at me, it’s ok! I know I’m strange about stuff like this, and I can live with it.

Years ago, I had a manager who was picker than me about making documents look good, and at the time she really got on me about mistakes. I remember being upset with her at the time, but honestly, she taught me so much. (I saw her several years ago and told her how grateful I was for what she taught me, and that turned out to be one of the most gratifying conversations I have ever had!) She made me a really good proofreader…for other people’s documents, that is. For my own, not so much. I don’t know why I can’t see my own mistakes, but it’s probably because I’m too close to them. The good news is that at least I know it and ask other people to proofread for me when it’s important or run everything through spell and grammar check. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do that. I just think it looks awful to have those kinds of mistakes in a document that is being shared outside of your team, and worse, with clients because you know that the client has someone just as odd as me, who will see those careless mistakes. (If you read a prior post from me about job hunting, you’ll remember I commented on my discovery that my spell and grammar check wasn’t working and how horrified I was about the cover letters I’d sent out.)

Another annoyance for me is not aligning numbers and bullets in a list. Use the functions built into the application to align things correctly for heaven’s sake! That’s what the indent is for, or the little tab markers in the ruler at the top of the page. I’ve seen indent used on one line, spaces on the next and nothing on a line following that, so nothing lined up correctly at all! All of this fussiness meant that my fairly simple little project grew exponentially because of my own pickiness. Yep, it’s my own fault, I know that. At least when I was done with them, they looked fantastic. Unfortunately, no one appointed me proofreading czar, so that means I’ll have to learn to bite my tongue going forward as those same people will continue to churn out documents with the same reckless abandon they always have. 

Maybe someday I’ll be in charge and can have that expectation on my team but in the meantime, I’ll have to learn to roll my eyes in silence, which is probably a good skill to have anyhow. To amuse myself in the interim I’ve been reading “Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” by Lynne Truss. It’s a humorous look at what a difference correct punctuation makes in writing. Just the title ought to be enough to demonstrate. If one were to add a comma, it becomes “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” meaning sometime came along, ate something then took a photograph (or perhaps shot a bow and arrow or fired a gun) then left. Without the comma it is “Eats Shoots and Leaves” meaning the diet of an herbivore. Punctuation matters!

So after all my ranting above, did you find any errors I missed? Let me know, please! Also, what pet peeves in your professional life you do you have?  Feel free to share. I know I’ll feel better not being the only fussy one out there. 

Death of the Editor-2025 Kickoff

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

I originally was going to title this “2024 Closeout”, but then realized I didn’t have enough content for a post at the end of the year. Instead, we’ll kick off 2025 in style with more things from the internet that make you tilt your head and say “huh?”

This story about an Indiana execution and an individual with schizophrenia who killed his brother and three other men is sad enough on its own. But as you read through it, the story feels strange. First it says he was executed, then a short time later it goes on to say he COULD be executed. The story is just oddly written and the order is all wrong.

From People.com on December 30. Katie Holds to Starbucks cups…what does she hold them to? From the photo I would venture a guess that she is holding “two Starbucks cups” but hey, I could be wrong.

While not strictly filled with errors, I had to chuckle at some of the entries noted in this article on “Celebrities Known for Their Generous Tipping Habits” (I know, brainless reading one morning!) There are several listed (Ethan Hawke and Keanu Reeves, among others) that tipped 20%. Last time I checked, that wasn’t generous, that is STANDARD. Don’t get me wrong, 20% of $10,000 would certainly be a generous tip, but on the other hand, if you’re wealthy enough to afford a 10K dinner, you can afford a 2K tip. With both of these actors, the actual amount of their bill was not known, so I don’t know if the tip they provided was $50, $500 or something else. But 20% isn’t generous. Donnie Wahlberg leaving a $2020 tip on a $35 bill during the 2020 tip challenge is, however. The other funny thing about that story is the number of times the writer said that a particular actor was a generous tipper, but then listed both the bill and the amount as unknown. Well, if both are unknown, how do you KNOW they are a generous tipper?

From NBCNews.com, a clickbait story (which I did not click on to read!) about placing a bottle on your tire when traveling. Maybe it’s legit, maybe not but the content of the story isn’t the issue with this one, it’s the photo. Now call me crazy, but when you have a title that says “Place a Bottle on Your Tire When Traveling”, shouldn’t the photo show bottles and not cans? Maybe it’s just me…

And then there was this headline on January 21 in People Magazine online

 So whose 95th birthday was it? I mean, I know it’s Tippi’s and not Melanie’s, but it does read as if Melanie was 95 and her mother was something more than that.

And finally, from The Guardian on 2/6/2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/05/cuny-pregnant-student-protections

 When abbreviating the name of something, shouldn’t it be CUNY and not Cuny, as if Cuny was a word? It’s an ACRONYM. Sheesh.

What editorial oopsies are you spotting?

The Write Stuff

/ Beth Younker / Leave a comment

When I graduated from college, the gift my father gave me was a Mont Blanc pen, which was really special to me. A few years before that, he’d given his brother one and I remember my uncle got very emotional about it. I asked my mom why it was such a big deal, and she said that giving someone a Mont Blanc as a gift was a sign that “you’d arrived”. Somewhere I still have a photo of me opening the box and seeing it for the first time, then hugging him.

While I love the pen and love writing with it, the refill rollerball cartridges aren’t cheap. A while back I found a YouTube video explaining how to refill them, and while it does work, eventually the rollerballs wear out and you have to buy new cartridges again (at least, that’s what I think is happening, or maybe I’m not using the right kind of ink, who knows).

When doing a search for ink, I found the Goulet Pen Company and a few weeks ago I decided to give writing with fountain pens a try for a couple of reasons, one of which is that the informational videos from the Goulet Pen Company are really funny and engaging. So, I bought my first fountain pen, and wow, what a difference.

I’m not going to go into detail about how they work and why they write so nicely as Brian Goulet does a fantastic job of that in his video blog in Fountain Pens 101. But I’m having so much fun with it that I’ve ordered a couple more pens (each has a specific purpose) and I am having a blast playing with them. Writing has become a lot more fun again, which has led me to restart my journaling. I have two that I’m working on right now. One is just some general thoughts on day-to-day things and I don’t know that I’ll ever plan to share that as it’s really more like a diary but the other is kind of a ‘memory book’ where I’m trying to record as much information as I can about my childhood, recollections that I have or stories I was told. An early post that I wrote titled “Fancy Pillows” has some of those memories and stories about my grandparents and events around them. So many of these tidbits just get lost to time, and if they aren’t written down someplace then they’re gone. I’m finding myself really searching my brain to find things to write down since it’s so fun to use the pen. My hope is that someday my niece and nephew will read the book and find out some interesting things about their great- and great-great-grandparents that they didn’t know.

Goulet also sells a TON of different kinds of ink, and I think nearly every color and type comes in a sample size vial that’s 2 ml, so you can try out many different ones until you find something you like. There are “wet” inks and “dry inks”, which sounds odd because aren’t all inks wet? And yes, they are, but what that means is that some bleed through paper more, feather on the edges more, and that kind of thing. If you’re using a fountain pen as a daily writer like I am now, that’s important if you are like me, taking notes on plain old loose-leaf paper. Wet ink bleeding through means I can only write on one side of the paper, so I prefer drier inks.

One of the pens I ordered is called a “dip pen” and as you might guess, it is a pen that you dip into the ink. This one is from a company called Jacques Herbin, and the pen is all glass, each one individually crafted. IMG_7759.jpegIt has ridges on the clear glass end and as the ink flows down the ridges and is used up, you just redip it again. If you decide you don’t like the color just wipe off with a damp paper towel. No need to refill a whole pen which makes it a great choice for playing around with all the ink samples I’ve gotten so far (too many, really!) Another pen I ordered is one that has a flex nib which allows you to write with both thick and thin lines as well. It writes a little like calligraphy with the variable line width, or you can just keep it as a fine point writer.  I also ordered a book on cursive writing, because apparently this is a lost art. I grew up taking penmanship and writing cursive and was quite surprised to learn that is stopped being required in schools around 2010 (Wikipedia has good info on this) but is now starting to be required again.  One thing that has become very clear to me with all of this, is that writing slowly is key to writing fancier. Here’s a sample of what writing with a flex nib looks like.  I’m using practice calligraphy paper, and if you look closely, you’ll see some bleeding (around the x and the n) due to the paper being cheaper quality and using a wet ink. IMG_7858

There are so many different pens at all different price points, which I think has my husband slightly concerned. He commented the other day “you’re really getting into this fountain pen thing, aren’t you?” and all I could do was smile and nod my head. Just doing a quick check of their site, the prices start at $3.95 and go all the way up to $16,000! When you purchase one of those, you’re actually getting a one-of-a-kind pen with a barrel crafted by an artisan. I can’t imagine spending that on a pen, but I’m sure someone must or they wouldn’t have them. For now, I’m happy sticking with my entry level starter pens that work really well and learning how to write fancier.