Editing Pet Peeves
In my work, I get to edit a lot of stuff. I’m also blessed to have a great editor who edits my own work, since we are often blind to our own mistakes. I’m no master of the English language. My grandmother was the family English grammarian! But I do have two pet peeves that drive me nuts, and if you write for me (you know who you are) I’ve probably nagged you about these two. Double spaces after punctuation. Punctuation after quotation marks. The first is a left-over from type writers which I think have been gone for quite awhile. Type writers had small spaces and folks back then needed to hit the space bar twice to make a single space that looked the same width as the characters. You can read all about the history here if you like: Space Invaders. The second is simply good grammar. It was taught in grade school. Learn it. Why am I bringing this up now? As I was driving across this Great Land of America I stopped at a rest area and was surprised to see that a government sponsored ‘monument’ broke both my pet peeves. I wondered what processes were…
