Being a person who works with words every day whether copy writing, editing or proofreading, makes me a bit picky when it comes to common grammatical errors, but I think everyone must have seen examples of the so-called greengrocer’s apostrophe – you see a sign (usually handwritten on a piece of card) in a shop window giving prices for goods such as,  ”potatoe’s”, “tomatoe’s” or “apple’s”, where there is clearly an unnecessary possessive apostrophe.  These signs are more often seen in vegetable shops than anywhere else, hence the name.  One particularly interesting sign I saw recently was advertising “potatoe’s 5kg bag” – which effectively means that the item for sale is a bag, weighing 5kg (quite a heavy bag, must be made of  something other than hessian or plastic), belonging to the potatoes, not the potatoes themselves.

These errors, however, are not limited to greengrocers (or should that be greengrocer’s?)  I recently bought a box of treats for my dogs, and was amused the see printed on the top and sides of the box in large letters, “dog treat’s”.  This means that someone has ordered packaging for their product, and has either made the error themselves, or not noticed it.  The error has also been missed (or maybe it was created) by a few other people who were involved in the various processes of designing and manufactuuring the packaging.  The dog treat supplier is now stuck with a whole load of boxes with a glaring error emblazoned on all visible surfaces.  Maybe they are in blissful ignorance of the problem, but I got so annoyed with seeing it every time I went to get a treat for my dogs, that I ended up re-boxing them & sending the original box for recycling!

These kinds of errors are easily missed when proofreading, because as I have mentioned before, people often don’t check words in large letters.  Note to self – always check the headings!

When I am proofreading, I come across many typographical errors, some of which make me smile.  Typos have many causes, including hitting the wrong key when typing in a hurry, letting a spell checker have its head without checking that it really has picked the correct spelling for you (they can sometimes be too ‘helpful’ for their own good), or simply the wrong choice of word.  I recently proofread a website that mentioned self-cleaning glass, and how it worked.  I won’t go into technical details, but basically one of the properties of the glass is that it is ‘hydrophilic’, which makes the water droplets cling together to wash dirt off the glass, but the copy writer had somehow (possibly aided by an errant spell checker) substituted the word ‘hydrophobic’ which means a terror of water, and is one of the symptoms of rabies – not such a good choice of word.

Another type of error occurs when writers don’t check the spelling of headings or captions - if it’s in large text, it often goes unchecked.  A prime example of this happened in a company I used to work for, where each quarter they produced a magazine called ‘Quality Matters’.  A whole print run had to be recalled and pulped when someone noticed that the heading, which was in bold text and letters an inch high, actually said ‘Qulaity Matters’.  As the Italian Captain in ‘Allo ‘Allo might have said, ‘what a mistaka to maka’!

The English language is a living thing, it grows and changes all the time, & in my various roles as copy writer, editor or proofreader, I am constantly fascinated to come across new words, or even old words used in a new way. If it were possible to travel back in time 200 years, and talk to the people who lived then, the way we talk and our use of language would seem alien to them. We are much less formal in our speech these days, and there would be many unfamiliar words, or familiar words used in a different context. The same would presumably apply if we went forward 200 years (assuming the planet has not undergone a catastrophe, and that the human race still exists by then!) Language would have continued to develop, absorbing words and modes of speech from the many other cultures with whom we interact.

Here are some words that I find interesting:

‘Newbie’ – according to my dictionary, this is an informal term for ‘an inexperienced newcomer’. This is allied to ‘newie’ which is also informal and means ‘a new person or thing’. These are examples of verbal shorthand, conveying quite a bit of meaning in a single word. The fact that they are labelled ‘informal’ means that they began life as slang terms, but have gained enough credibility and usage to be included in the Oxford English Dictionary.

‘Singleton’ – originally meant something that was ‘one of a kind’, a single item, but has more recently been adapted to mean ‘a person who is not in a long term relationship’ or actually a ‘single’. How fascinating that in an age of ‘text-ese’ (a term that does not appear to have made it into the OED yet), where words are usually shortened, a longer word should replace a shorter one.

The evolution of language is one of the factors that makes my role as a copy editor or proofreader so challenging, but also keeps it fresh. I have to stop and think carefully if I come across a strange word or use of a word. I usually have to resort to my trusty OED or on-line resources such as dictionary.com or Wikipedia, to make sure I’m not challenging the use of a perfectly legitimate word or phrase. After all, the author has chosen to use it, and he (or she) is the boss!