JournaliseThis.com

An editor is essential if you want to write authoritative posts on your blog. If possible, have someone else read a post before you publish to at least look for obvious spelling errors, clunky sentence structure or misused words.

A poorly written post with grammatical and spelling errors will turn off many readers, or as the newspaper maxim goes: “If we can’t get the little things right, how can we be trusted to get the big things right?”

However, blogging is often a real-time endeavor, and your editor might not be around when you need to get a post up quickly.

I learned a little trick from the stylebook of a magazine publishing company where I worked as a freelance proofreader: Read it backwards.

Start at the bottom and work your way to the top. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll catch. Granted, this would not be a valid strategy for a 2,000-page novel, but most blog posts are relatively short.

This extra step should only take a couple of minutes.

Photo by Ethan Bloch

It is said the best editors are those with dirty minds.

Thanks to Jay Leno’s “Headlines” segments and Web sites such as probablybadnews.com, most of us are aware of the comedic value of unintentional innuendo.

“Yank’s Wang expected
to be out until September”

“Lakers beat off
slumping Celtics”

Real headlines and really funny, right?

Not if you didn’t intend for them to be funny.

Think with a dirty mind. Watch out for words and phrases such as “probe,” “stiff,” “beat off,” “laid” or “erect.” All are perfectly fine if used properly, but the words around them can certainly turn them into fodder for middle-school titters. (Also, watch out for “titters”).

Your best bet is to use other words that mean the same thing (”investigate,” “rigid,” “fight off,” “placed” or “build”).

While I’m on the subject, there a couple of words that a slip of the typing fingers can turn into inadvertent typoscenities (OK, I invented that word).

Accidentally leave out the “o” in “count” or the “l” in “public” and you’ll know what I mean. The latter error is so common that it’s usually mentioned in more than a few classes in college journalism schools. And spell check will not catch it.

Also, improper capitalization can turn “I want to help my Uncle Jack off the horse” into “I want to help my uncle jack off the horse.”

Of course, there most likely are owners of several Web sites out there that would find the second sentence most appropriate for their content.

But I’m sure they quit reading a long time ago.

A recurring feature that highlights words commonly misused or mistaken for each other.

Gantlet v. Gauntlet

A gantlet is a flogging ordeal, literally or figuratively. (Run the gantlet)

A gauntlet is a glove. To throw down the gauntlet means to issue a challenge. To take up the gauntlet means to accept a challenge.

Source: Associated Press Stylebook (2006).

Overheard in the Newsroom #1498 Old editor to old columnist: “We invented Twitter years ago! They’re called headlines.”

That’s from the Facebook page of www.overheardinthenewsroom.com, a pretty funny site, at least for those of us in the news biz.

But this anonymous old editor has a point.  Headlines and tweets have much in common:

• They must fit in a limited space.
• They need to make a point as quickly as possible.
• They need to entice readers to read more (if you’re tweeting a link to a post or a news story).
• Making them fit can be frustrating as hell.

I plan on posting more about the subtleties of headlines, but this post will concentrate on the mechanics.

So, let’s apply some old headline-writing tricks to tweets.

For our purposes, we’ll assume you’re tweeting a link to a Web post and  using a URL shortener that condenses your link to 20 characters (that seems close to the average).

Within Twitter’s parameters, that leaves you 120 characters to work with.

Step one

Write out what you want the tweet to say in one or two sentences. (Don’t worry too much about the length at this point).

Here is the tweet (for this sample, I copied the first sentence of a random Associated Press story)

The California Supreme Court wants a trial court to come back to a long-running dispute over the use of a former model’s image on Taster’s Choice coffee labels.

160 characters. We need to lose 40.

Step two

Starting at the end of the post and working toward the beginning,  eliminate the articles (a, an, the, etc.) and the period at the end

The California Supreme Court wants a trial court to come back to a long-running dispute over the use of a former model’s image on Taster’s Choice coffee labels

That leaves us with:

California Supreme Court wants trial court to come back to long-running dispute over use of former model’s image on Taster’s Choice coffee labels

Still makes sense, and gets us down to 145 characters. Not enough.

Step Three

Cut adjectives and adverbs.

California Supreme Court wants trial court to come back to long-running dispute over use of former model’s image on Taster’s Choice coffee labels

That leaves:

California Supreme Court wants court to come back to dispute over use of model’s image on Taster’s Choice coffee labels

That leaves us at 121 characters, just short of our goal, so I’ll now look for any words that can be eliminated without radically changing its meaning.  I vote for “use of”.

California Supreme Court wants court to come back to dispute over use of model’s image on Taster’s Choice coffee labels

Yay! That leaves us 28 characters to spare, plenty according to the rules of our game. In fact, I’m returning “trial” to the post because I considered that the unkindest cut.

So …

California Supreme Court wants trial court to come back to dispute over model’s image on Taster’s Choice coffee labels

Still 22 characters to spare; enough for our 20-character URL and maybe a # or two. It makes sense, doesn’t have any clunky abbreviations and will perhaps pique the interest of your followers so they will click on the link.

By the way, or BTW, you can follow this blog on Twitter at www.twitter.com/JournaliseThis.

Maybe she heard there’s a bathroom on the right.

Face it, we’ve all suffered from “lyricosis,” when we finally realize that we’ve misheard a song lyric all our life.

It’s funny when you’re singing it in the shower, and there are several Web sites and books that collect the mental typos, a.k.a. “mondegreens,” for our amusement.

But when you write down a misheard lyric for the world to read, well, there are plenty of folks out there who know the right lyric and they will let you know it.  You’ll open yourself to ridicule, and it will be harder for people to take you seriously.

If you really want to use a song lyric to illustrate or expand on a point, there are a few steps you can take to avoid relying on your perhaps faulty memory:

• Google or Bing “(song name) lyrics”. There are plenty of sites out there to help — but how do you know if the lyrics there are not themselves wrong? Try to find official band sites or serious fan sites; you’ll have a better chance of finding the correct lyrics.
• If you have it, check out the CD or album cover to see if the lyrics are there.
• If you’re still not sure, just don’t use it. It’s someone else’s words anyway. Find another way to make your point.

By the way, The Beatles actually sang, “A girl with kaleidoscope eyes” in “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” and Credence Clearwater Revival warned that “There’s a bad moon on the rise” in their song “Bad Moon Rising.”

Now, to misquote Jimi Hendrix, “Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”

Welcome to the blog.

It’s not a tech-heavy place. Though I expect that as I learn more, I’ll feel more comfortable throwing around phrases like “HTML” and “byte,” this is more about how to string together words better, not bits of electronic data.

It’s not your nit-picking high-school English teacher’s blog. I’ll offer some tips on grammar and sentence structure – trust me, it’s important – but I couldn’t care less if you mix up who and whom, or lie and lay. If you want to learn such subtle differences, dust off your textbook – or find a grammar blog.

It’s not a place for traditional journalists to put down online journalism, or vice versa. Each camp can help the other. Besides, the line of distinction becomes more blurred every day. I suppose I’m an example.

It’s not a battlefield of political persuasions, nor is it a political advocacy platform. There already are far more of those blogs than we need.

That is not to say I  discourage discussion and debate. I’m all for it.

In fact, I’m a big supporter of the first 10 amendments – especially the First. Just keep it civil, folks.

Contact me at Gerard@JournaliseThis.com.