An A to Z list of editing peeves

A blogger has compiled his least favorite linguistic mistakes that editors furiously fix, and he’s not alone. But we writers are a stubborn lot.

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At last. Somebody has compiled it: “An A to Z of Editorial Peeves,” with entries by Andy Hollandbeck on stinkweeds like alright, due to the fact that, and irregardless. Now we writers can stop annoying our editors.

Then again, maybe “at last” isn’t quite right, because editors have been creating similar lists for years, filling thousands of artfully proofread Web pages, only to have us writers continue to fling our ignorance in the faces of readers.

For instance, Daily Writing Tips listed “7 editing pet peeves” that include beg the question, and quality when what is meant is high quality. But writer Mark Nichol apparently likes trying to row upstream as he’s being swept by the currents toward a waterfall:

“I abhor the use of nonprofit as a stand-alone noun,” Nichol writes, “and I find I must append the word organization to that word, converting it into an adjective: ‘nonprofit organization.’ The same opposition applies to multinationals; I favor ‘multinational corporations.'”

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