Word geekery

[helblonde]

I'm editing a guidebook about IT responsibilities in M&A.  (Zzzzzz....) I knew I was in trouble when I asked my boss whether there was a technical writer involved and he said "you're it!"

Aside from one of the writers not knowing that we're writing in English, so we don't need to capitalize every single noun, I have grabbed a couple of interesting errors. Today's favorite:

(blah, blah, blah, etc...)


Um, "etc..."? I'm pretty sure the elipsis has no place in business writing and certainly does not need to be combined with et cetera. *sigh*

Comments

[helblonde.livejournal.com]

I'm completely OK with using the elisis socailly, but I do hope that people writing business, uh, literature can finish their thoughts.

Academically, there is the potential to use an elipsis to signal material is being left out of a quote, but that's it. Oddly, professors expect students to finish their thoughts just like I expect my coworkers to.

There is an amusing difference in how the elipsis is created in Word and how I was taught about it in a CAL Extension editing class. Word shortens the unified punctuation, while I was taught by the editor that an elipsis is period-space-period-space-period-space.