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

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Snort. While I use the elipsis more than I ought to in email and such, I try not to use it as much in technical and business writing. It does sort of mean "an unfinished thought", which doesn't look good in those types of writing. Weird.

One of the things I'll be looking for with my Word students is the capitalization issue. And I'm sure with my intro students, I will have some who use too much of the IM shortcuts and will try to sneak those into their writing. Luckily I don't teach the English class they're required to take. <g>

[lifeofglamour.livejournal.com]

Huh. I would have thought that "blah blah blah" and "etc" were redundant enough already.

random numbers

[finickynarcane.livejournal.com]

I love the people who think and elipsis consists of some random, non-three number of periods. Better yet, is the person I've seen using large numbers of commas where I think they intended an elipsis. Granted, both of those examples are from social writing.