The 12 days of editing

Online writing delivers ‘gifts’ all year long, but the holiday season is an ideal time to look at the special offerings an editor finds glistening within blocks of text.

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On the 12th day of Christmas, the Internet gave to me:

12 misplaced apostrophe’s.

11 tautological, repetitive, superfluous, iterative redundancies.

10 anthropomorphisms, who need love, too.

9 gratuitous exclamation points!!!!!!!!!

8 run-on sentences where the predicate seems never to end even though the point has been made and it’s obvious that the writer has lost his or her focus and for Pete’s sake would you throw in some damn punctuation please?

7 false series, lack of parallel construction and the syntax was flawed.

6 “convos,” “learnings,” “asks” and “rebrands.”

5 … inappropriate … ellipses.

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