Copy-Editing

Copy-Editing Tips

Great concise advice on stylistic pitfalls can be found in the ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION section of The Elements of Style.

Here are some common mistakes I see in student papers (not including the common mistakes covered in The Elements of Style):

Incorrect punctuation of et al. (it is short for et alia, which is Latin for "and others," so there is a period after "al." but not after "et").

In U.S. usage, commas and periods always go before closing quotation marks, even though that doesn't make much sense logically. (Note that this is different from British English punctuation, and probably most other languages.)

Single quotes should only be used to quote something within double quotes, e.g. "Bob said, `Me too!' " (Again, this is standard U.S. usage; British usage seems to use single quotes differently, as do Americans who read a lot of British publications.) If you want to draw attention to something or define a non-standard word usage ("air quotes"), double quotes should be used:

So-called American "cheese" is a processed food that contains only a minimal amount of actual cheese.

Citations at the end of a sentence should be place before the period [McMains, 2005].

Incorrectly using "which" instead of "that" as the relative pronoun for a restrictive clause. Here is a summary of the correct usage adapted partly from "Side by Side Spanish and English Grammar" by Farrell and Farrell:
Relative pronouns begin relative clauses. If the relative clause is a "restrictive clause" defining the noun that precedes it, the clause is not set off by commas and "that" is used: "The one that you want is over there" (in this example, "that you want" is the relative clause). Restrictive clauses are essential definitions; often if you were to omit the relative clause the sentence would make no sense. Sometimes you can cross out a restrictive clause and still end up with a reasonable sounding sentence (as for "The book that you want is over there"), but the meaning is not clear without the definition provided by the restrictive clause.

A non-restrictive relative clause, on the other hand, is not essential to the meaning of the sentence. It gives additional information, but the meaning of the rest of the sentence wouldn't change if it were to be omitted. It is typically set off from the rest of the sentence by commas: "My favorite book, which I re-read regularly, is Strunk's `Elements of Style.'" If you can put the relative clause in parentheses without changing the basic meaning of the sentence, it is a non-restrictive clause. Non-restrictive clauses begin with "which" (when they refer to things, that is -- if the relative clause refers to people, there are different relative pronouns to worry about, but I won't get into that). Note that a comma should precede the use of "which."

Personally I think that when to use which is the most subtle rule of English grammar, particularly since I didn't learn it until my 20s, and therefore I may not always catch a misused "which" when I check your papers. But for readers who have internalized the rule, misuse diminishes the clarity of your writing. So if you haven't internalized the rule, make a special effort to consciously double-check that every "which" in your paper is really introducing a non-essential description, not an essential definition.
Bryan Catanzaro wrote this useful script for detecting potential misuses of that and which.

The word Boolean should always be capitalized (in honor of George Boole).

A hyphen is not a dash. In latex, use three hyphens in a row when you want it to produce an emdash for punctuation.

Dave Patterson also has great advice on not spelling out numbers less than ten if the reader will be doing arithmetic with them, as well as other useful tips on his page on common errors in grad student writing.

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Latest update on or after : May, 2014