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| Not all English "experts" know their business. | ||
| Be careful. There are salesmen out there who want your money but may be promising you the same old snake oil. When E-Proofer began in the late '90s, only a few editors and proofreaders were available on the internet. Today there are hundreds. Every few months we poke through some of their sites and find numerous careless errors — or worse still, mistakes possibly made in ignorance by these self-proclaimed experts in their very own work. Only a few of those appear randomly here as they appeared in early 2005. Sometimes their red-faced authors quickly correct the errors after we point them out. But thousands more provide a never-ending supply of evidence that very few internet proofing "professionals" truly know their business. |
Actual text | Errors and comments |
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| "If you were referred by a member, please enter their username so that they may receive proper credit". (onlineproofreaders.com) |
Noun and pronouns disagree. 'Member' is singular; 'their' and 'they' are plural. |
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| "[name of editor] ... teaches humor writing with Universal Class and Writers College, and has also taught IT courses at Digital University. She has been a professional writer and editor for 11 years. "[name of editor] has a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford, and has also studied Theology and Engineering. He has served on the board of the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom, and also in various elected positions in a number of other UK community and volunteer organisations. Previously, [name] worked for an association of leading Euopean universities, organising international conferences, developing Internet-based academic exchange programmes ..." (scribendi.com/about.htm) |
Mixed spellings, British/American, on a Canadian website, typos, misplaced commas, and improper capitalization. 'Humor' (US spelling, first paragraph) is inconsistent with 'organising' and 'programmes' (UK spellings). Non-compound sentences generally do not take commas. Only proper nouns or titles should be capitalized, e.g., "I studied law [lower case] and earned a Bachelor of Law [upper case] degree." Euopean is a typo that suggests the level of conscientiousness used by this company. |
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| "The team take the utmost care to check every element of any project, ensuring that the final result is completed without being blemished by typos." (net-surgery.com/proofing.htm) |
'Team' is singular, and 'take' is almost surely a typo for 'takes', most appreciated when one reads the entire sentence. |
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submit URL for FREE critique | "There is no need to use your precious money and resources to employ staff writer. Who wants to spend the money to hire a full-time writer or specialist, only to keep paying them to sit around after the project is complete?" (chillibreeze.com/writingediting.asp) |
The article 'a' is absent before 'staff writer'. There is noun/pronoun disagreement ('writer' is singular; 'them' is plural). This foreign web site blithely states that quality is not a problem when people in English countries outsource their editing/proofing jobs to India. |
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| The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance. — Winston Churchill | "We offer academic document editing, scientific and technical document editing services. We are specialize in providing an English correction and improvement service." (oleng.com.au/media-release.html) |
The second sentence contains a glaring error with the addition of 'are' before 'specialize'. Perhaps it's not a good idea to pay this company to proofread or edit anything of importance. |
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