Kathy Underwood
In 1986, Robert Connors and Andrea Lunsford started to research and document the most commonly found “errors” in the work of college composition students. They came up with their list of “Top 20 Errors
,” which informed their work on the Second Edition of the St. Martin’s Handbook, published in 1992. While concern remains that focusing on specific surface errors can distract students from larger issues such as organization and quality of argument, for the weary teacher, it’s a great boon to be able to give students a specific list of taboos.
Similarly, the weary technical editor can opt to provide a list of common errors to an equally weary and beleaguered technical writer. Of course, a corporate “top 20” list is usually a mix of common usage errors as well as departures from company-specific practices. An example would be the use of the serial comma, which is one of the many issues about which usage pundits have no true consensus.
The Department of Technical Editing at SAS uses their own locally derived list that we call “Frequently Marked Editing Issues” (affectionately known as “feemies”) to prompt both writers and editors to recognize all-too-common surface errors. To encourage compliance, the Editing Department provides all writers and editors with a little ring-bound flip book (about 4 ¼ x 5 ½) called the “SAS Style Guide Feemie Flipbook” with each “feemie” printed on one page of card stock. Each card states the usage issue and gives illustrative examples. Where appropriate, further explanation is provided and links are given. On our online SAS Style Guide, these are, of course, live links. (Our style guide, unfortunately, cannot be accessed outside our intranet.) For example, we have a long table with the American English equivalent of certain Indian English and British English terms (we standardize to American English).
Here are a few of our other top “issues”:
| Issue |
|---|
| Choosing between and punctuating that and which |
| Long noun phrases (aka, “noun stacks”) |
| Use of that to show that a noun clause will follow |
| Putting relative clauses close to what they modify |
| Clarify what each prepositional phrase is modifying |
| Use of in versus on and vice versa |
To me, one of the most helpful items has to do with preposition choice. It seems like everyday there’s another flavor of dialog box or window. And the usual guidelines about how to decide whether something is “in” or “on” some other thing aren’t always that helpful in cyberspace. On our style guide Web site, we add this statement: “We emulate Microsoft in our choice of prepositions to use in conjunction with components of user interfaces. “In” generally refers to a position within limits, and “on” generally refers to a position in contact with something.”
Another very useful category to include on a “feemie” list is tagging. Should a given item be formatted as <code> or as <codeBlock> or have no tag at all? Particularly, if writers in your company use multiple authoring tools or are transitioning from one tool to another (SGML to XML, for example), everyone will welcome a “frequently confused” list to guide their tagging.
Do you and your colleagues maintain similar lists of “frequently encountered” errors or usage taboos in your workplace? I would be interested to hear about your experiences with this kind of document. Please write to me at kathy.underwood@sas.com.
Recommended Reading
Connors, Robert, and Andrea A. Lunsford. “Frequency of Formal Error in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research.” College Composition and Communication, 39:4 (1988): 395-409.
Lunsford, Andrea A., and Karen J. Lunsford. “’Mistakes Are a Fact of Life’: A National Comparative Study.” College Composition and Communication, 59:4 (2008): 781-806. Available at http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/lunsford/PDF/Lunsford_article_Mistakes.pdf.
Williams, Joseph M. “The Phenomenology of Error.” College Composition and Communication, 32:2 (1981): 152-168.