The document discusses tips for preventing errors in blog posts and social media writing. It emphasizes having another person carefully edit one's writing before publishing to catch mistakes. It recommends taking a break from the writing and returning to it later with a fresh perspective, using Grammarly or Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar checks, or hiring a copy editor. Common errors discussed include unnecessary words, misspellings, extra spaces after periods, and inconsistent formatting. The author advocates for a thorough editing process to ensure writing is professional and error-free.

1. How to Prevent Blog Post Blunders and Other
Grammar Pet Peeves
blog.dlvr.it/2014/09/how-to-prevent-blog-post-blunders-and-other-grammar-pet-peeves/
Debra Garber
(#WorkloadWednesday) One of the many hats I wear, both at home and at work,
is Copy Editor. At home, I began as a spell checker, run-on-sentence catcher and
grammar coach for my school-aged kids. At work, I’m a collaborator, dangling
modifier catcher and moving commas and repossessing possessives editor for
our social media blog posting team. I have no idea what the last sentence means
but it certainly sounds impressive.
In my various editorial roles, one of the most important things I have learned is the
importance of having someone, preferably a copy editor or a well-educated
meticulous friend, check your work. I can’t emphasize this editing process enough.
I may be a decent writer but I make mistakes (plenty of them – truthfully) and
believe me, so do the experts.
When you’ve finished researching and crafting a compelling social media
blog post, uploaded breathtaking visuals and believe you are ready to hit “publish”

2. to go live — wait!
Neglecting to have a second set of eyes scan your work can lead to
unprofessional, embarrassing and misleading results.
#WorkloadWednesday Tip of the Week:
Do everything possible to make certain your article is grammatically correct, tightly
drafted and professional. The editing process is vital to the success of your social
media post. If you don’t have a second person editing your posts, or if you are on
a budget, here is what I suggest:
Step away from your article and review it later when you can give it a fresh
look
Drop your copy into Microsoft Word to use as your editor
Splurge on Grammarly.com as an online editing tool
Copy Editing on a Budget
I’m fortunate to have a great editing partner at dlvr.it. We’ll write more about our
team editing process in future social media posts (make sure to signup for the
Social Media Minute newsletter to not miss out). However, regardless if we have
both “signed off” on the post and set the status to ‘Ready to Launch’, I still
have one more step to complete before launch. My final editorial review
process is to always drop the entire post into Microsoft Word (assuming the post
has not been drafted and edited in Word).
From the original source:
1. Copy and paste into Word
2. From Tools, run the Grammar and Spelling check
In my opinion, Word picks up more errors than most word processors including
Google Docs and WordPress. You’ll be surprised what you missed – from
misspelled words, to extra spaces and fragmented sentences. As this review has
yielded me more corrections than I care to count on any one of our social media
posts, I never skip this final editing step.

3. If budget allows, in addition to this internal editing process for all our social media
posts, there are numerous online editing tools and services available. I recently
splurged on a monthly subscription to Grammarly.com. It claims to be the world’s
best grammar checker. Quite a few educators I know use the service for online
editing. I plan on testing it for the next couple months and will provide a
feature review in a future #ToolboxTuesday post.
Copy Editing Tips
There are numerous articles listing copy editor’s pet peeves. One such list is
contained in Barry Feldman’s article, Copy Editing Tips: Delete + 12 More Ways to
Improve Your Writing. My favorite tip from this list is something that I catch myself
doing again and again is to use an unnecessary “that”. (See, there I go again
with that unnecessary “that”):
Pet peeve #1: Cut “that” out
I can always spot an unprofessional writer by the repetitive and
unnecessary use of “this,” “that,” and “these.” A specific pet peeve
of mine is finding them as the first word of sentence. When you
review your drafts, remove every instance of these (that) you can.
See what I mean?
One of my newest “editorial” peeves is to check for:
Having two or more spaces after a period
Did you know you no longer have to put two spaces after a period? I had an
editorial argument with my young daughter about this. She was adamant her
teacher only wanted one space after each period and would be “marked down” for
two. This was news to me and clearly dated me once I had read this article from
my friend Lorna’s Facebook stream, Nothing Says Over 40 Like Two Spaces after
a Period!
Lorna is the Education Editor for our local paper, The Sonoma Index Tribune. To
quote her, “I have been reprimanded repeatedly by my editors over this. It is a
HARD habit to break.” Apparently, I’m not the only one to not get the memo. The
comments Lorna received from her friends and followers, who are obviously over
40, and her editor were hilarious:

4. I started looking at this extra space thing as a time saving tip for the over 40
crowd. Let’s do the math:
My typical post has 1000 words with 100 periods. It takes me 1/8 of a second to hit
the space bar. OK…if my math is correct, by hitting the space bar just once 100
times, I have saved myself 12.5 seconds. Whew… I’m filing this under productivity
tips!

5. As an editor, how do you catch the two spaces? Other than just previewing the
copy, use the “find and replace” function in Word to hunt down the double space
and replace them all with single spaces –presto-o change-o!
What are your copy editing pet peeves? What editorial services do you use? We
would love to hear from you!
Feature image by: Nic McPhee