Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Editing basics: That's what 'corrections' means

That "corrections" label at the top? It means the story got something wrong (or "gave erroneous information," or "had incorrect information"). You don't need to repeat that in the text. The correction needs to explain what you got wrong and then provide any necessary non-incorrect information.

The "erroneous information" about the first appears to be its appearance in a breakout box of downtown stores that "have recently closed" (why that includes a Caribou that closed a year ago is a different question). As for the "incorrect information" about the second -- imagine if you had people around the office who read stuff before it was published and considered it their job to ask questions like, you know,  whether two Spanish-themed coffee shops was a little much, even by Royal Oak standards. You could call those people "copy editors." (One of them might have also pointed out that the last sentence in a paragraph only needs one period, not two, and that you don't usually follow a question mark with a comma, but that's getting into the rest of the article.)

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