My current task at work involves proofing a large number of articles that were written by an outside group. These were not written by professional writers, and they’ve never been proofed. Here’s some of what I’m finding:

• “a-lot” (The correct spelling is two words, and I’ve seen the incorrect one-word version, but never hyphenated.)
• “Others may be things that yow old never have thought of in your wildest dreams.” (What?)
• “Basically, society owes bucket loads to inventors because they have shaped the very ground we walk on.” (Let’s see… Redundant words, check; unprofessional colloquialisms, check; ridiculous overstatement, check.)
• “The Performing Arts, how we love and appreciate them!” (That’s the opening statement to a rather lackluster article on the performing arts.)
• “Inventing usually starts at a young age, and children usually start to become better and better investors as they grow older with time. One young inventor, Mathew Wood, said ‘I love inventing; it gives me something to do and is loads of fun.’ ” (That quote is one hell of a non sequitur.)
• “Intellectual property is defined by online dictionaries as…” (“Online dictionaries?” Bear in mind that this is an article about intellectual property that’s not giving credit to other intellectual property.)
• Hyphens in place of dashes, I can understand, but dashes in place of hyphens? Really? If they don’t know how to make dashes when they need them, how do they end up with them in the middle of words?

And all those are only from the first third of the articles. Fun times ahead!

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