But 9 times out of 10, there’s no such subtle distinction being made – the person is just failing to think through if there’s a more direct way to say something.
This is a matter of style. Obviously you learned one way, while I learned another.
winterhawk11: The example you gave reminded me of the all-too-common “free reign” error. Since so few people depend on horses for transportation nowadays, the concept of “free rein” is alien to many folks.
“His name was called Bob.” So, what was his name?
“That that is, is. That that is not, is not.” “Is it?” “It is.” (Is that right? The last bit doesn’t make much sense. Doesn’t it? It doesn’t.)
You know, Twix, Gaudere’s Law being what it is, you could probably pick up some good examples in this thread. E.g., Reality Chuck’s sentence
contains an error that** Reality Chuck** could have no doubt caught himself if he’d been proofreading carefully. Took me three passes to identify the verb problem that was bothering me.
Yep, that’s right!
One thing that really annoys me is the use of “pour over a book” when “pore over a book” is meant. I see this very frequently in newspapers.
Maybe this is too technical, but nobody ever seems to get scientific names right: italicized, with the genus capitalized and the species not.
Colibri thalassinus
NOT:
*colibri thalassinus
Colibri Thalassinus*
Colibri thalassinus
God, yes. I see “alright” at least a hundred times a day and I just want to throttle the person who wrote it. The worst part is that I’m not the only editor on this project, and I can’t convince the others to change their ways. This means either the spelling changes back and forth during the course of the game, or I have to bite the bullet and leave it as one word.
For another test, try capitalization on titles vs. nouns.
“This is my master’s sword.”
“This is Master’s sword.”
How about this? I had a discussion with my boss today about puctuation in quotes when the quote doesn’t contain the punctuation that the sentence does.
Person A: He’s a vampire!
Person B: Did you just say “He’s a vampire”? OR
Person B: Did you just say “He’s a vampire?”
Too easy – outside the quotes. (Exclamation points and question marks are the only ones that are placed according to whether they’re part of the quoted material or not.)
For those who are following the story behind this: the guy did on the shady side of so-so on this; but he’s got killer managing editor skills. I think we may hire him, and just keep him the hell away from content.