My daughter was visiting home, sitting with me on our back porch, when she looked up from her laptop.
"Hey, Dad, I think it's time for another column on proofreading," she said. "Check out this message from my doggie day care."
Here's what she showed me: "When dogs are placed in group situations, they are often exposed to the orgasms that cause kennel cough."
I found the sentence so amusing I quoted it in my July 4 column. So that's my topic today -- not orgasms, nor organisms, but proofreading. But before I get on my soapbox and chastise you for not taking sufficient care with your own proofreading, I'd like to make a confession: I myself do not produce perfect copy.
It's true. Before you write in protest and lamentation, hear me out. Despite my keen eye and meticulous nature, I do, on rare occasion, let a proofreading error slip by. In fact, in that very July 4 column, I mixed up my explanation of aspirated and non-aspirated h's. Here is the offending passage:
"English has two main articles, the indefinite a and the definite the. An is a variation of a. A pronunciation aid that enables you to run your words together more easily, an is used before vowel sounds -- not vowels necessarily, but vowel sounds, as in an evening and an MBA. Its use before h depends on whether the h is aspirate or pronounced: an hour if the h is pronounced, and a historical person or a historical event if the h is not pronounced. An historical event is a common error even among educated writers and speakers."
What I should have written, as a number of readers subsequently pointed out to me, was "an hour if the h is not pronounced, and a historical person or a historical event if the h is pronounced." So rather than shed light on the question, I created confusion. I apologize.
My penitence is to offer the following advice on proofreading, both for my sake and yours:
