you’ve probably all seen lists of things you should watch out for when editing. There/their/they’re. Loose/lose. Your/you’re. And innumerable misspellings and typographical errors.

But there are three great editing sins that are very difficult to catch unless you look for them. I’ve detected them both in the last three books I read, I figured I should share them with you.

1. What is wrong with this sentence?
The law required that people prove that they’re a citizen.

People don’t prove that they’re a citizen. They prove that they’re citizens. Remember that if you’re talking plurals, you stay talking about plurals. If you start talking singular in the midst of a sentence, you get singular/plural confusion. This is mocked, delightfully, in Lois McMaster Bujold’s “A Civil Campaign”:

“If nothing else it leaves one more Barrayaran woman for the rest of us.”

“Well, it leaves one more Barrayaran woman for one of us,” Byerly Vorrutyer corrected this sweetly. “Unless you are proposing something delightfully outré.”

One more thing, which it pains me to say. Be aware that–particularly if you are writing a Regency-set historical–”they” is not commonly considered in that era a singular pronoun. It’s not wrong to use it so; it’s not even anachronistic. But it was frowned upon in some quarters, and if you’re writing a real stick-in-the-mud, he will not use “they” as a gender neutral singular pronoun. He will use “he”. (I’ve used the stickler construction in that sentence: if I hadn’t, I might have said, “if you’re writing a real stick-in-the-mud, they will not use “they.”) And they will most certainly not use “cos” or “em” so don’t even think of mentioning it. ;)

2. What’s wrong with this sentence?

Smiling broadly, her elbow brushed against his buff inexpressibles.
Death by clauses. Be very, very careful to know what the subject of your sentence is. Here, the thing that is acting is her elbow. But her elbow cannot smile broadly.

3. What’s wrong with this sentence?

The slow moving man dragged his feet.

Maybe nothing is wrong with the sentence. It depends on whether the man is moving slowly, or whether the moving man is slow. If the man is moving slowly, you should hyphenate the compound adjective: “slow-moving man.” Otherwise, if he’s a really sorry moving man who needs to get fired, no hyphen is needed.
So how can you tell if you’ve sinned? Look it up in the Chicago Manual of Style, of course! The CMS provides absolution for the following:

1. Ending a sentence with a preposition.

CMS says: “The ‘rule‘ prohibiting terminal prepositions was an ill-founded superstition.”

2. Starting a sentence with a conjunction.

CMS says: “There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.”

And there you have it. What are your editing peeves?

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