first entry

So as I started to think about what I would write about for my first entry for Jour 420 about news editing I realized I had no idea what to say.

So I decided to just Google “news editing” and see what it came up with. The first search result that came back was from Wikipedia so I clicked on it to see if it would give me an idea about what to blog about. Luckily it did.

(this is the website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing)

Now I realize that Wikipedia is not the most credible source because it is written by average people and anyone can make corrections. Therefore, mistakes can occur in the information. However, I think that it is interesting that the entry on “editing” has grammar mistakes in it. I would have thought that someone who was writing the entry on “editing” would be able to actually edit his or her work and make sure there are no mistakes.

(so hopefully all the following mistakes I found are actually mistakes)

In the first paragraph I found some comma mistakes.

The first sentence says “Editing is the process of preparing languagem images, soundsm video, or film through correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media.”

From what I learned in class last week I thought in a series you do not put a comma before the “and” or “or.” However, there are two commas misused in the above sentence for that reason.

This comma when in a series mistake occurs several times throughout the entry. However, there are some sentences when there is not a comma before an “and” which is correct.

I just would have thought the person writing this entry would at least be consistent with his or her comma usage. But apparently they are not.

Later in the entry this sentence appears, “In the book publishing industry, editors organize anthologies and other compilations, produce definitive editions of a classic author's works ("scholarly editor"); and organize and manage contributions to a multi-author book (symposium editor or volume editor).

I think that the first comma used after “industry” should not be there. I do not see any reason for there to be one. I also believe that the semicolon used is wrong. There this no reason why there should be any punctuation there, let alone a semicolon.

I think it is just a little ironic that the person writing an entry on “editing” did not edit his or her work that closely.