With all the talk about the EdenTasks going on, I got to thinking about how I edit my reviews. I am starting to take more time on them to make sure I catch more things, but sometimes I have a hard time deciding whether something is just a personal peeve I have grammatically, or if it's something big that should be fixed. So, how picky are you, and what do you prioritize while editing?

*I'm asking which would be most important to you if you had to choose.* less

Same here. I edit all that needs to be, one at a time, section by section. I have a lot of pet peeves, like run on sentences, incorrect spelling, not capitalizing "I"...the list goes on.

I actually was taught in school to double space after periods and colons. It's not incorrect. The only thing I fix in regards to that if is someone is inconsistent. Like, one sentence is followed by one space, the next is followed by two, the next just one again, then two or three, etc.

It often seems to me that people rush when they write. And some people do their reviews on a phone where there is no spell check and it's easier to hit the wrong button. less

I'm rather picky about grammar but I don't correct the more esoteric problems (where grammarians often differ) or those incorrect usages which have become idiomatic. (In some cases the proper grammar is likely to be interpreted as wrong by the average reader!) Occasionally, strange grammar must be left untouched because it would be too difficult to correct without changing the original sentence to such an extent as to be unrecognizable. (But I'm certainly not adverse to changing an ill-chosen preposition, misplaced adverb, or incorrect verb tense if it clarifies the meaning of the sentence without infringing upon the author's intent.)

Unless EF is doing something funky, it shouldn't matter whether people use one space or two after a period. In HTML it renders the same on screen. (HTML collapses adjacent whitespace.)

I'm very picky about punctuation, so I end up spending quite a bit of time fixing that. I implore all reviewers to read the Wikipedia articles on commas and hyphens if unsure about the rules of punctuation. The vast majority of you understand apostrophes and quotation marks but there are some reviewers who don't seem clear on either concept. I've seen some horrible things done with colons and semicolons but most people wisely avoid them when unsure of proper usage.

Some punctuation marks involve style issues (e.g., British vs. American quoting styles, or whether to put spaces around em-dashes and ellipses, or even whether to put a comma after "e.g.", as I did in this list) but there are concrete rules for most punctation marks, which I try to enforce whenever possible. Occasionally some particularly odd punctuation is hard to replace without changing the author's intent, but this is very uncommon. (It is far less common than when ungrammatical sentences must slip past uncorrected in order to avoid changing the author's voice.)

I haven't proofread this post, so please be gentle in pointing out my own errors. less

Same here. I edit all that needs to be, one at a time, section by section. I have a lot of pet peeves, like run on sentences, incorrect spelling, not capitalizing "I"...the list goes on.

I actually was taught in school to double space after periods and colons. It's not incorrect. The only thing I fix in regards to that if is someone is inconsistent. Like, one sentence is followed by one space, the next is followed by two, the next just one again, then two or three, etc.

It often seems to me that people rush when they write. And some people do their reviews on a phone where there is no spell check and it's easier to hit the wrong button. less

I read the whole review too, my question is more of what bothers you the most to fix I guess. I fix all the things I put up there, it's simply which one would you choose if you had to pick one.

I can't even pick one though, since the whole thing essentially matters. less

"The only thing I fix in regards to that if is someone is inconsistent."

Yes, I definitely agree about the spacing. I follow whichever rule the writer uses. I only make changes if there are inconsistencies, using the style choice that is most prevalent in the review to make the style consistent.

As some have mentioned, there are some things that are simply style choices.

Another correction I make is when the majority of sentences in a certain section (such as the Care and Maintenance section) are in one tense and then one or two sentences suddenly switch to another tense. It does not change the writer's voice to change "was" to "is," for example; it is simply making the sentence grammatically correct and consistent. less

I remember a thread a while back, I think it was you who started it but I can't remember. It was about the whole double spacing thing. I don't mind it, but I am so used to one space after a period that I tend to automatically "fix" it when I am going through something.

I am learning a couple more things to look for, like tenses. I notice sometimes, but I have never looked for them particularly.

I absolutely HATE run on paragraphs ( I am calling them that because that is what they are to me, lol). That is the most common thing I see and it is a challenge to decipher one huge paragraph. Especially if you throw in the grammar errors, punctuation like "..." throughout, and mispelled or misused words. A lot of the time I have to go back and go through the review again just to make sure I didn't go in circles by the end of it. less

Your last paragraph makes me smile. I've been there, too. Those are the reviews to which I was referring in the other thread regarding how errors you would normally never, NEVER miss seem to somehow slip through in your exhaustion from trying to make the review simply readable. The reader does not know how major of an overhaul you gave the review from placing punctuation in one continuous run-on sentence, removing emoticons and chatspeak, translating abbreviations into full words, capitalizing the first word of each and every sentence, correcting an entire legion of spelling errors, and just simply trying to determine what is being said so that you can then determine how to make it grammatically correct without changing the writer's voice.

The longest amount of time I have spent on a review was approaching four hours. Of course, a lot of that time was spent documenting the corrections in the notes section, formulating simple explanations, and providing helpful links. But at least half of that time was spent simply trying to determine how in the world to "fix it" while preserving the writer's voice. (I did not send the review back to the reviewer because I sensed that s/he was earnest and sincere in his/her her efforts, and I truly wanted to help him/her.) If I could just write it how I would say it, the editing process would go much faster. But, of course, I don't really desire to do this because I do value the writer's voice. I just feel tempted at times when I simply cannot figure out how to fix something. Those are the reviews on which I spend the most time.

Anyway, when it comes to reviews like those, it's somewhat like putting forth a lot of effort into lovingly repainting and repairing an old dilapidated house only to have the first person coming to see your renovation point out a couple of chips in the paint, focusing ONLY on that. If they could have only seen what you had to work with and known just how much work you put forth to help the contributor's voice be heard (and understood) in this community, then they might be a bit less harsh and a bit more appreciative. less

I haven't proofread this post, so please be gentle in pointing out my own errors.

See that's where I'm starting to get a little nervous about this whole editor thing. I have always liked to think of myself as having good English, but I still have a few of my own tweaks here and there. I just hope that people don't get really picky about forum posts and things, because I don't always capitilize and sometimes I will use slang.

I don't want to feel like I'm an obolete editor, I guess. Lol less

With all the talk about the EdenTasks going on, I got to thinking about how I edit my reviews. I am starting to take more time on them to make sure I catch more things, but sometimes I have a hard time deciding whether something is just a personal peeve I have grammatically, or if it's something big that should be fixed. So, how picky are you, and what do you prioritize while editing?

*I'm asking which would be most important to you if you had to choose.* less