 Okay I am so glad to be here at Muscle and Syracuse of Florida where it is sunshine and probably about 82 degrees right now But since I'm from Brunswick, I know this feeling this murky grizzly feeling very well And with this person I'm at Edit Nation dot com and I'm going to show you right now how to make $250 Who here could use an extra 250 bucks every time they're here? I'm going to let you back to your room here. All right, what if I told you that I was going to show you how to make $250 Not a month, not a week, not a day, not an hour 250 bucks a minute. Who in here wouldn't like to make 250 bucks a minute? And I'm going to show you. Oh, look everybody's got your hands in place. I would too. I would too I'm going to wrap my Honda fit. I've got two cars. I have a Honda and I have a Porsche. I'm not going to drive. I'm not going to wrap the Honda. I mean the Porsche, but I ain't going to wrap the Honda So I know this guy, and I said give me a price to wrap my Honda. He came back with these proof copies So I looked it over. I thought no, no, no, this is really not where I wanted to go But I had to see it first, you know how that is So I want to draw your attention to my tagline editation.com because everyone need an editor Now is this a joke? Wouldn't it be funny if I drew a big black line through me and put needs and then drove around town? I thought about it for a couple seconds I thought no because at this point the buck stops here And I need people to have confidence that I am a good editor and I can spot a typo at 50 paces So this was a $2,000 car app How long would it have taken that person to review his work? I calculated about eight seconds And my friends that comes out to 250 bucks One second for eight seconds They lost my business by not taking that time and proofing my work because I'll tell you what if you're going to prove anybody's work It better be an editor So what happens when you don't prove your work and you put your work online for a client and there's a screaming typo on the first page What kind of credibility does that give to your client and how that doesn't make you look? You can't trust someone think about it. Who doesn't spell? This gal isn't serious though. She claims that she's a work press advisor But if she can't spell the word advisor How much confidence do I have in her ability? Would I pay her To give me her wisdom if she can't spell the word advisor? It doesn't even put her stuff to spell check Give me a break So what I'm going to do today. I don't want to talk to you about excellence I'm not going to talk to you about perfection because this is a place where you can be perfect Just like the big guy upstairs. You can carve out perfection in your written words And I want you all to take a deep breath And relax Because I'm going to tell you a little bit of story about serena williams. We all know serena williams. She's been dominant in women's tennis for quite a while Now I'm going to ask you a question When serena williams first stepped on the tennis court, do you think she cared about the width of the court? The height of the net The length of the racket or the size of the balls I can practically guarantee you that she can get those things at second thought She was there to play tennis. She was probably thinking about how to create cost and law But she didn't care about the fundamentals the foundation that creates the game of tennis Because serena williams knows that if you change one of those things You could change the width the height the width or the size you might want to be playing a game But you're not playing Tests I'm going to do this morning this afternoon is I'm going to show you the top 12 things you need to know About good writing in American English. These are the foundation foundational fundamental things Where there is no discussion I'll answer any question you ask of me except one And that is why Because there is no answer to that question But I will tell you that these are the rules of American English Right here right now in 2018 and they will be the rules for the foreseeable future So just breathe and relax and join me Because when you leave this room I guarantee I'm going to have you knowing these rules and I'm going to have you Thinking like an editor Because we're going to find out three things. We're going to find out what you know We're going to find out what you don't know And we're going to find out perhaps most important What you're not sure about that bushy middle ground You're not sure that's really what I want to find out because when you leave this room I want you to leave this room with confidence So let's take Our first paper here's what we're going to do We're going to take two self-graded quizzes There's nothing particularly strange or exotic in these rules Everybody should know them So we're going to take two quizzes The one we're going to take first is mark quiz number one It's blue 21 sentence quiz I want you to mark the correct sentences. I'm going to read the directions on what you go through The only thing about this everyone is I'm going to give you four minutes because like I said This is something you should know Four minutes four minutes does not translate into one minute per question So if you get confused or flummox, just keep moving Blow through it. I'd like to see if you can get through it, but if you can't not to worry We're going to go over the material in this quiz and then We're going to take a second quiz because studies have shown that people retain new information 87 percent more if they're retested on new information immediately following the first time they learn it So we're going to take a second quiz and I'm going to blow your hair back because you don't have a lot of time So four minutes started right now Let's take the blue quiz I think that 20 is not enough Coming up on three minutes They've heard it I'm sorry Start pulling yourself away from the quiz because we're about to start talking about it in five four three Two one. All right. If you get finished it's no big deal We're not editors most of you probably So let's get started. Let's look at question numbers. It's number one. It is. Yeah, there we go This is the number one mistake. In fact, I'm not going to mention any names, but I went to the session this morning And a fellow who was presenting that got it wrong twice So here we go. This is the number one mistake everybody names It's versus it's so you've got it possibly s versus it s We may want to tell me what it fossil gas means It is it also means it has it's a contraction So that the fault now is it s is the possessive of it boy that trips me up all the time It really does but fortunately I always do searches if I'm doing a lot of content I always do searches for both because sometimes, you know, somebody's spell check is not going to catch that It might give you blue one but it ain't going to give you red one because it's a real word So make sure that you know in your heart in your soul in your bones that this rule is very important It's the number one mistake that people make in their content it s versus it's possibly s So we look at number one. It's about social marketing lobby lobby traffic brand reputation I gotta tell you these are all wordpress sentences when I knew I was coming a whole pot of wordpress sites Tried to have all that done my information expunge, but obviously I wasn't too careful because number two Stonewall publishing consultants specializes in the rebranding of an offer to get the book That doesn't really really make sense, but they got it's wrong because it should be his or her But anyway, that's the mistake in that sense. So two down 21 to go both those sentences are about it s versus it possibly s number three In american english the noun drives the bus which means if you have a singular noun You cannot use a plural verb form or a plural pronoun. So let's look at sentence number three The noun here is site builder Site builder not site builders site builder is one. So you cannot say in their path You have to say in his or her path or the easy work around is site builders Plural site builders that's pretty easy No, it's not No, it's it's it's there's a move towards that in british english in british english is actually okay But the last time I looked I'm standing in the united states and if you want to connect the people quickly and efficiently through your writing You need to write like them. So for example, I came across a website and someone said they were We're in a gray sweater. They spelled gray g r e y I would think that the content might have been very well written in india where they practice british english But not mistakes. So if you're trying to connect with americans, definitely need to use american english Rules if you are writing for canadiens, they speak british english If you're writing for people in singapore british english for the united states It's american english. So you write and there is a movement towards that But that movement and that moment has not come It has not come yet Now weakle in this business about noun and pronoun agreement is found in sentence four I have the best and most skilled team of any hosting company They know their craft team is what's called a collective noun that refers to a group of people But it is treated as a singular noun. You are my audience An audience is refers to a group of people But you use a singular noun singular pronoun singular word for The workarounds are there if you want to find them, but you can never say the audience are You cannot say the team knows their craft a team is singular Of course because you're referring back to team Absolutely now if you said team members, you know, it really is the trust me on this 17 votes 10 of which are about american english Punctuation grammar you can trust me on this. I'm sort of swing a williams Punctuation grammar. Okay, so but yeah team is singular Now if you're a comfortable referring to a group of people as a git and I personally am very Uncomfortable referring to people as it's then the the workaround is my team members That's easy Team members This is the rule of this moment in time in america english when the new york times goes and changes its rule I might consider changing my mind, but that moment has not come number five Actually, you know something i use what i call a american academic style, which is a blend of chicago new york times and We're not princeton university style. So this is what people use in content. This is what people use in novels New york times has newspaper style and when I should write for a newspaper, you're not going to use that style chicago Chicago's getting off the rails in some respects. I have any chicago book and I've got under Over my dead body written in margins And then princeton has gotten a little bit lazy I'm not going to come out just because there's just such a flood of sloppy writing coming at princeton in the staff They just sort of run up the white flag and said, you know, we're not going to worry about that I worry about that. So this is a blend of this american academic style And it is modern and it is current and what people need to use so you look smart You look smart. That is the purpose of life Now I have to say number five is the only sentence i'm going to talk about about commas You're looking at a woman who can do a two-hour workshop about commas that properties of commas But obviously we don't have two hours. I won't talk to you about this because almost all websites include information that's biographical in nature If you ever say that you're from boston, massachusetts You need to put a comma after massachusetts unless it ends your sentence So here surely who likes to drink wine lives in baltimore, baltimore, maryland with her husband and two dogs She's got to have a comma after maryland. It is non-negotiable Yeah, that's one after surely too, yeah No, because if that's not really parenthetical information surely it's necessary to the to the sentence So if you pulled surely out you just said it's just any old exactly as wine enthusiasts So that's a good bit. So the wine enthusiast is the introductory element, but there's not a second comma after surely It wouldn't say surely comma a wine enthusiast comma lives in baltimore, maryland. You sure could you sure could That's another glass of work around but then because If the wine enthusiast just becomes the parenthetical information that can be taken out of the sentence completely So you then you end up with surely lives in baltimore, maryland, maryland Then you put the commas around the wine enthusiast because it's it's interesting but not necessary to the sentence Not necessary to the sentence Talk to me about commas. I'll tell you what I can talk about them all day long Okay Watch your spacing. Let's look at sentences six and seven These are both incorrect. So so far you might be seeing a trend. We've not seen a single solitary sentence. That's correct We have a great lineup of speakers Line up unfortunately is a verb phrase a line up The noun is one word One word And it's number seven Duncan is one of the founders of angus night set up Angus night a set up is a noun The verb phrase to set up these two words So those are both mistakes and those are both verb phrases I see used a lot line up set up Those are verb phrases that people are using you've got to watch your spaces on both of those Here's another sentence number eight Someone's looking to get my business because they have had testimonial on their website about WordPress hosting Problem with this sentence is they put a hyphen in fully managed Never put a hyphen after an ly adverb Never and unfortunately it sounds so right. It sounds like it should be joined But you never put an ly adverb After excuse me, you never hyphenate an ly adverb So this is incorrect because of that one mark of punctuation because of that hyphen Yeah, I don't remember what the sentence five to that is so I have to go back and look But for this far purposes the problem is the the hyphen Um, excuse me. I'm so sorry The question was they've been a perfect fit So gg was asking about vague and because I don't have the proceeding sentence in there to see if she was talking about a team Or a company or whatever. We don't know whether they was used correctly. Is that that's yeah, okay. Thank you. Okay Then number nine good lord Everybody is off the rails about capitalization I have clients who wants to capitalize the word visitors. He thinks he honors visitors by capitalizing The name the word visitor to honor them and make them feel more important. All it does is make him look Illiterate because you don't capitalize something unless it's a proper noun or part of a proper phrase So why in the world would you want to say you are passionate with a capital P? Because passionate is absolutely not a proper noun cannot have that happen But then on the flip side people are capitalizing proper now I have a news for you the word dumpster is a proper noun And so is the word google because even though that might be sometimes used as a world nowadays It is still a proper noun in this particular usage of google form I would absolutely recommend if you capitalize appropriately If you are in doubt check an online dictionary to see if that word Xerox I'm going to go Xerox. I'm going to blow my nose with a Kleenex. Those are both proper nouns They're a trademark noun you have to be precise the rule in this situation Absolutely shouldn't be capitalized 11 So far we haven't found anything that's correct Are we going to? 11 oh, I see this a lot EG is the problem in this particular sentence EG is always always always always followed by a comma No exceptions whatsoever ID and EG always not followed by commas now et cetera You know something we are so pressed for time. I'm not going to talk two minutes about the word et cetera Because it's it's interesting whole things interesting. So please put a comma after EG and ID All right Yes Can you tell us the difference between ID and EG? Okay, sure. Okay, I'll ask the camp. EG means for example Okay, there's a lot of praise for which is a statement right now But I always recommend because E and example start with the same same way So EG means for example and ID means for in other words So I in other words. This is how I keep them straight Okay, so those are the best of difference and they're not interchangeable. They're actually not you need to know the difference in those two terms That's well I love the sense. I'm going to read the whole thing Creating quality content that engages the customer and it's also a key word rich while portraying the branding of your company Is key to having a successful website Now I'm going to tell you who's going to hire somebody who writes this Can't spell have a can't spell successful and you know something else They didn't bother to put it in word because these are both red line red line Which means they cannot be published and yet I've often write off a word press to go for his website Would I hire that person going back to my original $250 a second Questions I would not hire that person if you can't spell you're not getting my business I'm so sorry But you know something after I told you to use word you can't trust word You can't trust word This is why the union brain will always be superior to the computer in so many respects because here we have two sentences with what are called hominems a hominem is One pair sometimes three actually that are spelled differently meaning different things, but pronounce the same Okay, so if you're thinking your words if you're not paying attention you're spelling you've got to be careful Because the first the first sentence insure I am Ensure with an eye is only into the context of insurance car insurance boat insurance motorcycle insurance You need ensure the end to make sure something to make a certain of something Well, no that doesn't really work. Think about the think about the sentence context. It's not It's not quite where it should be Ensure And then peak who knows how to spell peak the way this needs to be spelled. Yes, ma'am Exactly exactly. So this is another form of misspelling and it's another example of somebody who wasn't paying attention To his or her writing because it sounds right, but it's not All right This is a little deep dive only deep dive on the lab myself for my 40 minute boot camp Okay, I'm gonna talk about quotation marks. I've seen them all over the place today And I see them all in the place in American in wordpress sites and this is america. We've already discussed this. I'm going to look at 15 60 and 15 and 16 for now Okay, when you are in america and you are writing for americans You always need with double quotes And I'm going to tell you what there are no exceptions to this None of these things actually I'm talking about today have exceptions Or I'm going to be talking about double quotes You always skip off the double quote. So if you write something about one size fits all we leave off the single quotes You might be writing for a british audience, but you are incorrect for an american audience So you've got to have double quotes one size fits all now The other rule that I want you all to look at is number 16 in america in america When you have quotation marks, they are always placed outside periods and commas and I mean always no exception always periods and commas quotation marks are outside semi colons and colons the quotation marks are inside and question marks And exclamation points depend on the context of the sentence, but just don't worry about that right now We're only talking about periods and commas Quotation marks, double quotation marks, single quotation marks, all quotation marks outside periods and commas Now this is really interesting. Oh, yeah, I think I already said all this I don't know. You know, I do want to mention this really quick because grammarly is so well known Grammarly Anyway, grammarly is wrong on so many accounts and here's one of them Grammarly says that quotation marks always have to be impaired And if you look at that sort of superficially, you'll think, oh, yeah, of course, they have to be always in pairs No, no, no, no I want you to pull off any novel you happen to have on your show And I want you to notice that if you speak into or if you have a character who speaks into a second paragraph There is no end quote, which means they're not in pairs All right, I want to look at 17 this is something I made up I'm going to take all credit for this. I'm going to talk about the rule of pot because this tells you When you need to use quotation marks and when you use need to use italics Okay, what do you think about a pot? I want you to imagine your favorite flavor of mine happens to be key lime pot Big old pot you can slice a pot All right, when you have used to be in my time a record album Okay, but the newspaper a magazine if you can divide the pot a pot The pie itself is put into italics So the new york times isn't italics, but the pieces of the pie are in quotation marks So the article in the new york times is in quotation marks, but the new york times is in italics The article in the magazine the song title those pieces those divisions of the pie are in quotation marks But the record album title is in italics So when you say that you invented the internet It doesn't really sound like I have a lot of faith in you because how I invented the internet should be in italics italics Now 18 I want to talk about because I may have a stick on this and somehow the hyphen between 8 and 8 Did not show up, but there are two correct ways to show time in American English The first one is to use lowercase no spacing, but periods You always have your 330 space a period m period Or I don't want to use top of the hour Colon zero zero. I think that covers my pros. So I'll just say four space Lowercase p period lowercase m period. That's how you can do that one style The other way is to do uppercase with no periods But there's always going to be a space between your number and your am or p You see that mistake a lot We haven't found anything correct yet 19 Here's some sloppy writing This led to Liam Transition from a career Well, gosh, it looks like a missing word there. Uh, this led to Liam's transition From a career or maybe so Liam transitioning from a career But leah did not choose to transition from a career. You know, that's absolutely wrong and a careful edit a careful Check double check with pot that and number 20 our marketing programs are what Maybe are a re but they're not our custom tailor So so far we've gone through 20 questions. We have not found one that is correct So this is a 21 question quiz Where's our 21st question? Where's our 21st sentence? Where is it? Where is the other? What There we go. That's right those missing words Gosh darn it. They are a you know what's a fine They're so hard to see because they're not there Good discretion. So we've gone through 21 sentences and none of these were correct none of them But I told you I promised you that I would have you thinking like an editor So let's go ahead and think like an editor One thing I see is I look at this as a piece as a piece of writing. I see One sentence in here that's boldly And one of the big bug boots of writing you've got to be correct You've got to be compelling and you've got to be consistent So if this is of a piece I would expect that all Those words are going to be in the same font in the same type of font and if I saw a bold like this I'd wonder why I'd wonder why so I would consider that as an editor a mistake There's something else that's a little more profound. Maybe more subtle that I want to see maybe caught Maybe catch something else you want to tell me about There's something really stinky in this prose And if everybody says uncle I'll tell you what it is because when you see it, I guarantee you will not unsee it This is the joy of being an editor because once you see this stuff, it just comes up and slaps you outside of the head No, no, I'm sorry. There's anything up in the headline. That's my deal and it's not that Oh, that blabbers me too, but you know something ladies, that's not it. That's just me Okay, yeah, I'll tell you what I'll give you a hint 15 60 and 17 is where these mistakes are found Okay, so everybody says uncle. We've got three different kinds of quotation marks in this We've got directional two different kinds of directional and then we've got one kind of non-directional Ouch, that is not good writing. You must have a style You must establish a beach head before you invade France And you must say that our style is going to be Directional or non-directional quotation marks. You've got to establish a style saying this is our farm This is the way we're going to tell time and we're going to do it throughout Throughout and maybe you've changed from client to client. Maybe one client will have a preference But you must Establish style You really must otherwise your writing is going to be all over the place It's anybody in here work for a company that has a style guide You've got one man. We've got two ladies back here. We've got another gentleman and They got something Oh, okay. Well, that's that's that's dangerous place to be That's dangerous place to be so I would suggest that you all consider Tell me the powers that be at your company that your company needs to establish a style guide A style that is imposed on not only your material from your own website, but for everybody else's Correct Consistent compelling the consistency is where you find the excellence So here's a little bit closer to my Conduct it If anybody else has accomplished it in this room, I pity you because it is just like driving A tin can with a sewing machine engine. I've never driven in such a bad car But pretty soon I'm going to be driving around so sporty and serisota Looking like an editor and it's all going to be spelled correctly. Believe it. Believe it So circle back to work Please does not care About anything to do with the foundation of tents I would tell you frankly that things do change though There's always going to be a frothy leading edge to tennis and to our language for example when I began to play tennis back in the 60s We all have to wear white Now I didn't say we had to be white. I said we had to wear white Now obviously changed in tennis a lot of things have changed in tennis A lot of things have changed in English language since I was playing tennis I will tell you that what we've done today Well, we've looked at today and even though we only got from one quiz I was a little ambitious Even though they only got from one quiz what I told you are principles that you can take for the bank We can have a fist fight with your boss if you go back to the office And he or she tells you that this is not the way to go because this is where excellence lies This is where professionalism lies and I guarantee you if you post style on the content You look professional And you will make money Perhaps even 250 dollars a second Thank you all for being here I guess we probably have a couple minutes maybe Two minutes all right sir you got a question As you said earlier that through a bunch of times I'm actually speaking in Brunswick probably in May It's the 10th anniversary of my first book Which is Al Brunswick So I'll be up doing an editing workshop Their paper is terrible I know and I do find mistakes in the New York Times from time to time And I have a hotline to the senior editor We go back and forth Well Brunswick you only have to look Really? Because they're there I'm sorry and that just shows you the decline The precipitous decline of editorial standards But that's okay because we are going to raise the bar That's why I flew up here Because we are going to start to raise the bar About American English translation grammar Sir you had a question I did Yeah I'm rummaging through my recollection I had a habit of wrapping E, G and I, E in parentheses In the middle of a sentence Now you could You actually could But I wouldn't you wouldn't you're not wrapping like Parenthesis E, period G, period Parenthesis No the whole string Absolutely And that's actually the best way to do it Is the most proper way Is to put E, G and I in parentheses Because it's basically an editorial aside For example these things Yeah What I need to say is this So that's actually the most correct Yeah You're right Yes Yeah exactly Yes I On the yellow sheet We do the center round of the ready prep sentences Oh gosh Do I have to tell If you want to take your yellow sheet home and do it at your leisure Everything you covered is on the yellow sheet and And I will say It's if I force when you're You're hurting me Of yeah I'm in no correct sentences on the yellow sheet But I'm hoping that if you look at it you can know now Why the sentences aren't correct So please take that home and use it And then if I put a rat card I point it out Got it passed out That has all this stuff So it had actually passed out a cheat sheet For the entire test With that rat card But that's okay Anybody else I'll be here all day You're going to need some weird or pain question You want to ask me I'm going to add you What's the table T.T and I had that joke really Yes one more I didn't understand on sentence 16 The quotations and the commas I didn't understand what you were saying Like what is the first answer for number 16 16 Okay well 16 Oh the quotation mark should be outside the comma So it should go work for higher comma Yes yes Okay No exceptions to that rule Yeah that's an easy one Yeah it's high It's actually And it's always a double quotation Regular use of single quotation A single quotation is a quote with a quote So if I'm saying And then she said I can't believe it So I say Liz said And then she said So Liz said comma quote And then I'm going to quote somebody else Okay so I'm talking And then I'm quoting what she said I can't believe it So quote Single quote Because what you're trying to do Is you're trying to communicate to your reader Where someone is speaking Stops and someone else's starts So that way if you use single quotes You're queuing your reader That whoever's speaking is now quoting Exactly someone else That's why I need to use that So it's double quote Ba ba ba ba Single quote And quote Single quote Okay so quote And quote Double quote The blooms in this are very important I hope that I touched you through that So you've always You've got double quotes around it The larger thing and the single quotes Around the quote you can have inside Very hard to imagine right now Sorry That's a good one Yeah thank you I'm actually It's supposed to be for a song title But not It's supposed to be for a song title And then it'll be out It's supposed to be for 18 songs Okay here My favorite song on Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark is Court and Spark My favorite song on Joni Mitchell's album Court and Spark That's italicized But I just told you it's album Is the song Court and Spark So the song Court and Spark explodes But remember we're just trying to communicate With our readers We're trying to tell them what's going on Let's take the wordpress Phoenix And a big Big more of Phoenix Because they might give me two hours To do this program And not play with anyone else Yes Are you finished? Yeah Yeah Okay so our next speaker is here Are you the next speaker? All right great Thank you so much everyone