Editing boundaries and rules

Editing is all about boundaries and rules. Should I include this detail in the headline? Is this number relevant to my research? Should I mention the groom's bachelor party during my toast? Basically, it comes down to whether or not we should include or do something, and when we should not.

Over the weekend, I saw the movie Unthinkable. This is a great movie to watch if you want to have your moral boundaries tested. I don't want to give away too much of the storyline here, so...

*** Spolier Alert ***

Now that that's out of the way, the movie is basically about a terrorist who plants 3 nuclear bombs in 3 American cities, and then gets captured. While in captivity, he is tortured in order to gather information regarding the whereabouts of the bombs. The U.S. government employs a specialist who essentially does anything and everything to get the information he needs from the terrorist. The use of torture alone crosses most people's moral boundaries, but it gets even worse.

All I can say is, watch the movie, and you'll spend the next few minutes arguing with yourself about where your own moral boundaries are.

And, just to end on a lighter note..

10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

Happy Turkey Week Everyone! I call the week following Thanksgiving Turkey Week because I know many of us have massive amounts of leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner. Which means turkey for lunch and dinner for at least a few days. Hope you all had a good one!

Today I'm going to blog about a polical flyer for a candidate, Casey Jones. Casey is running for City Councillor, and hails from Old Kildonan. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to take a picture of the flyer, but I'll try to describe it as best I can.

I found his flyer in my mailbox just yesterday, and I immediately noticed quite a few errors in grammar, parallel form and punctuation. It bothers me that so many errors could go unnoticed during the printing process, and then again during distribution. It makes me wonder whether Casey himself even looks at these flyers because some of the mistakes are so glaringly obvious. Just as an example, on the second page, there is a little blurb about his background. Right in the middle of the first paragraph is an extra space. How does anyone miss that when proofing the final copy?

I found this flyer to do slightly more harm than good for Casey's campaign. Quoted from the flyer:

"I bring years of experience in leadership, time management, planning and implementation, all of which will enable me to pursue a position as your City Councillor with unwavering confidence and pride."

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like a lot of planning took place in the editing process, and the distribution was poorly implemented because even with the large number of errors, the flyer was still distributed. Though the content is good and the message is clear, the way the message is conveyed through the flyer implies a lack of quality in the work he's putting into his campaign.

This reminds me of the Stark County speaker some of us had the pleasure of experiencing in the Oral Presentation class today. He had a message, but it was so hysterically presented that it completely destroyed his presentation. It was quite entertaining though, we can all agree on that.

It's a J, not a B

I'm sure everyone has received their Voter's Notices in the mail this past week (I also just noticed that on the card itself, there is a missing apostrophe in the word "Voters"). Somehow, after spelling my name correctly for the past 8 years, they managed to spell it wrong. I now understand how Iain feels when his name is spelled/pronounced wrong.


Strange how they managed to confuse the letter "j" with the letter "b." They look nothing alike!