Signs of progress

It seems as though writers have just about run out of new style mistakes, but there are still plenty of repeat style mistakes. Those are what we'll again be focusing on in this post.

Example one:
Raw copy, wrong--"Dutch Elm Disease"
It should be--"Dutch elm disease"

Example two:
Raw copy, wrong--"helping develop a separate speech and theatre department"
It should be--"helping develop a separate speech and theater department.
Use of the words theater and theatre is an issue Mark Merck wanted me to bring up a few weeks ago. It came up again last week. AP Stylebook says: theater Use this spelling unless the proper name is Theatre: Shubert Theatre. In this area, it's the Fargo Theatre.

Example three:
Raw copy, wrong--"both hotels have large multi-purpose conference rooms"
It should be--"both hotels have large multipurpose conference rooms"
I've already written in several e-mails about the AP style for multi. It doesn't hurt to have a reminder in this post: multi- The rules in prefixes apply, but in general, no hyphen. Some examples: multicolored, multimillion, multilateral, multimillionaire.

Example four:
Raw copy, wrong--"such as text, voicemail and e-mail messages"
It should be--"such as text, voice mail and e-mail messages"

Example five:
Raw copy, wrong--"bought his American coworkers"
It should be--"bought his American co-workers"
AP Stylebook: co- Retain the hyphen when forming nouns, adjectives and verbs that indicate occupation or status: co-author, co-chairman, co-defendent, co-host, co-owner, co-partner, co-pilot, co-signer, co-sponsor, co-star, co-worker.

Example six:
Raw copy, wrong--"employs 68 fulltime and 21 part-time"
It should be--"employs 68 full time and 21 part time"
AP Stylebook: part time, part-time Hyphenate when used as a compound modifier: She works part time. She has a part-time job.

Example seven:
Raw copy, wrong--"recent data suggests"
It should be--"recent data suggest"