sherrymims.com

Mario’s Restaurant review

Sherry — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:06:49 +0000

I’ve written a “Lunch Bunch” and had fun, so the next thing to do was write a “Supper Club” restaurant review of Mario’s restaurant for The News-Journal:

Old-fashioned food does not equal a tired menu at Mario’s Restaurant in Ormond Beach, as copy editor Sherry Mims and her husband, Amir Fleminger, discovered during an outing to the family-owned restaurant.

Open since 1956, Mario’s serves traditional Italian food as well as creative updates.

Although a little pricey, we loved the food and service. I’d highly recommend it — unless you have a sensitivity to butter!

Typos in the news

Sherry — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:00:40 +0000

Speaking of typos, an awful error befell a North Carolina school district:

A road contractor hired to paint the word “school” on a freshly paved stretch of road near Southern Guilford High School in North Carolina rendered the traffic area in question a “shcool” zone.

They’ve apparently fixed it now, but trust me, we “typo hunters” can count on more errors to come. That’s the way of things.

Several years ago, my mom upset the City of Bushnell by telling officials that the new signs — posted all over town — should read, “Smile, You’re on Radar” (instead of “Smile, Your on Radar”).

Spend those few extra bucks hiring a proofreader, folks. Trust me, we’d love the extra income.

Typo hunts and other things to do

Sherry — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:37:49 +0000

Ha, between planning for the upcoming Florida Press Club banquet in October, motivating myself to finish a restaurant review and book review for the News-Journal, plus nabbing possible freelance work — relax HR, nothing against my contract — it’s easy to forget to update. Very easy because I thought I had linked to an interesting interview about “The Great Typo Hunt” on Salon.

Not surprisingly, I love looking for typos.

The author of the book makes a great point:

Typos cloud communication, which is the primary purpose of writing. If your text has typos, it’s going to take your readers longer to read it. If typos get in the way of your text, it’s going to cause a problem, especially today, where you often only have a second to grab your reader’s attention. It can also be a warning sign that whatever text you’re looking at was created by someone who might not be paying that much attention.

Can I get an amen?

Seriously, if I see typos, I think: Low credibility. I don’t like having to read over a passage again and again. I’m not talking about speakers of English as a foreign language making mistakes— often, I find non-natives have better English — or the occasional mistake. It happens.

But if you see nothing wrong with these phrases, others may not take you seriously:

“Me and I so-and-so bought…” So-and-so and I bought

“They was…” They were

“I would of” I would’ve. I would have

Once you realize your sore points or someone calls you out on it, it’s amazing how often you notice others making the same mistakes you did, and in the case of spelling bees, you never misspell that word again!

I Write Like

Sherry — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:25:52 +0000

Looks like I’m not the only one perplexed about my “I Write Like” results.

From the Associated Press:

The New Yorker found that an invitation to a birthday party was James Joycean. Many others were aghast to discover they wrote similarly to “The Da Vinci Code” scribe Dan Brown.

I know I was!

Chestnykh [whose second language is English] modeled the site on software for e-mail spam filters. This means that the site’s text analysis is largely keyword based. Even if you write in short, declarative, Hemingwayesque sentences, its your word choice that may determine your comparison.

Most writers will tell you, though, that the most telling signs of influence come from punctuation, rhythm and structure. I Write Like does account for some elements of style by things such as number of words per sentence.

Chestnykh has uploaded works by about 50 authors — three books for each, he said. That, too, explains some of its shortcomings.

This is one of those Internet sensations we should have seen coming (or thought of first). After all, all of us have taken the taken a “Harry Potter — Hogwarts House Sorting Hat Quiz” at one time or another…

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

Hurrah for recognition

Sherry — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:01:14 +0000

Taking a picture so that my business page design would work paid off — literally. I was named one of the employees of the month and won $100.

From the e-mail:

—Special Recognition: Designer Sherry Mims for her extra effort in designing the business page on Sunday, June 27. Sherry thought the page would look more appealing with a photograph to accompany a story about Keiser University, so she went out and took the photo herself.

I was also nominated for Behind the Scenes Hero.

Works for me!

Analyze your writing

Sherry — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:10:15 +0000

When I plug in some paragraphs from one of my favorite articles, I get:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Full disclosure: I typed in some of my fiction first and got Dan Brown. Go figure. Maybe this means I’ll be a famous author? That’s what I’ll keep telling myself anyway. Ha.

H/T Jess for doing the quiz first.

I’m a photographer, part II

Sherry — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:24:51 +0000

On Sunday — for Monday’s paper — I drove to Keiser University to take a picture of the building because I needed a piece of art for an article, and we didn’t have one.

While I wouldn’t exactly call what I did getting inspired, it was dedication. I did it because I found only ONE way to design around a story with an awkwardly sized box, and that included finding a picture to break up the text and fill out a long right column. (You can’t exactly use filler ads to plug the front.)

Keiser University in Daytona Beach, above, is among 14 campuses across Florida.

(This is the image very cropped. WordPress doesn’t allow me to show the whole thing, but you can click on it for a larger view.)

Of course, I told people I drove to the campus to take a picture of the building, and some people saw it in the next day’s paper. One editor said it was a great building mug and framed well. The designer, who I show my work to, said, “Now I know you’ve been bitten by the design bug. You took a picture just so your design would work!” Another one came up the next day and told me I was mentioned in the afternoon meeting. Our newsroom’s managing editor even wrote me this nice e-mail (and CC’d our executive editor):

At today’s critique, we learned that you were putting together the business page yesterday and thought the design would look a lot better with a piece of art with the Keiser University story. So, you got up and went out and took it yourself.
That’s great dedication. Thanks so much.

See the picture here with the article by Mark Harper while the N-J still has it available online.)

So I guess I was a photographer for the biz page again!

Jumpy copy editor

Sherry — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:07:15 +0000

My friend Bonnie, who deserves her own tag now because she sends me the coolest links, sent me a link in an e-mail with the subject line of “I will remember this the next time i see you…want you to be your best!”

Throw small projectiles at your copy editor now and then. A jumpy copy editor is an accurate copy editor.

Huh. So that’s why we used to throw those Florida Press Club stress balls at each other all the time!

New blog series

Sherry — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:33:58 +0000

I’m going to review some books, shows or movies where the main character (or even a minor character if he or she is interesting enough) is a journalist…or copy editor if I can find one. Sometimes —like when I watched the now-defunct “Eastwick” — I want to throw something at the television. Other times, like when I reviewed “Veronica Guerin,” about an Irish journalist, for The Oracle in 2003 (unfortunately no link), I was very impressed.

Give some suggestions, people. Someone already suggested “The Wire” to me a long time ago, and I’ve been meaning to watch it. What else? Keep in mind, I’m not looking for high art. Feel free to give me some so-horrible-they’re-great examples of Journalism Depictions Gone Wrong.

If I still had the particular books, I would review some GREAT examples of romance heroines doing the “journalism thing” (hint: really not journalism), but I don’t remember the specifics.

And should I call this series Fake Journalists?

Fictional Journalists or Journalists in Fiction sounds so dry…and not so likely to bring in random traffic from teh interwebs.

Fun with Keynote et al

Sherry — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:53:54 +0000

I’ve made Amir into an Apple fan. Who knew it would be so easy? I should have known, though, that the software would draw him in.

He’s had success selling his holding pattern tutorial for pilots, but after some time, needed a way to get a fresh audience for PilotsCafe. Maybe something to put on YouTube or Metacafe?

That’s where this promo made in Keynote, a software that makes flowing presentations, iMovie, and Audacity, a free audio editor and recorder, comes in.

Yes, that’s my voice narrating again.

I’m rather proud. Both of us were sick this week, but you’d never know it from “Holding Pattern Entries — Figure it out by drawing.”

I can’t wait to do more of these.