I’m Tired of Medium Editors Introducing Errors into my Work

I’m a professional editor — I promise you I know what I’m doing

I’ve written for several publications over the course of my time on Medium. I enjoy writing for publications, reaching new audiences, and meeting individual constraints on typography or word count. I thrive in boundaries, so these often work for me.

But often I will re-read my published articles and find errors introduced. I get correcting blatant mistakes like misspellings or the wrong word choice. That isn’t what happened to me.

Also, I know the errors weren’t mine, and now I have proof. I wrote a recent article in Google Keep, copied and pasted into Medium, added topics, and submitted for publication.

In my Google Keep note, it says,

“Nostalgia,” I replied immediately. No thought required. “It tastes like childhood.”

The published article, on the other hand, says,

“Nostalgia,” I replied immediately. No thought is required. “It tastes like childhood.”

The added word here is wrong. First, my fragment was intentional. I wanted to show how little thought was required, so I used a fragment. As few words as I needed to get my point across. (The previous sentence is a fragment too, also intentional. I wanted to show how it works.) Second, even if one were going to be a stickler for the rules and say they don’t allow fragments even for effect, the rest of the sentence is in the past tense. Present tense is wrong.

There are some grammar and punctuation rules that are fluid and allow room for voice. Mixing tense in a single sentence is not one of them. My words went from acceptable, intentional, non-standard English to a tense error that reads stilted to me in addition to being wrong.

There was a second error introduced in the same piece, too, this one regarding punctuation.

I wrote this:

When I first told my dad I was looking for an ADHD diagnosis for my kid, he said, “Well, if that’s ADHD, then I have it too.”

But when I re-read the article today, I noticed it reads like this:

When I first told my dad I was looking for an ADHD diagnosis for my kid and all the symptoms I saw in my son; he said, “Well, if that’s ADHD, then I have it too.”

That semicolon is misused. A period doesn’t make sense there, so a semicolon doesn’t make sense there. That’s how semicolons work; they are substitutes for periods.

Illinois Valley Community College has a faculty guide to English 1001 that talks about the semicolon. It says,

Semicolons are often misused. Some writers seem to think that semicolons are fancy commas that create longer pauses that commas. This is not true. Semicolons NEVER should be used to try to create a “pause” longer than that achieved by a comma.

In the case of my sentence from my ADHD article, all the way from “When” to “son” is an introductory clause as defined by Purdue OWL. Introductory clauses are followed by commas. Even when they are long.

The Utah State University writing guide has this to say about introductory clauses:

In order to indicate to the reader where the main thought begins and ends, and thus clarify the writer’s point, a comma should be used after the introductory language.

I have been a professional editor for more than a decade. Of course I still have typos and mistakes when I publish on Medium. Everyone needs an editor, including me. But seeing errors added to my work has me frustrated.

Has anyone else noticed editors introducing errors rather than helping to fix typos?