I've got a dispatch from the trenches; I don't usually do editing work on the weekend, but I was stuck in a spreadsheet all day Friday and didn't get around to my other job. Here's the offending sentence:

I told her it was a credit card and she asked if I had a pin #.

Now, like any good copy editor I know that PIN stands for Personal Identification Number, so pin number is redundant. In a direct quote I want accuracy, period, which is why I didn't touch the ATM machine in the previous sentence. That's right, I did, and without even a [sic].

I'm fixing this. I can't make direct quotes better, i.e. change history, but it's my job to make writing better and the meaning of the sentence isn't changed by this revision.

I say PIN number all the time, btw. Who doesn't?

Labels: editing