Adventures in editing

We have 3 newsletters at my job, which I manage. I write two of them myself, and the third is our employee newsletter - we have an editorial board who do most of the writing, and I'm the executive editor.

We have a new board member who was to write about our new defibrillators, since she's also on the Health & Safety committee. She submitted her article to me on Monday with this email:

this kinda sucks but i've just been insanely busy-promise better results
next time
your the best !!!!!

Shudder. This is a punctuation nightmare. And, I'm the best WHAT? Oh, I see, you mean "you're the best." Shudder.

So I open the attachment entititled "Defribrilators" - great. You left out one L and added a superfluous R. Perfect. This is going to be good, I can tell. The 'article' she submitted is below. I say 'article' because everything but the first paragraph was copied and pasted verbatum from an announcement that was sent out two weeks ago. Sorry, that's not fair. She did change it somewhat. She copied and pasted it, then messed with the font, and screwed with punctuation and spacing for no apparent reason. Oh, and she changed "fool-proof" to "idiot proof" - nice. What I love most is that she starts the article off by reminding our readers of a fellow employee who died of a heart attack at a work conference 10 years ago. Way to get their attention by hitting them in the face.

Without further ado, here's what she submitted. I think I'll highlight a few glaring issues, just for fun.

__________________________________________

AUTOMATED EXTERNAL DEFRIBRILLATORS (ya, that's not spelled correctly.
That's why there's a wavy red line under it.)


Had debrillators (What?!) been available at the conference years ago Mike Lenucci might still be with us .But they were not and he is not.

An AED is used to treat the most common causes of sudden cardiac arrest where the heart stops pumping. When used correctly, the AED automatically analyzes the heart rhythm to determine if a shock is required. If it is, the AED sends a shock
across the heart to reactivate the heart. The use of this device in conjunction with CPR can be repeated until emergency medical services arrive.

A few weeks ago Our Company made the investment of several defribillator (this was spelled correctly in the announcement she took it from) units to be made available on each floor. Training was provided to select employees as to how to employ these units.But training was not essential since these 1 use only units are virtually idiot proof.They will not generate a charge if a heartbeat is detected or if the unit is not placed on the torso properly .Each are easily accessible on all OurCompany (there should be a space between those words) floors The following first Aiders have completed AED training and are your primary resource for using these
devices:

***********
***********
***********
***********
Training for the remaining First Aiders will be completed over the next few months.

AED's have been installed at the following locations: ***********, ***********,
*********** .


Please feel free to contact anyone on the Joint Health and Safety committee for any further information.

__________________________________________

Awesome. Just awesome. I'm so glad she joined our editorial board. Now I can look forward to rewriting her articles every month. Yay!