Helpful hints from work – #18

(This is the latest in a series of tips I write for work. My boss wrote a few tips for the company blog at the start of the year, so the delay between tips 17 and 18 here is from waiting my turn to come up with and share new material.)

Today’s tip: confusion with “lead”

English can be confusing when words have different pronunciations for the same spelling. Today’s example looks at “lead.”

Lead (sounds like led) = a noun meaning the element that is found in pencils and can be harmful in certain substances.

Example: “Happy Fun Metallic Bear was recently recalled after consumer safety groups found that the toy had high levels of lead.”

To lead (sounds like leed) = a verb meaning to guide something or direct operations.

Present tense: “Bob, lead Milton to my office. I need to tell him that if he could move his desk to the basement, that’d be great.”

The past tense of “to lead” is “led.”

Past tense: “After they led him to the basement, Milton threatened to burn down the building, but no one heard because he was mumbling.”

You be the editor: an ethical dilemma

Being an editor requires using good ethics in addition to correct grammar — we’re taught to attribute statements to their rightful owners, not to plagiarize, etc. Given this situation, what would you do?

An employee who has been thrown into producing PR pieces, but who doesn’t have a strong writing background, turns in a press release about a recent charity event the company sponsored. In addition to numerous grammatical errors and factual errors, a check of the charity’s Web site shows that paragraphs from the release are lifted straight from the homepage. This isn’t the first time this writer has made major mistakes, and this person doesn’t like to admit to being wrong. The piece is on deadline set to go to the CEO next in the route. What do you do to address what looks like plagiarism?

a) Take the piece back to the writer and find out what happened.
b) Write down your concerns, but pass along the piece so the higher-ups can see the writer’s work and be aware of potential problems.
c) Other (let me know your solution)