If you count the four years I was an editor on my college’s newspaper and my two years as an Associate Editor for a commercial construction news bidding paper BEFORE I got my first job covering the pharmaceutical industry, I’ve been an editor for, well, a very long time.
In that time, I’ve seen – and made – my share of editorial mistakes.
I remember when we first got spellcheck on our computers and for fun I was running previously published copy through the system – and there it was – hit me like a ton of bricks. I misspelled “mixer” in a subhead – I left out the “e”. And of course, a week later I was at a trade show, standing in the mixer company’s booth, hoping no one had noticed. But of course, one of the execs pointed it out to me.
Not one of my finer editorial moments.
Once I was also admonished over the phone by a reader who said I consistently spelled “cleanroom” wrong. I think at the time I was spelling it as two separate words as “clean room.” His contention was that “clean room” was something your mother told you to do.
While “cleanroom” is a pharmaceutical facility. I’m still not 100% which version is correct.
But I have caught a few whoppers of mistakes as well. For example, there was the time in the middle of an article when an author called the FDA the Federal Drug Administration. While I never got a thank you from the author for saving his reputation – I’m sure he appreciated it (or more likely, never noticed).
The pandemic has also caused some confusion as I’ve seen COVID-19 published with all capitals, or just with a capital “C” – Covid-19. I prefer COVID-19 – so that’s what you’ll be seeing in these pages.
Finally, there is the issue of CGMP or cGMP for the abbreviation of current good manufacturing practices.
I was taught that, since what is current is always changing, the “c” should be lower case. Yet in many cases I see it frequently capitalized.
If someone reading this has a definitive answer on which way it should be – I would be very interested in hearing from you.
So – yeah – “C” can be confusing.
Maybe with a little editorial decongestant we can clear this up.