You Don’t Say

I downloaded “The Blueprint for Change, Barack Obama’s Plan for America” last week from the campaign’s Web site. It’s good reading, and I think Obama has a good plan for America.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a good proofreader. The plan is riddled with a bunch of Proofreading 101 mistakes.

Take this sentence, for example, from the Health Care section of the plan:

The insurance business today is dominated by a small group of large companies that has been gobbling up their rivals.

A good proofreader, regardless of political affiliation, would cringe at the mistake in that sentence.

The dependent clause, that has been gobbling up their rivals, modifies or explains the plural noun companies. So the verb in the clause should be in the plural form: that have been gobbling up. That long prepositional phrase should read of large companies that have been gobbling up their rivals.

Then there’s this gaffe in capitalization in a subheading, also in the Health Care section:

Too Little is Spent on Prevention and Public Health

I won’t argue with the position stated in the subhead, but as a proofreader, I’d flag that lowercase is.  Is is a verb. In titles, headlines, and subheadings, all verbs–even two-letter ones like is–take a capital letter.

Yes, these are minor mistakes and don’t diminish the merits of Obama’s plan. But there are too many of these minor mistakes–I counted 10 in the first 12 pages–for such an important document.

Come on, Obama, you raised $66 million in August. Surely there’s enough cash in the campaign coffers to afford a proofreader or two.