Woe Is I
Wed., August 27, 02:36 PM
I think I’ve been editing too long. Even though I never had the title of editor, I have worked for editors. (As I had to explain to one HR “expert,” who said, “But you’re a secretary.”) A prime rule of proofreading is that no one can proofread his/her own work; because you know what it’s supposed to say, that’s what you’ll see.
I just loved it when one supervisor showed me her beautifully printed invitation for an upcoming event, and I saw it immediately — three l’s in “will.” They always wanted to show me, y’know, when it was too late. I handed back a pamphlet to one guy, very proud of his English skills, saying, “second paragraph, third line.” At that point he could see it — thier. They weren’t willing to believe me; I know my business.
That was a few years back, of course. People don’t hire proofreaders as much now because everyone has some sort of spell-checker. Sure; you figure out what the heck that guy meant when he wrote, “I took the cup of my pen.” I occasionally typed for that writer; he spoke with an accent, and what the spell-checker offered looked all right to him.
I’m still automatically proofreading, for whatever good it does. I am unhappy enough that I don’t read as fast as I used to, but I’m truly annoyed when bad grammar and spelling slow me down. I know that newspapers often lack the luxury of proofreading time; I have just read a couple of books by experienced writers who… Well, listen.
In one book, I had already gotten sidetracked by the fact that the author was interrupting her own time line. It was up to the reader to figure out that this dog was one she had in the past, not the one she was writing about in the previous paragraphs. Next she described a picture of “Steve and I.”
Ack! It’s a picture of us, a picture of me and a picture of you, a picture of you and me. The case isn’t supposed to change; it’s not rocket science. If you’re unsure, break it up the way I just did.
Now my sensors are operating, and sure enough, there was another glaring error: a dangling participle. Dangling participles are something like this: “Driving down the West Side, the Statue of Liberty rises from the mist.” (What does the Statue of Liberty drive, a Hummer?) To make it clearer, try “As I was driving…” or “Driving down the West Side, one can see the Statue of Liberty…”
In another book, even worse, I came to hun- at the end of a line and gover at the beginning of the next. Yes, hangover is a solid word, but hung over is two words. And you hyphenate a compound word between the entities, even if the second one begins with a vowel. The sensors were once again on call, as I noticed her name begun with a lower case letter and quotation marks opened but not closed. I am not inclined to read more books by these authors.
The beauty of the English language is that, even with errors, you can usually figure out what was intended.
It was cool enough this morning that I wore jeans and a jacket to ride my bike. I needed to take a longish (for me) ride in order to mail a letter. The Post Office has removed the box that was within walking distance. By the time I got back home, I was happy to change back into shorts.
I have been doing three to four miles each time I ride. However, the distance is not as important as the time; when I know I have pushed that thing for twenty minutes, even when I can’t get speed, then I have accomplished what I wanted.
