Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Humiliation of Being an Editor

One of the things that seniors in our organization do is "Review" the storyboards that are scripted by other writers for various e-learning programs.

Most (if not all) would agree with this:
Grammar, words and spelling are humiliating. I used to be good at this kind of thing in school, but going back to editing reminds me how shaky are the foundations of one’s knowledge. Where do commas go when you use quotation marks? Is ‘none’ singular or plural? Is ‘willpower’ one word or two?

[. . .] I must stop being an editor. Two things happen: You quickly turn into a pedant, while at the same time realising that you knew far less about the English language than you thought you did.

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