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Saturday afternoon I took a short course titled "Become a Copyeditor or Proofreader." Amusing factoid: the guy who spoke to us is the person responsible for Hershey's Syrup spelling "recipe" correctly on their bottles. I knew there were rare other people who'd notice such a thing, but it was validating to meet a guy who writes to companies and gets such mistakes corrected!
As for my fellow students, I have never seen so much anal-retentiveness gathered in one room. Wow. I had found my tribe!
I was a little disappointed that no one there, including the speaker, could spell better than I could. :-)
I'm sure I could make a living at this if I spent a bit of time building up a resume and a portfolio. It won't pay what embedded OS work pays, of course, but if I went freelance it would be a fine supplemental job. I haven't yet decided to commit to it. I'm mulling it over.
As for my fellow students, I have never seen so much anal-retentiveness gathered in one room. Wow. I had found my tribe!
I was a little disappointed that no one there, including the speaker, could spell better than I could. :-)
I'm sure I could make a living at this if I spent a bit of time building up a resume and a portfolio. It won't pay what embedded OS work pays, of course, but if I went freelance it would be a fine supplemental job. I haven't yet decided to commit to it. I'm mulling it over.
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You and I should have a spell-off, though I'm sure you'd win. I think the hallmark of a good editor is her relationship with the dictionary... or is that just my relationship with American Heritage that we're talking about here?
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We went through "The World's Hardest Spelling Test" -- several pages full of commonly-misspelled words. He asked us to imagine that this was the manuscript and we had five minutes before FedEx pick-up. The words were wonderful. Liquefy. Straitjacket. Shoo-in. Opthalmology. Gauge. Ibuprofen. He had once caught a newspaper headline with "ibuprophen" in it!
I'm sure you're right that the best editors use reference material very frequently. That's something I'd have to learn, actually; I usually trust myself.