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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.
no subject
I also have that feeling of things leaping out of the page at me. It really grated on me that the spelling and grammar in the Merc (San Jose Mercury News for non-local readers) were noticeably worse during the month of September. I attribute it to the number of "Big Stories" at the time, so they were sloppy.
The Hershey's Syrup change is an impressive accomplishment. The person I would really like to congratulate is whoever managed to finally change the express lanes to "N items or fewer".
no subject
I bet you're right that the folks at the Merc were probably more rushed than usual in September and thus a bit more careless. It does make sense.
Want to hear something a bit scary? Some publishing houses are abandoning copyediting entirely. They're telling authors to go hire it done themselves if they want any. Needless to say, spelling and grammatical errors in novels and outright factual errors in textbooks are dramatically on the rise. :-(