Anal people, unite!

[cjsmith]

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.

Comments

[firecat]

Editing is pretty good freelance work. And as a programmer, you'll be in a good position to break into technical editing, which pays better than other editing.

You don't have to commit to it right away, because you can start doing it on the side.

I think spelling ability is genetic or otherwise hard-coded in the brain. I've always been a natural speller, but my dad, who is also a voracious reader, spells really badly.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I didn't know technical editing would be any different in pay scale. Thanks for the idea!

That's an interesting concept (that spelling is hard-coded). It's hard for me to comprehend what the world *looks* like to someone who doesn't automatically spell very well. I look at me and I look at someone else and I guess that another usual difference (voracious reading) might be linked. But evidently that's not, or at least not always, the case.

Dang I make a lot of typos when drunk. I just thought I should mention that.