Last fall I had the amazing opportunity to interview a real live presidential candidate for my work with the e-magazine, 10,000 Couples. I was soooooo nervous as the time drew near for our conversation over the internet! But Mr. Fred Karger, a lesser-known moderate Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, was absolutely wonderful! He was such fun to talk to, easy-going, generous with his time, very down-to-earth, and had no “agenda” whatsoever — which is to say, he did not seem compelled to twist any question I asked so he could say whatever he wanted to say, even if it had nothing to do with the question. So, you see… not at all like the typical candidate for public office.
Though, of course, we’re hoping we won’t have to try it for long.
About a week ago, my husband learned his graphic design job was being moved out-of-state (and he was not offered the chance to tag along). Of course, we went through a whole range of emotions — a bit of relief, as things had gotten complicated at that job; but mostly, as you might imagine, anxiety and nervousness, not only about finding a new job but also about the likely need to move and about how close we are now to the new school year (could this not have happened back in May or June? Really??).
Oh, I knoooooowwwwww… I’ve been remiss about blogging for waaaaaay too long! This is how I’ve always been with journaling, too — off again, on again, always having a hard time keeping at it faithfully. I like journaling — the idea of it, that is — the concept of recording my thoughts to look back on later, especially thoughts about faith and life, prayer concerns that I can see answered in retrospect, questions I’m pondering, that sort of thing. But the only time I’ve kept at it steadily has been when I was traveling. I faithfully recorded my experiences in Norway daily for two weeks the summer before my junior year in college. No, two weeks isn’t much to brag about, but then I also faithfully journaled (maybe not every day, but regularly) throughout my five months in Spain during the spring of my junior year in college. That, I think, was the last time I faithfully kept a journal. So, no big surprise here that thinking of something to write about and making a point to do it every few days for the sake of my blog does not come easily to me. So, my apologies. But since I’m here now…
I’ve decided to start something new and make a series of it — maybe a once-a-week sort of thing; we’ll see. As a copy editor, and a fanatical one at that — one who can’t turn off her proofreading brain, even after the client-based work is done for the day — I am often not just annoyed but appalled by the errors I see “out there.” Now, because my aim here is not to shame anyone — and since, after all, I wouldn’t have much of a freelance editing career if everyone had the gift of excellent writing skills — and because whereas I have strong writing skills, others have business or math or science or parenting skills I will never have — I will not reveal the identity of a writer, business, book, etc. with whom/which an error is associated. What I want to do is to turn these frequent nerve-shredding nuisances into something positive. So, every few posts, I plan to use a real-life sentence or phrase or some other snippet of writing I’ve seen as a demonstration of what the correct construct should be and why.
So, here goes. This is a common error in ordinary, casual conversation as well as in writing:
“It contains a story about my husband and I!” No. “It contains a story about my husband and ME.” Why “me” instead of “I”? Here’s a helpful trick: Take the prepositional phrase (“about my husband and…”) and omit the object of the preposition that is not the pronoun in question. Get rid of it so you can focus only on the pronoun. Now try it both ways: “It contains a story about I” or “It contains a story about me.” Clearly, even in casual conversation, we would say “me.” So, too, should you choose “me” — an object pronoun, it’s called, whereas “I” is a subject pronoun — when there is another object in the phrase as well: “It contains a story about my husband and me!”
Another post sooner than later… I promise!
Oh, and if you see an erroneous grammar or punctuation construction “out there,” please mention it in a comment below. I’ll do my best to explain what’s right and what’s wrong, and why.
I am so delighted to share with you the promo video for a soon-to-be-released book I’ve had the honor of editing. Author Bathsheba Smithen is only in her mid-20s, but she has wisdom beyond her years. Watch the video (Bathsheba is the first individual in it)… and then read the book’s Foreword, below, which she also gave me the privilege of writing:
Editor’s Foreword
“All is vanity and a chasing after wind. … So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly…” (Ecclesiastes 1:14 and others; 2:12, NRSV)
When Bathsheba Smithen first invited me to write this Foreword, I replied with a laugh, “You want a pasty white girl from small-town Minnesota to introduce a book by an African American from Washington, D.C.?!” Read the rest of this entry »
I have been so blessed in my work as a freelance copy editor to meet some truly inspiring people I would never have met otherwise! I’d like to introduce you to one of the busiest of them, I’m quite certain: David E. Watters.
Sometimes my copy editing crosses over into the opportunity to do some original writing, as it did when an article was urgently needed for the April “10,000 Couples” web-magazine for which I serve as copy editor. I hope you’ll take time to read the entire article here, to see photos and a relevant sidebar, and perhaps even to subscribe to “10,000 Couples” if you wish (it’s entirely free, and though you can read the whole e-mag without subscribing, doing so has its perks — like allowing you to post comments). But to give you a teaser, here’s a bit from my article, and a video message from David himself: Read the rest of this entry »
This morning, I took the time to follow a few Facebook links posted by people I know. Each took me to a piece of fine writing recently posted in cyberspace. The articles are quite different from one another, but what they all have in common is the high caliber with which they are written. I’ll provide links to the articles — as well as to two other examples of fine writing I came across recently — at the end of this post.
Some people are not convinced that the quality of their writing — correctness of punctuation, accuracy of spelling, smoothness of sentence flow, and so on — really matters. “People know what I mean!” groused one writer for whom I used to proofread. “And if they don’t get it, they’re not the kind of readers I want reading my stuff anyway.” Well! Read the rest of this entry »
