Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Good Writer or Obnoxious Editor with a Perfectionism Complex?

I know I'm definitely not a bad writer, but I wouldn't consider my writing to be amazing or above-and-beyond expectations.

(Personally I think people's expectations are just way too low.)

But seriously, how hard are these basic rules of grammar?

-"University" is a proper noun, as in referring specifically to the University of Michigan; "university" refers to any school of higher learning.
-Along the same lines, if you call an organization, say, the Smile Project, and thereafter refer to it only as "the Project", "Project" should be capitalized. If you're just referring to a project that the organization does (as in one project of many) you simply say, "the project". Is that too hard to understand?
-Spell check people. If we're not going to spend our time actually learning how to spell the words right, then we should, for god sakes, actually USE this ingenious tool that we all excuse ourselves to so often.
-Here's a hint: punctuation is logical. Don't just throw marks in where they look good, have some logic beyond the Paris-Hilton-fashion-trend-of-appearances for why you put it where, and then, more than likely, it will make sense.
-Good god, PLEASE do not use the same word twice (or three or four or five times) in one sentence whenever possible. Shift F7 people. Is that so much to ask???

I think this is one of the downfalls of spending too much time alone. I don't get to (have to?) experience other people's styles (and inadequacies) as often. Ego-centric perfectionist? Probably. But friends, family, teachers, colleagues, and supervisors still think my writing is good, so can my recommendations and writing logic be so wrong?*

*I realize, of course, that there are likely to be a few mistakes in this little rant. But let's just call it therapy for the claw-my-eyes-out editing I've been doing for the past day and leave it at that. Okay? Thanks.

P.S. On the unlikely chance that anyone who wrote said pieces that I am editing is actually reading this, my apologies. It seems that I am getting a littl pissed off--I mean frustrated--with people due to my lack of social interaction (I'm all for being productive, obviously, but little morale boosting sign of a care for my existence beyond being a work horse wouldn't hurt. (My it's easy to be pissy when it's not a face-to-face conversation. I think that's the problem with the world... but that's another rant. :-)

1 comment:

Kathleen said...

THANK YOU. No, those rules aren't that hard. But mind you, my current peeves are lower-brow, as per my students:

-Please don't un-compound compound words. Cannot is one word. Mailbox is one. The list goes on.

-"Are" is a verb. "Our" is a pronoun. Just because you think they sound the same doesn't mean they're spelled the same.

Harumph.

We're not mean, we just want people to follow the effing rules!