I'm training a friend of mine how to proofread. It makes me a little nervous since I edit his fiction and he occasionally does stuff like change the name of a character halfway through the story but I figured I'd give him a chance. I know the proofs are pretty clean so we'll see. Anyway, this guy and I email each other throughout the day--usually goofy stuff about how unAmerican I am because I don't watch sports ("Your hatred of sports, and by extension, America, once again defies words") so I'm glad we can now extend that to editorial stuff.
John: I'm trying to make proofreading more exciting, more XTREME!
This isn't surprising but I think I actually kind of like it.
I've been enjoying going through the Chicago manual.
Me: I'm such a Chicago geek that I've signed up to be alerted whenever new questions are added to their web page.
You can also email them and usually they'll answer. I noticed that when I worked for Princeton I got a much faster turnaround time (usually the same day). Now that I work at the deaf school, I'm lucky if they respond in two weeks. Bastards. Yet another example of the oppression of the deaf world!
John: What have you done to me??
I didn't sleep last night because I was on the Chicago site reading about judicial citations.
And now I'm constantly correcting everyone around me. My wife, my friends, I'm even correcting my cats, (Chicago recommends meow, pause, meow to ask for food rather than the antiquated meow, meow, meow)!
God help me.
Me: Hah! It is addictive. And it’s weird how attached you can become to certain things. A few years ago when the new edition came out, I thought it was blasphemy that suddenly they were allowing postal abbreviations of states in the references. What?? Not on my watch, mister.
On the other spectrum, I just got a call from my brother Colin. He started it off by saying “I have a question for an editor. In the phrase “too much fun,” how do you spell ‘too’”? To which I replied “Uh, t-o-o.” There was a shocked silence for a second and then he said in an aggrieved tone “WHAT?” In the background I could hear my sister-in-law yelling, “HA HA! I was right! I told you so! Once again the wife is right!” And then he tried to argue with me--he tried to tell me that I was wrong. The nerve! I finally convinced him I was right. He then said “Don’t tell, Mom.” Ha! He also told me if I ever had a question about windows (he’s a customer liaison for a window company), I should call him up. Uh, okay.
Of course I’m going to tell Mom. I’m his big sister. That’s my job.
Last October when I was down at the Outer Banks with my parents, I told them about how my brothers used to tie ropes to the backs of their bikes and then ride them off the pier (they would then climb back on to the pier and haul the bikes up from the bottom. I remember watching them do this over and over, thinking “I’m related to morons.” My parents were shocked! They had had no idea. Though my father said “Well, that explains why their chains were always rusty.”
At Christmas, my mother brought the subject up and they both just started laughing. Dan said “yeah, and when we started getting nicer bikes, we just stole the Cope kids' bikes and used theirs.” I was surprised when my mother started laughing at that. “You know, I don’t even feel bad about that after what that family put us and you (pointing at me). I think that’s great.”
[During a snowball fight, I managed to hit one of the Cope boys in the face. Because, as I understand it, the point of a snowball fight is to try and hit the other side with snowballs. Apparently I am wrong. He promptly ran over and punched me in the mouth. I had just gotten braces so my teeth were loose to begin…he knocked out one of my front teeth. My parents rushed me to the dentist but he couldn’t save it. So, using the braces, they shifted all my teeth over so that a side tooth was now my front tooth and then they ground it down and put a veneer on it. Which has fallen off multiple times. It’s currently chipped and I need to get that fixed.]
