Hello,
I am the son of a copy editor who learned early on to read public text out loud. Reading aloud forces you to look at each word and understand its meaning. It brings the common errors like were; where; there; their; quickly to the fore. I'm not a grammar-nazi and make my own fair share of mistakes. As you can see from books and web pages today, the supposed professionals do as well. My biggest grammar pet peeve is people mixing up site(location) and sight(to see).
I generally make minor edits to pages as I come across them. Mostly it is a grammar correction or occasionally a re-wording to clarify a point or improve readability. One recent edit was for a line which stated before my fix, "an iron bar was wrapped around a map to disguise it". In real life i came across this traffic accident after a ten thousand menus had been printed: Fries - $2.25; Loaded Fries - $2.25. Turns out the second price should have been $3.25.
The other thing I learned early on was that if no one corrects you, there is little incentive to improve, or even knowledge that you need to. This applies to more than just writing, but to most things in life.
I look forward to one day knowing or building something unique enough to merit its own page on the major wiki. I do manage an internal wiki for my employer but it mostly contains procedures and processes that we as a group figure out.
You may see double edits by me as I notice something I left out of my original edit. Enjoy reading and wasting large amounts of time following the links.
This user is interested in maps. |