A guest post by Diane’s chief proof-reader and editor:
Anonymous Husby-Figure
As all of you out there in blog-land know by now, my Beloved
Diane likes to write. I for one think that she does it very well. But – horrors! – sometimes she makes a
mistake.
Some time ago, she appointed me to be her
proof-reader/editor/fixer-upper by insisting that, although she really does
proof-read her columns before she posts them, sometimes typos and grammos just
slip in there and hide.
“Grammo” is the pet word I concocted for her very infrequent
“grammatical” errors.
Over the months, the
most frequent of her infrequent grammos was the use of the wrong form of “its”
or “it’s” as in: “Its simply not acceptable if it’s apostrophe is missing when
its really needed or present when its
not.”
So to speak.
So I do try to catch Diane’s
typos and grammos, because I do believe it makes for a better read not
to have them in there, and I believe that it shows respect to you, her readers.
I do not claim to be a perfect writer, but I did learn early
while chasing an elusive education the importance of being word-perfect. So if you will indulge me, I will do as my
Beloved does so well and regale you with the story of where my typo-grammo
mania came from.
It was the early 1980s and I was in a graduate school senior
seminar, learning French Revolution history and cultural anthropology from Dr.
de Luna. (His name of course is of
French extraction, and we often heard about his relationship to the moon – “lune”
in French. Some of my classmates
preferred to suggest that it was “loon”, others wondered whether there was a
vampire connection, but most of us ended by irreverently, although
affectionately, referring to him as
Professor De Lunatic.) Now besides
endless etymological meanderings about his name, Dr. De Luna liked to tell us,
almost daily, about how any written work, as in papers and articles, that we
gave him HAD TO BE WORD AND LETTER PERFECT.
A summary of his reasonings: “It is disrespectful of your reader if said
reader stumbles over typos and grammos
WHICH ARE ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE because you MISGUIDED doctoral candidates
were TOO LAZY to proof-read it. Your
work is therefore sub-standard because your miserably lame analysis and
argument that you think is intelligent discourse is unreadable because your
reader is distracted when having to stop
to figure out what it is that you MEANT to say when you made your typo . . . . . “
I think you get the point. We got the message, many many times over.
Not so lunatic, when you stop to think about it.
So, time came for us to present to the dear Professor our
first major research papers; and, a few days later, time to hand the graded
papers back and discuss them in seminar.
Dr. De Luna went around the room, handing each paper back to
its (notice this is the right one!) author, each with some mostly encouraging
commentary and all with some very vociferous praise for being letter-perfect in
the typo and grammo department.
All but one paper – the one belonging to a good friend,
Ostap.
Now you should know that Ostap had a great sense of humour,
was actually a very good scholar, but he had not internalized the message about
being word-perfect. He just didn’t think
it was all that important. At least not
yet.
We came to discover, by the Professor’s 10-minute+
recapitulation of the obviously degenerate if not criminal intent and nature of
anyone who dared to hand in a paper IN THIS SEMINAR that was anything LESS than
word perfect, once again how important this whole typo-grammo business was.
At the end of his lecture (not the one about the French
Revolution), Dr. de Luna passed this last paper to Ostap, with a scowl and a
stare, and asked: “So, Mr. Ostap, what do you think I should do about this sort
of thing? Hmmmmm!???”
Ostap quipped back without the blink of an eye: “I think you should stop worrying about it so
much! You’ll enjoy life a lot more and
live a lot longer!”
We weren’t sure how long Ostap was going to survive.
But he did, and went on to a bright future.
But not as a writer.
Dr. De Luna retired shortly after. We think it was because of a brain
aneurysm. Caused by the lodging of typos
and grammos in the blood vessels of the brain . . . .
And so, my friends, I pledge to continue doing my best to
save you from typos and grammos in my Beloved’s columns.
Its the least I can do.
(Oops!)
