Eats Shoots Leaves

As my friend Susan says, "The two things one should never sacrifice even during down times are travel and education." That is a total paraphrase and a COPY EDITOR would so talk to the fact checker to make sure it was a direct quote. If not, it would be changed on the page.

I know these things and more because I took a one day copy editing class. It was fantastic. Taught by Cheryl Della Pietra who, if she ever googles (not capitalized when used as a verb) this blog, will have some red pen things to say about it! I was so struck by her because she had such a sincere and infectious enthusiasm for grammar and structure and style. She was amazing. I wanted to put her in my pocket like a thesaurus.


I loved the copy editing exercises, but I failed the must not fail if you want to be a copy editor spelling test miserably. Annoint, supercede, supoena, occassion, liquify, descicrate, irresistable, battallion, occurance etc. I spelled them all incorrectly so you could not immediately think "What an idiot, that is so obvious." Now you can figure them out yourself.

The course made me realize that I need to be a writer and have someone else copy edit me! But I so did love the love of grammar and am in total agreement that we way overuse the M dash nowadays -- at least I think so.