In a message dated 1/23/2003 1:40:22 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> I once worked with an advertising director who was like this. She was > responsible for writing house ads, but as a writer she was beyond bad--she > was _awful_. She couldn't punctuate, her word choice was approximate at > best, she had no sense for subtlety. But her very awfulness made her > impossible to work with. She would never run her work past the copyeditor or > me; she would actually _withhold_ her work from review because she was > annoyed when people made changes to what she'd written. When called on it, > her response was usually that _she_ knew what she meant, and therefore "the > readers will know what I mean." This even extended to spelling mistakes! > She'd spell inevitable "inevitible" and then defend herself by saying, "So > what? Look at it. You can't tell that that's 'inevitable'? Anybody can tell > what that's supposed to be." Protests that edited magazines were actually > supposed to be _correct_ (and that this was what the editorial department > spent most of the workdays doing) were lost on her. She just couldn't see > why it mattered. > > I'm like this with numbers. I'll be quoting numbers and I'll skip a digit > and say billion when I mean million,* and somebody will call me on it and > I'll say "whatever." Of course it's not "whatever." If the person I'm > talking to is good with numbers and gains a subtle > understanding of meanings > from numbers, it matters very much. Mike, sorry. I probably get going on this subject as much as you do -- in the opposite direction. Having hung around writers, I think those in love with the written word have a hard time understanding there are others who aren't. And some who are rather indifferent to it. Just as some don't care for B&W photography, some don't care for color photography, some don't care for photography, some don't care for art, and some don't care for numbers. Should those people jump through hoops to please those who do care? I don't think so. Admittedly someone being published in a magazine should be willing to be proof read. But I read your story quite different from the interpretation you put on it. I think that woman knew quite well that she was a bad writer, she was just defensive. Tired of being corrected all the time, and probably tired of being corrected by the *same* people all the time. (Been there, done that.) So she ended up hiding her work to avoid constant correction -- to avoid feeling "put down" and to avoid feeling bad about herself. Pure human nature. I have yet to meet a person who likes being corrected all the time. Sometimes yes, all the time, or fairly frequently, no. And some can't even handle being corrected infrequently. Not everyone is going to love the written word. Some of us just view it as a means to an end. That's just a fact of life. Again, apologies for losing my temper. Doe aka Marnie Even if it wasn't that evident.
