Why I care
I did not set out to be a website copy editor. Come to think of it, I did not set out to take on many of the varied roles I have filled over my lifetime. I suspect that is the case for many of us.
After all, when you first decided to take on the role, the business that caused you to turn to the internet, to build a website, your first thought was probably not about the need to create, or pay someone to create for you – the content for a website. You may or may not have thought about the fact that poor grammar could be one of stumbling blocks between you and success. By now, if you have been reading some of this site’s “Words Matter” pages you may have been startled to discover how strongly people may respond to grammar glitches. Sometimes we come at our discoveries from an indirect angle. My discovery was a bit like that.
I was a professor, teaching students in a city college class the skills needed for them to become successful addictions counselors, a profession that had been mine until I switched to life coaching. As you might imagine, there is more to addictions counseling than simply counseling. There is paperwork. Oh yes! Paperwork! For that there are standards, and in New York state those standards are applied through randomly occurring and unannouced visits from State inspectors. They select client charts at random for inspection. In addition to looking for appropriate treatment processes they look for… surprise… clearly written reports that includc decent spelling, and correct grammar.
This seemed to be a surprise to some of my students. Over the years I developed a system for giving them feedback and suggestions for correction without putting them down or making them feel “less than” (as some of them would have put it).
Fast forward to retirement from teaching and back to life coaching. Most life coaches make one or more websites an integral part of the marketing side of their business. Browsing the internet for example that I might – or might not – want to folllow, I was startled to notice how many sites had grammatical weaknesses.
There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, including the story of being bullied in my childhood, being saved by an older kid who became my hero but was not allowed to be my friend because he spoke so ungrammatically – something that my mother would NOT want me to learn to do. That, however, is another story.
just know that I do care, and that I do my very best for every client, even when it involves taking more time, and more back-and-forth discussion, than is usually necessary.
If you really want to know that boring resumé type stuff about my education and experience, feel free to go to… surprise… my Education and Experience page.
Links to other “About” pages:
Testimonials The Process How I Give Feedback
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