Most of us know by now that very little of our high school education sticks with us long enough to remember or usefully apply in our adult lives. I can no longer balance a redox reaction or tell you anything at all about Hamlet—besides that probably a lot of people died. But there is one phrase that virtually all of us learn, remember, and at least occasionally apply. That’s right, I’m talkin’ ’bout “‘I’ before ‘E,’ except after ‘C.'” I mean seriously, you’d have whole generations spelling “believe” and “receive” wrong if it weren’t for that little ditty! Of course, I still get “achieve” messed up (I literally had to look it up to be sure!) because there is a “C,” just not right before “I” and “E.”
And that’s why we all love spelling and grammar, right? No? No cheers? Well, you can imagine my chagrin then, when I had finally gotten through the preparation, writing, research, and editing phases of Healing Hereafter, only to realize I had to review the document yet one more time to accept or reject my proofreader’s excruciatingly detailed suggestions. Almost every single page had something on it. Yoiks. I probably should have felt more sorry for her than myself, but she at least got paid to comb the tome!
I’m convinced (perhaps by self-delusion) that most of the problems were due to rules that had been changed on me since I was in high school, but it didn’t turn out to be that bad. Well over 90% of the corrections involved putting parentheses within quotes instead of outside them, clearly the cardinal sin of the literary faithful! But with 1400+ biblical references in the book, that meant a lot of time reining in those naughty, wayward quotation marks! And good thing, because nobody would have understood anything I was saying otherwise! OK fine, the proofread did make some of my wandering sentences more clear and certainly renewed my appreciation for sarcasm (at least about the utility of perfect grammar!). But the real payoff? Once your proofread is done, you’re done writing! And friends, that is a very satisfying and freeing feeling! But now you gotta make the writing look pretty, and that’s what next week’s all about…
