RE: dangers of spellcheck

[mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com]

Sarah Bouchier [mailto:Sarah -dot- Bouchier -at- exony -dot- com] replied:

> >Actually, you can do a good job on your own text... but only
> >after it's too late.  That's a rule, enforced by the universe.
> >Really.  If you put the work aside for a time, you'll come
> >back to it with essentially "fresh" eyes.  Oh, the horrors
> >you'll discover.   "For a time" means weeks, not hours. 
> 
> Actually, in my experience, 'for a time' means 'just long 
> enough to send
> off to clients/publishers'...

Well, I do acknowledge the pernicious existence of the "Send Button Effect"
(a corollory to the Mechanic Effect, the influence that makes the funny
noise disappear while the mechanic is listening to your car).

But, as bad as it seemed when you (foolishly?) glanced at it, immediately
after sending, well... maybe it would be just too, too disheartening to
revisit next month and get that awful sinking feeling back, three times
over...    :-)

The only argument that I've ever come up with, that ever made much headway,
was:
"You submit code to peer-review, don't you?  Writers need the same backstop,
for the same reasons."

Still didn't succeed in getting a staff editor, though, or even a budget for
part-time contract editing.

Our current TechPubs manager was _supposed_ to be it, but that pipe-dream
lasted less than two weeks before she acknowledged that any docs we'd
submitted were deep under the growing heap on her desk and unlikely to see
daylight again.

Sigh!

Kevin

Kevin

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