And yes I call myslef a ediotr

Update 1 - Blogs blocked
All the blocked blogspot sites can still be accessed by people in India via pkblogs.com. The new blog url will be http://www.pkblogs.com/blogname if the original url was http://blogname.blogspot.com
For example, the bar can be accessed at pkblogs.com/sayesha if sayesha.blogspot.com is blocked. Alternatively, you can use http://www.inblogs.net/sayesha

So if you're getting distress messages from blog-readers in India who can't access your blog, spread the message, tell your buddies about pkblogs.com and inblogs.net, or leave a comment on their blogs (which I presume will go to their email even if they can't access their own blogs).

Update 2 - Dissertation survey
172 down, hoping to get 28 more before my subscription expires. So if you live outside Singapore, and have watched Krrish, then please please take my survey by clicking here. :)

Samachar samaapt hue. Now I can get back to my new post.

A colleague mentioned something very interesting today.

When you're an editor, you tend to look at everything around you with an editor's eye. Especially that of a copy-editor.

When I joined my company as an assistant editor, my jobscope involved a lot of copy-editing -- language, grammar, tenses, style, consistency, punctuation, etc. etc. And that kinda spilled over into everything else. I would be horrified to see things in my daily life which I wouldn't have noticed (or cared about) earlier. I spotted 'errors' in newspaper articles, emails, posters, outdoor advertisements, everything!

"Gosh! Double space between the two words!"

"Why is there a space before the full stop?"

"Oh look, they spelt out the number 10 in the first paragraph and wrote it as a number in the last paragraph. How inconsistent!"

"Drink milk 'everyday'?? Sheesh, there should be a space between 'every' and 'day'!"

"Hey there are opening quotes but no closing quotes!"

"There should be a comma here! The meaning is different without the comma!"

"This should not be a hyphen! This should be an 'em-dash'!"

Thankfully, I no longer have this annoying habit. It could be because my jobscope is no longer what it used to be. As a senior editor, my job involves more of conceptualisation, strategising, talking to users, market research, identifying new book ideas, training, drafting frameworks and content editing than copy-editing. I leave the copy-editing nitty-gritties to my project editors.

But there is one copy-editing tip that I learnt years ago, but follow even now.

When I was undergoing copy-editing training, the trainer gave a tip that I found exceptionally useful. She suggested that while copy-editing a manuscript, we place a ruler under each line as we read it. That helps us concentrate better because we're not distracted by what comes after that line, and so it helps us look at that particular line with a sharper eye.

It was an excellent tip, and I always follow it, even now, especially when I am checking the final proofs of my editors' work.

But I also find the tip to be useful for another very important reason.

It gives me the ability to differentiate between simply reading something and reading as an editor.

I know that when I put a ruler under a line, I'm sub-consciously preparing myself to read it in a different way. I am not gonna read it like I read a newspaper or a magazine or a blog, I am gonna read it to ensure that it is clear, concise and error-free. It is very important for editors to do this differentiation because the nature of our job is so similar to what we do outside of work, all the time. We're always reading something or the other. If I started reading everything with an imaginary ruler under it, I would go bonkers. I would have to quit my job and seek counselling. And I'd probably be copy-editing my counseller's namecard as I wait for my session.

So I made a rule -- when the ruler is off, I don't see the typos, I don't see the grammar errors, I just read the stuff like everyone else.

Once in a while, I get comments on my blog that go somewhat like "And you call yourself an editor?" or start off with a sarcastic "Miss editor, why don't you... blah blah..." But it doesn't affect me. Because this is a blog, not an editorial in a daily. And I am proud of it, complete with all its typos, grammar boo-boos, all its little imperfections.

My blog contains my thoughts, which often come tumbling out in one big mess and that's how I will put them up. I will not look out for grammar and punctuation and spacing and spelling and sense when I blog. Of course, before hitting 'Publish', I read it once just to make sure it represents in a fair manner what I wanted to write. But I refuse to put a ruler against my monitor.

Because this is not an editor's blog.

This is just the blog of someone who does editorial work from 8:15 am to 6:03 pm five days a week.

And this doesn't hold for editors only. I have always followed the policy of "Do not let your personal life interfere with your professional life. And oh, do not let your professional life interfere with your personal life either."

In fact, I vote for a livelier world -- a world where a doctor faints at the sight of blood when he cuts himself shaving, where an electrical engineer can't figure out why his radio set is not working, where an artist helps his son with his art homework and the son flunks, where a carpenter has a wobbly dining table in his house, where a mathematician can't divide a 140-dollar dinner bill among his three friends and himself, where a dietician is found munching on a packet of potato chips every night while watching her favourite soap, where a lawyer is rendered speechless by his wife, where a banker can't manage her home expenses, where a negotiator can't peel his son off the X-box and get him to finish his homework, where a sharpshooter can't aim with a water pistol, where a cricketer can't catch a saucepan that his wife throws at him in anger.

A world where no one (including myself) cares whether each of my posts is 'well-edited' or not.

I blog at home, you see.

And I don't like to bring work home.