Of ice-covered bridges and slippery syntactical slopes:
A tale of two Dans
In 1971 the first “Sea to Shining Sea” car race across the United States took place. The only rules were clocking out of New York City and arriving at the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles—and having two drivers who could take any route they wanted and travel at any speed.
A writer teamed up with Dan Gurney, one of the top racecar drivers of the day. Gurney did most of the driving, including a steep downhill stretch in Colorado at high speed, curving onto a gorge-spanning bridge that was unexpectedly ice-covered. The writer watched in both fear and awe as Gurney kept the Ferrari under control on the glare ice, using quick, darting hand movements on the steering wheel for several seconds until the crisis was averted.
The writer had driven two or three hours up to that point across the nation’s heartland on long straight stretches so that Gurney could sleep. But he was thankful a pro was at the wheel when they hit that bridge.
The analogy with CopyProof is unmistakable. Folks who give their text to the retired English teacher down the street or to Aunt Erma (who’s good at Scrabble) will likely be fine on the English language’s straight and dry stretches. But the slippery slopes of grammatical agreement, tricky homophones, effect as a verb and affect as a noun, nominative versus objective case, Latin-based plurals, and stylistic consistency from start to finish constitute conundrums of a different color.
In such matters, clients would do well to entrust their copy to CopyProof—in care of the other Dan: Dan Shenk. He rides herd on all the print-media gremlins. Dan considered calling his business “Beyond Spell Check” because there’s a huge portion of written communication for which spell check doesn’t help. In fact, it may even hinder the writer by fostering a false sense of security.
So when the rubber meets the road and you need a pro at the editing wheel, contact Dan Shenk of CopyProof.
