A long time ago, I was an English teacher. One of my students wrote this in her journal: “I’m so ashaymed I cant spell”.
And the ‘a’ in “can’t” was a ‘u’.
Yikes.
What do you think I did with that sentence? Circled the errors with a red pen? No way! I left those things alone and focused on the fact this girl had the COURAGE to tell her new teacher her ‘shayme’. That’s what we worked on. Honouring that trust.
The apostrophe, the ‘y’ and the ‘u’ came later.
Today I’m editing a story for a client. It is riddled with punctuation errors and formatting inconsistencies, but as the editor this is not where I start.
The ideas, the word choice and the voice of the writer are very clear and powerful, so why would I want to DIScourage someone who has shown COURAGE and put something of himself into the world?
Yes, it is my job to ‘fix’. But in my opinion, it is also my job to highlight the good and honour the work done.
Sing out if you need some help. I can encourage AND fix.
