The dialogue took place in church, in late August 2019, just before the service began. Ladonna and I had become closer friends in the month before, and she seemed a bit stressed.
me: “Everything OK?”
Ladonna: “No, we’re behind on Bella and I’m up against the deadline.”
me: “How can I help?”
Ladonna: “What can you do?”
me: “I’m a trained proof reader.”
Ladonna: “Can you be at the studio at 6?”
me: “Yup.”
And then the music started.
So for 18 months I have edited all of the content in Bella. I was fortunate to be raised by parents who were meticulous in their use of the English language. I endured years of grammatical correction, and now I get to put those skills to use.
For example, I straighten out the incorrect use of hyphens and en and em dashes. Not sure what that’s all about? Well, it’s so much fun that I’ll share the details with you. Hyphens “-” are used in hyphenated words like self-esteem; some people mistakenly call them dashes. The en dash “–” is a bit longer and reserved exclusively for use within a range of dates or numbers, as in June 1 – 6. The em dash “—” is longer still; its usage is a little more tricky, and it deserves its own paragraph.
This explanation of the em dash, found on Grammarist.com, defines its usage perfectly. “For example, em dashes are used when a parenthetical remark contains an internal comma or would otherwise sound awkward if enclosed by commas. Perhaps a useful way to think of the em dash is as a pause or parenthesis with somewhat more emphasis than a comma and somewhat less than parentheses.” Got that? At first I wanted to eliminate em dashes completely, but as it turns out, they come in really handy when nothing else works. So if you notice em dashes in Bella, rest assured that I put a lot of thought into each one.
In addition to straightening out punctuation marks that are already straight, I tend to do a lot of fact checking. I make sure that quotes are attributed to the right person. I keep an eye on “tone” because we don’t want to offend our readers with language that might be, um, offensive. I try my best to track down permission for images if we don’t know the source. And I try to make life a bit easier for Ladonna and Samantha and all of our wonderful Bella contributors.
I look forward to editing the next 18 months of Bella — I enjoy the variety of articles and learn much in the process. I want to thank Ladonna for her ongoing friendship and for the opportunity to work with everyone involved with Bella. Finally, I want to thank each of you for supporting this community publication by reading it.
