Tuesday, March 27, 2007

rock on

One of my current responsibilities is being the adult advisor for a teen group's online newsletter. I approve articles submitted by the teens and send on to our teen editors what needs to be edited. Once we sell the house and move, I'll be leaving this job behind. Today that makes me want to say "Thank goodness!"

I had a submission today on music CD's that will be or have been recently released. This young woman had previously submitted an article that was so poorly written the editing alone took hours. I would have tossed that article right back in my kid's faces if they tried to submit something that poorly written.

My son is the senior editor this year. (And did I happen to mention a National Merit Scholar? Oh... I did...) He's a good editor and knows his grammar rules. Often I give him the tougher editing jobs. He cringes when he hears the aforementioned young woman's name because he vividly recalls the time he spent editing her previous submission. Today he had to take another crack at editing her work.

My daughter, just me, was a great help in this endeavor. First she read it out loud to us. I started banging my head against the bookcase as the number of "awesomes" increased. My son was rubbing his forehead as if in pain. Honestly, at our house we would have scrapped the whole thing and started over, but at this point just me was a blessing.

She said, "This was written in a 'dude to dude' style, not really as an article."

Then she said something concerning the awesomes and sweets that I know she got right from her mother, sarcastic tone included. "She needs to meet her friend the thesaurus."

My son, keeping the horrific "dude to dude" writing concept in mind, managed to simply highlight the numerous awesomes and suggested that she find another word. (Sweet!) He managed to not suggest she get acquainted with her thesaurus. (Awesome!) Then he kindly asked her if all sentences really needed to end in an exclamation point. (!!!!!) Finally he told her that he placed commas in-between all the track listings. He was masterful in his restraint as he wanted to send it back to her and say "Try again."

All I was expecting from this young woman was a fluff piece on the upcoming prom. Now we still have the prom article to look forward to reviewing.

"Thank you and rock on!!"


1 comment:

Tiffany Todd said...

ACKKKKKKKK, your poor poor son. Teehee