bmac.jawns.club.ap.brid.gy
Technical writer, editor, speaker, manager, currently slinging docs at Temporal.io. Former DigitialOcean, Pragmatic, O'Reilly. Philly native. Likely to get nerdy about […]
[bridged from https://jawns.club/@bmac on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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@chrisjrn I don't have the more common autism signs, so I *think* I'm just mildly ADHD with no autism, but I could be wrong.
The lack of a binary answer on neurodivergence issues is immensely frustrating to me, as a newcomer to this whole thing. "Look, just test my neurotransmitter levels and […]
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Hey, dude -- you know that overdeveloped sense of morality and crushing guilt you've lived with your whole life? Turns out that's just a result of low dopamine levels in your brain. Isn't that good to know?
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Beating that, the large petals are called "shoulder shells." They're shoulder-pad pieces for large-scale buildable figures, like Darth Vader and Boba Fett.
But the *best* -- those two small buds? They're single pieces. Specifically, they're white, repainted […]
[Original post on jawns.club]
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The Lego community has a concept called NPU, or "nice parts usage" -- using a part to represent something other than the original intent. Especially when the original intent was something super-specific.
In this model, the small pink buds are scoops of ice cream. The center of each bloom is a […]
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I also noted that particular line is a wonderful example of syllable-stuffing. Hip-hop didn't invent sticking more syllables in a line than reasonably belonged there.
One of my personal favorites is from "You Can Call Me Al":
All along, along, there were incidents and accidents
There were […]
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Which dropped me down a rabbit hole of great key changes of the 80s and 90s and why don't you hear those anymore (there are lots of theories).
Apparently, key changes were so common back then that nobody on the modern Internet has bothered to mention the one in "All This Time" or maybe the […]
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@invalidname @bdudney @RedQueenCoder @joshmarinacci Mine too. Did some spot-checking, and I'm reasonably confident that anything I ever edited is in there too.
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@lemay That is physically painful.
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@kallekn @randahl I can't confirm this myself, but apparently he's using "Palestinian" as a slur for "Jewish American who doesn't support Israel's actions."
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Upon reflection, I figured my friend would get a kick out of a "to my favorite brother" birthday card. I wrote a nice explanation inside, put it in the envelope, started addressing it...and then realized that the mailing address I have for my friend is a couple of decades out of date.
So […]
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But if you write "utilize" when you mean "use," yes, I will judge you for that. I mean, I'm not made of stone here.
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So my professional skills don't make me more sensitive to grammar errors; they make me less so. Which means you don't have to worry about the typo in the e-mail you sent me, or heaven forbid, a text.
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As a result, I've actively trained myself to *not* fix grammatical errors when I see them, to just ignore them and get the sense of the author's message.
I still see the errors, but I look past them.
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Here's the secret bit: in general, development editing costs more than copyediting. So if I stop to fix a grammatical error while I'm doing my development edit, I'm not just focusing on the wrong thing, I'm doing somebody else's job, and costing my client more money to do it.
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The grammar editing is done by a copyeditor, who comes later in the process. Copyediting is a separate skill, one I'm also trained in, but I don't think I do it as well as many of my colleagues, nor do I enjoy it as much as development.
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A development editor looks for higher-level stuff: Is the level of explanation appropriate? Are you addressing the right audience? Is the complexity level consistent? Is the tone correct for the purpose? What if we reorganized the content?
Nothing about grammar here.
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I've spent most of my career as a Development Editor, which is a role the general public doesn't seem to know about, although I swear we're not hiding.
I work in tech books, where this role is well defined, as it is for most professional content areas (medical, legal, etc.)
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@joe Did you check to see if Timmy has fallen down the well?
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@erraggy Indeed I did. If you look elsewhere in this thread, you'll see the "best" effort an A.I. could make.
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@jbenjamint That rhyme did give me a moment's pause. I even wondered if anyone would note that my name reveals my heritage, and thus be disappointed. But I'm a fourth-generation American, so....
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@Sempf Is the conference using the Zebrawood, Aloeswood, etc rooms this year? Seeing that hallway closed off last year was sad-making.