Studying English makes you wildly successful

Yes, I do believe that. It's now been 27 years since I graduated from Pacific Lutheran University with my B.A. in English (holy Beowulf!!), and my English degree has definitely helped me in life. Strong writing skills are highly sought in many fields, and people who do not have a good grasp of the English language can appear less professional and educated (even if this is not true).

Studying English helps you in the following ways:

• Strengthens your writing skills, which are needed in many professional careers--I had to write essays for each of my English exams in college, teaching me how to write spontaneously and quickly
  
• Makes you look at the forest as well as the trees, as you critically assess poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and try to determine its meaning--I think I'm out of practice with this now!
  
• Helps you organize your thoughts and consequently, those organization skills spill into the rest of your life (too bad it doesn't help with cleaning, too!)
  
• Makes you a more well-rounded, literate person (I'm smarter after having read Shakespeare, Melville, Austen, Eliot, Vonnegut, Barth, Bronte sisters, Angelou, etc.)

Dr. Harold Varmus

Check out these 16 people who majored in English and became WILDLY SUCCESSFUL. Some of these are not terribly surprising...many people major in English before entering the arts, law, or business fields. But I especially love that Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, who went on to earn his medical degree and become director of the National Cancer Institute, received both a bachelor's and a master's in English (from Amherst and Harvard). Talk about well rounded!

Why the world needs English majors

I love Buzzfeed. Read these "things you should avoid" and learn why everyone needs an editor!

For example, this:



Working as an editor/writer in an environmental consulting firm, I've seen my share of "pubic" and "cunty" errors!

Copy Editors Killed In Ongoing AP Style, Chicago Manual Gang Violence

Leave it to the ONION to point out the ridiculous nature of editorial squabbles. 

I wonder whether it all depends on which style guide you used in your first job? Chicago for me...I just have to add serial (Oxford) commas wherever I can!

Lovely piece of prose

Pulled this out of a web page I was asked to rewrite. Isn't it pretty?

The flexibility provided by a programmatic architecture of a common template set combined with the dynamic functionality of a deployment script would deliver an efficient and consistent solution focused on improving productivity and consistency for the thousands of employees who would use this template set.

Bad writing sample of the day

These gems mean job security for me!! These are from some award applications I have been editing. Think they'd win any awards this way?

"A major design and construction challenge to completion of the facilities was the volume of projects required to be concurrently designed not only due to fiscal year funding impacts but the need to have projects completed so as to not lose construction seasons due to severe winter weather conditions."

PHEW!!

This is how I changed it:

"The team designed a high volume of projects concurrently to meet fiscal year requirements and proceed before severe winter weather." 

Sometimes my brain hurts!

Don't forget that all-important "L"!!!

Working at an environmental consulting firm with lots of PUBLIC clients, I've seen a lot of similar typos.

This is pretty bad. The University of Texas (unlimited possibilities--haha!) printed this egregious typo in its commencement program: "The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Pubic Affairs."

As I work in the group responsible for editing the firm's documents, I would hope that we catch as many of these typos as possible. More often than not, though, they get caught just in the nick of time, since nearly everything is done on a quick timeframe and tight budget.

Another frequent typo with our pubic clients is inadvertently forgetting the "O" in "County."

Reason #123 why everyone needs an editor with eagle eyes.

Man catches death-eating bacteria from internet

No, this is not the title on the National Enquirer...it's right out of a Yahoo news article.

"Sean Helgesen says he got lucky in his battle four years ago with the bacteria in a Daily Beast article."

This proves:

1. You should reread everything you write. (I have to confess that sometimes I do not take the time to do this myself, but I can't imagine I'd ever write something as bad as that statement above!)

2. Everyone--even the best writer--needs a proofreader. You should always have someone else read what you have written if millions of people will be reading it.
3. Sometimes people are so quick to post that they do not QC before they do so.

4. An article about a deadly disease can be far less effective with an awkwardly worded, clunky sentence in the middle of it.

Whatever you think about Tina Brown, she's not passing out death-eating bacteria.