just ain't right

Hoping these things don't come in threes . . . found out today that the 21-year-old grandson of a syndicated columnist I work for collapsed and died this weekend while training for the Atlanta Marathon. Just what the hell is going on?

Another "just ain't right" is people claiming to be professional editors, which I guess means anyone who has ever received even a dime to review another's writing. I received this email today from an author with whom I'm working:

Received your edited changes. . . . The reason I gave you several different sections of material is because not one person who has claimed they are a professional editor has corrected the five errors that I knew were in this manuscript but you.

Among the people he'd had edit his book, or portions of it, was someone with a PhD in English who charged him $.25 per page. I have to say that he got what he paid for. For twenty-five cents a page, I'm wadding it up and throwing it in the round file.

What I like is that he seems to have intentionally put errors in there to field-test the people he'd have editing his book. Pretty crafty, I'd say. Of course, there were myriad more errors than that in the manuscript, but at least he knew where those five were. If more authors were that proactive, there would probably be fewer crappy editors out there stealing people's money . . . a quarter at a time.