What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)

My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.

Feel free to contact me directly with additional questions: landondemand@gmail.com.

Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment. Come back often.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Sample Queries for Offensive Content

From a social club's history, the first blurb is the massaged version of the original text; the italics are my response.

Freelancer's hint: Send correspondence like this in a separate email, so the recipient doesn't, hopefully, foul up and forward it to the client.

> “had worked as a volunteer tutor for the primarily Appalachian students at the community after-school center.”

I have severe problems with their use of “Appalachian” as a euphemism here, and for what, I’m not quite sure. The Appalachian Mountains stretch from Maine to Georgia and include a lot of highly gifted students, and a lot who live in poverty. If what they mean by “Appalachian” is poor white trash from Eastern Kentucky, they need to find another way to say it than they have.

> “To form a collective to promote educational, social, artistic, and literary growth, and work to meet to the city's best interests . . . ” Updated in 2018 to reflect more contemporary language, the current mission statement describes the group as “organized to enrich lives through philanthropy and education.”

I call complete bullshit: Should read, “Updated in 2018 to placate the conservative Christian Trumpsters among them so that they can disavow any need to live up to helping society or the arts one bit, except when it suits their purposes.”

> “They have seen a Torah up close and toured a museum with Jewish cultural artifacts.”

Well, bully for them. Do they just want to come right out and say they do not now, nor will they ever have Jewish members? Oh, [city named here] . . . full of German descendants . . . right. If they have a Jewish member, they’d do well to change this bit of content. 

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