Earmarks of an Editor

There's a discussion going on now on an offshoot of one of my favorite e-mail discussion lists, Copyediting-L, about how you really know when you're an editor. My entries:

1. You review your fifth-grade son's essay and use proofreader's/copyeditor's marks and then have to explain what they mean to your bewildered child.



2. You order a chime that is to hang on your home's front door and it carries a small area that can be personalized. You want to have inscribed on it the three surnames of the people in your intergenerational household. The chime arrives, and you see that the wording in the personalized area does not use the serial comma. You talk your spouse into getting out the Dremel engraving tool, and you supervise him closely so that he base-aligns the comma and gets the letterspacing just right.

Why, yes, I'm extremely detail oriented. Why do you ask? ;-)