Saturday, August 18, 2012

Never Hire Cruella DaVille as a Motivational Speaker!



Much to read inside!



Yeah. I said I was going to post more this week, and then life went even more into the shitter, Long story that I would prefer not to talk about too much .. if I was actually on for a bit with individual people they probably know pieces of the story. I'm not in any major harm, so don't worry that I am going to be homeless or dying. Its just one thing after another of AARRGHH! I will get through all of it, and it will take some time, but I will clear all this shit off my plate, one nugget at a time.

Quite a way with words eh? LOL I wanted to spend some time captioning this morning, as I hadn't had time nor the desire to do it much but figured it might lift my mood. I ended up making two that I've posted at Rachel's Haven, and completed about 90 percent of the work on another, and 50 percent on a fourth. Lately, I've been finding that not quite completing a caption is sometimes the best thing to do. Plot it out and set it up, then later on, tighten it up and then post it to a trading folder.

When I rush to get something out, sometimes the captions suffer. For instance, I owed Chelsea a caption for her "31 dresses" series she's working on during August. After finding what I thought was a fine picture that Chelsea had supplied, I laid everything out and thought I had a pretty good idea. I always wondered why when guys turn into females they USUALLY end up with gorgeous hair, and they just have the knack for keeping it well groomed. I know WOMEN that cut their hair short ( the dreaded MOM hair LOL) because of all the fuss to keep it pretty, so how should a guy just be able to figure out hair-care products?

So I plugged everything in and did a spell check .. I really wanted people to see it and how CLEVER I was! POOF and it was submitted. Here is the caption I posted, see if you can find out what irked me about this BEFORE you read my complaint below the caption.


I pride myself on being a very thorough proofreader, and one with a relatively expansive vocabulary. Because of that, I tend to figure out different ways of saying the same thing in my captions. If I tend to repeat a word or phrase within a caption, its usually for a reason: to emphasize a plot point or repetition as a tool of brainwashing/hypnosis. In this case, I managed to use "get the hang of" TWICE in consecutive sentences! EGAD! Its something I most likely would have caught if I had walked away for a few minutes or just saved it and did a final once over. The mom's dialog seems REALLY clunky now and it just doesn't scan properly for me.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: How have your editing/proofing procedures changed over the years and how do you try to avoid mistakes? Was what I pointed out real glaring to you or am I just being too sensitive? Which caption do you like better and why?

5 comments:

  1. First.. on the preview pic thingie... it works, but you're making it harder than it needs to be :)

    On the Cruella caption.. VERY strong presentation and pic... Nice story, but not really my "thing"... I would have clicked on it and read it regardless, it is VERY striking and visually "grabs" you....

    On the mistake thing... On my OWN caption, the type of mistake you point out would have pissed me off mightily... On others' captions' I probably wouldn't have noticed, but I am much harsher on myself...

    I TRY and proofread the hell out of my stuff, but STILL things get missed, especially since the primary "tool" I use is Photoshop's built-in spell checker.... which ignores grammar, syntax, common sense... etc....

    I still refuse to type the story up in an outside program... because I am a stubborn wench... The occasional mishap just "happens", and I deal with it :)

    /hugs

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    1. Thanks for the email. Took care of things I think!

      I always do my stories right in Photoshop. That way i know if it fits or not and can edit for brevity right on the caption itself.

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  2. For my editing and proofing... In college, I learned the fastest way for me to produce anything was to use the 'edit-as-you-go' method. For captions, I do skim back over and very rarely do I see anything out of place. But I figure if I can catch it while it's happening, I'm less likely to run into problems later.

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    1. Perhaps I have been more distracted than usual, because I used to work that way too, but I seem to catch more issues lately when I've held off posting.

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  3. I liked both caps... especially the idea of wearing a wig while 'she' learns how to style it.

    I did notice the 'error'... but I think I noticed it more because of who made it, rather than it being a glaring obvious problem. Your caps are generally very smoothly written, so something like this tends to catch my eye. But if I saw the same writing on a different blog, I might not have even let it bother me.

    My own editing hasn't changed all that much. I write up my caps in Word, so it not only catches most of my real typos, it catches my fat finger mistakes and even some of the grammar problems. I too do most of my editing on the fly. Write a few lines, back up and read the last paragraph and make sure it all meshes together, then continue on. The biggest change has come from forcing myself to proof read the cap at least one more time after it's 'finished'.

    A lot of errors still work their way though... but I think that's from trying to proof read something so recently written. The tone is still strong in my head, and I find myself visually skipping by entire phrases as they are still clear in my head. If I had any patience at all (and honestly, I just don't have any patience), I would let the cap sit for a day and proof read it again when it isn't fresh. Of course if I had that level of patience, I'd probably end up writing long form stories instead of caps!

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