Good Grammar

I spent most of my weekend scanning through Webster's dictionary, trying to determine whether to insert or delete hyphens and spaces in words like pickup, facedown, and anymore, whether to use I or me, who or whom, lie or lay. Important stuff like that.

When I think about Dawn coming up her to last chemotherapy treatment, or Brian and Amy going to visit their 7 month baby who has never been out of the hospital, or Cindy mourning the death of her dear husband Larry who was one of the great men of God—the tiny little details that I have to concern myself with frankly feel inane.* Who cares whether someone says, "There are two things we know..." or "We know two things...."

And yet I want to get it right. It matters to me that the minute details are perfect, even as I realize they are not nearly so important as looking up from my work to laugh at my kids' jokes or to adjust a pillow for my injured husband or to send out an announcement to the church or to pray on behalf of trafficked victims around the world. I always go back to my tedious work though, and can't bear to send a manuscript to the publisher until I'm sure I've covered everything--even though I'm sure most people who read the book will not know or care whether it's grammatically correct.

Maybe I care about the details because in my heart of hearts, I know details matter.

It reminds me of the dream I had recently. I was praying for the continents of the world by editing html code. I was seeing each bracket that fit into another bracket that fit into another bracket, etc. The code was massive and impossible to edit alone, but I knew I had to get the code I was editing to be perfect because if even one bracket was left off, the whole thing would be distorted. I had to care about the tiny details so that the site as a whole would work.

I suppose that's why I'm good at my job. I look at the macro and the micro simultaneously. I see how one affects the other. The problem comes when I focus too much on one or the other. Looking only at the hyphens makes me forget why my work even matters; forgetting the small things makes my work sloppy and ineffective.

I need to remember this balance in every area of life. I need to see individuals and the world, my church and the Church, tedious tasks and my higher purpose.

Okay, I can go back to my editing now. I remember why I'm doing it. Thanks for letting me think out loud.

* I don't usually copy edit anymore, so maybe that's why I'm feeling reflective about this. More often I do macro editing. Macro editing looks at the big picture--judging readability, logic, structure, theology, content, etc. Copy editing is revising sentences to improve ease of reading. (Proofreading is fixing commas, capitalization, etc.)