{"id":227,"date":"2011-12-14T14:58:09","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T14:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/?p=227"},"modified":"2011-12-14T15:00:50","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T15:00:50","slug":"no-i-will-not-answer-in-the-form-of-a-question-reverb-broads-2011-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/?p=227","title":{"rendered":"No, I will not answer in the form of a question: Reverb Broads 2011 #13"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Reverb Broads 2011, December 13:<\/em><\/strong> What are three things you are better at than most people? (courtesy of Catie at http:\/\/catiecake.wordpress.com\/)<\/em><\/p>\n

I sure wish any of these three things were people skills. I wish these abilities could be leveraged to make the world a better place. But they’re really not. They don’t even make me particularly likable in many circles.<\/p>\n

My first superpower is proofreading. I come by this skill genetically; my mom is the Supreme Goddess of All Secretaries<\/a>. I’ve been proofreading for her since I was eleven years old. I’m also a grammar nazi, the kind of person Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots, and Leaves<\/a><\/em>) calls “a stickler.” And I’ve had a lot of fantastic English and journalism teachers who did unusual things, like make me memorize all the articles* in fifth grade.<\/p>\n

I see spelling and punctuation errors like Haley Joel Osment sees dead people: They’re everywhere. Moreover, I usually see these mistakes within about three seconds, even on a full page of text.\u00a0 Local TV ads, signs in grocery stores, and small-town papers (even large-town papers, more and more) make me flinch instinctively. There have been books (usually paperbacks are worse than hardcovers, for some reason) that I have been unable to finish without a marking pen in hand; my mom and I have both offered to various romance publishers to proofread for free, just to keep ourselves in trashy novels. And every time I let a publication go out that I haven’t given a pass, I inevitably find a dumb error, which really doesn’t help my general control freak-ness.<\/p>\n

But if you ever need to hire an editor for something important, even just a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 or wedding invitation? I’m your girl, and I work cheap.<\/p>\n

My second superpower is quiz shows. I’ve written before about my weird feats of memory<\/a>; in short, I’ve got a mind like a steel trap for trivia, and a sieve for useful things. And I’ve got a knack for abstract thinking — the more oblique the clue, the better. This combination allows me to be good enough at Jeopardy!<\/em> that I was regularly kicked out of the lounge in my college dorm when it was on, but to graduate a few hundredths of a grade point shy of wearing honor cords. I can solve Wheel of Fortune<\/em> puzzles without any letters. I’ve been told by more people than I can count on two hands that I would be their lifeline on Millionaire<\/em>. I deserve Carl Kasell’s voice on my answering machine. I do<\/em>, in fact, know Jack.<\/p>\n

Finally, my third superpower is reading aloud. Frankly, I rock at this. I’ve got some mutant skills in this area: I can read text I’ve never seen before upside-down at full speed, which would make me the Most Popular Children’s Librarian In The World, if I wanted to be. And when I read aloud, I make it a full-on dramatic event. With me, you get different voices, accents, and a panoply of emotions. If it says, “She screamed,” I can make it sound throat-shredding without even getting that loud. If the character has a head cold, ids goig do sound lig id. Glaswegians sound like Glaswegians; goats sound like goats.<\/p>\n

I don’t only do this for my kids and their classes at school. I’ve probably read a dozen books (including every word of Harry Potter) and a thousand articles aloud to my husband. Sometimes, as in the case with the Master Li and Number Ten Ox stories<\/a>, reading them aloud in their entirety is just more coherent than reading out context-less passages every time I laugh aloud (which is almost every page). And sometimes, it’s because I want to fully convey my shock and outrage. He’s very patient with me, and I’d like to think it’s a value-added service.<\/p>\n

In short, I’m a pedantic, overly dramatic know-it-all. But I’m the best one you know.<\/p>\n

*a, all, an, any, both, each, every, few, many, more, most, no, several, some, that, the, these, this, those, which, and all number words like one, two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reverb Broads 2011, December 13: What are three things you are better at than most people? (courtesy of Catie at http:\/\/catiecake.wordpress.com\/) I sure wish any of these three things were people skills. I wish these abilities could be leveraged to make the world a better place. But they’re really not. They don’t even make me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[125,127,64,126,128,9,102,129],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","tag-editing","tag-grammar","tag-memory","tag-proofreading","tag-quiz-shows","tag-reading","tag-reverb-broads-2011","tag-trivia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}