I need to talk about a serious thing today—one of which all of us computer users need to be aware. I’m talking about scams.

This past Tuesday alone, two (TWO!) scammers attempted to trick me via my computer. Neither succeeded, but one almost did (emphasis on almost) and I wish to share what I have learned with all of you.

The number one lesson on scams is that if any software company or service (Microsoft, Apple, McAfee, Norton, etc.) contacts you via a sudden popup on your computer screen and instructs you to call a given telephone number because something really bad is happening (e.g., your computer is infected by a Trojan and your bank account number is compromised) or something bad will happen (e.g., your antivirus protection will expire), do not call that number. At all. Ever.

If you obey the popup, you will get someone on the phone who acts like they are from the company in question and knows what they are talking about. They will tell you that they will help you, and then they will tell you that they need control of your computer. Never, ever give anyone control of your computer. Once you do, the evil person can do anything they want with it.

When I received an email last Tuesday morning that was supposedly from PayPal and stated that I had bought almost $1000 worth of Apple gift cards (I hadn’t), I initially began to fall for this scam. I called the number at the bottom of the email and reached someone who claimed to be from PayPal and said he could help. Then he asked for control of my computer and started to give me instructions on how to give it to him. CLICK! I hung up on him. That was the end of that one.

That very same day, late in the afternoon while I was working, my computer froze and the screen became filled with a huge popup, complete with loud audio of a bot talking, telling me that Windows Defender had detected a Trojan in my computer which had compromised my passwords, bank account information, and I don’t remember what else. It also told me that I needed to call Microsoft at a number on the bottom of the message to fix this. This scam was much more frightening because I had to restart my computer to get the message to go away. This time, I did not call the given number. Nice try, scumbag.

The point that I am stressing here is that you should never call a number that claims to be from a tech company. They will never contact you through a popup.

And finally, if you are unfortunate enough to be scammed by one of these losers, please don’t hate yourself or blame yourself. Don’t be angry at yourself, either. Be angry at these miserable excuses for human beings. They will one day reap what they have sown.

In this post, I would like to show some humanity. This may not be the most “professional” post I have ever written, but what I am about to say means a lot to me.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and at 12:35 AM tonight, I will turn 49.

Now, 49 really doesn’t seem much different from 48, if any different. It does seem a little weird because back when I was 25 and working as a lab technician, I thought that the people I worked with who were in their late 30s were old. And here I am, about to turn 49. Good grief!

And then there is next year. Let’s not even talk about that yet.

As I celebrate 49 trips around the sun, I am reflecting on what I would like to accomplish this next year of my life.

I would like to obtain enough additional work that I am very busy editing every day. (Not so much work that I am completely stressed out. There is a happy medium.)

I would like to attend my first professional conference. I believe I wrote about EFA’s conference, which is coming up in August. I will be there, by hook or by crook.

I would like to save more money.

I would like to have some fun, since it’s already been decided that my husband and I are not going on vacation this year. I would like to take a day off this summer and go back to Hersheypark. (Yes, the park really does spell it as one word.)

I would like to stay strong enough to be there for my aging parents, and I would like to gain infinitely more strength for them.

I would like (and my husband would also like) to attend the Washington Auto Show this winter. We are very interested in seeing the most recent car models.

I would like to grow closer to God.

How about you? What would you like to accomplish in the next year?

A number of weeks ago, I blogged about the 2023 ACES Conference in Columbus, Ohio, and how much I wanted to attend.

I fantasized about all of the cool editors with whom I would network. I dreamed of attending presentations whose information would make me the world’s best editor. I imagined experiencing the best that Columbus—a city through which I had previously passed on I-70 but had never actually visited—had to offer.

On October 28, early bird registration for the conference opened. I jumped onto the ACES website early that morning, right?

(sigh) Wrong.

After spending days looking realistically at my business finances, the cost of the conference, hotel, and meals, I realized I could not go and be financially comfortable. Add to that the fact that the two Honda Civics my husband and I own are elderly and may not make it all the way to central Ohio and back.

It was Langston Hughes who wrote about “a dream deferred,” wasn’t it?

I might be overreacting, but I had been wanting to attend an ACES conference for years, and the conferences for the next two years are respectively in San Diego and Salt Lake City. Way too far and expensive to get to. The 2026 conference is supposed to be in Atlanta, to which I could fly directly. As everybody’s parents used to say, “We’ll see.”

BUT…

I’m not about to invest in a crying towel, because my hope of attending a professional editors’ conference where I can network and attend cool presentations still remains. The Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA), another great professional organization to which I belong, is planning a conference of its own this coming August. And where is it to be held? Alexandria, Virginia.

That is in the Washington,  DC metropolitan area and I live in a city which borders on this area. I can take the Metro subway to Alexandria.

Happy dance!

And I have volunteered to proofread conference materials, so I will be giving back and not just taking.

I’m already excited about the conference. Now, if a certain virus doesn’t get in the way…

About fifteen women from my church and I have been working through (and thoroughly enjoying) a Bible study which uses, besides the Bible itself, a study guide written by a very passionate author. (I’ll call her Jane Jones.) Jane writes in a very exciting, engaging way, which I think is awesome.

There’s just one tiny problem.

Her study guide is full of typos!

Sometimes I am working through the study and an egregious error glares at me. For example, this past week one thing we participants were supposed to do was to “Read Matthew 29:16-24.”

Ummm…this is impossible to do, because the Gospel of Matthew only has 28 chapters. Oopsy-daisy.

I am 99 percent certain that Jane Jones knows well that there are only 28 chapters in Matthew. What I’m guessing happened is that someone’s finger hit the 9 instead of the 8 on the keyboard. At least, I want to give Jane the benefit of the doubt.

Jane’s study guide contains other errors as well, but I will not list them all. Although I continue to enjoy the reading, I have to say that errors in a published work are highly distracting. In fact, I am not the only woman in my church group who has noticed them.

I recall being on the beach one summer while savoring a novel written by a bestselling author. The book contained a character named Spencer, who was one of the “bad guys” and quite intriguing. Imagine how my reading flow was disrupted when I stumbled across a single instance of the villain’s name being written as “Spenser.”

“How did that get by quality control?” I asked myself as I snickered.

I have to admit that I have sometimes been tempted to contact publishers whose books contain a great deal of typos and beg for a job offer my services. I have not done this, and I have been advised against doing it. After all, how would you like it if a stranger contacted you and told you that your job performance stinks and that you could do the job better?

Do you find a lot of typos in books you read?

Hello, readers. It’s good to be back with you.

This weekend, I suffered a shock regarding a US holiday that is coming up in November. This holiday is Veterans Day.

Notice how I wrote it above. No apostrophe anywhere. That’s the surprise that I got.

My church has an annual Veterans Day luncheon and for the last couple of weeks, the church program has had an announcement about it. The trouble was that the person who wrote the announcement wrote the name of the holiday as “Veteran’s Day.”

Upon seeing this, I thought, “That isn’t correct, because using the singular possessive means that you are honoring only one veteran. We, as a country, are honoring all of our veterans, not just one.” And so I changed the holiday’s name in the program to what I thought must be correct: “Veterans’ Day.” I remembered reading a column in The Washington Post when I was a teenager where the author insisted that the plural possessive was correct.

This weekend, it finally dawned on me that I should look up the name of the holiday in The Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition, which is the gold standard for most editing and of which I have both a hard copy and an online subscription. “After all,” I mused, “the church’s luncheon is not until November 13 and the announcement will most certainly run in the program at least one more time. Better make sure it’s right.”

According to CMoS section 8.89, the name of the holiday is “Veterans Day.”

No apostrophe.

Such embarrassment on my part. Huge sigh.

This was one of those instances where one’s mistake and the correct alternative are not quickly forgotten, because the level of humiliation is so high.

Frederick Christian Fellowship Church, I owe you a great big apology.

Before I retreat into my shell, I would like to point out something that I do know: the names of secular and faith-based holidays are always capitalized: Christmas Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, et cetera.

CMoS 8.89 taught me that, too.

Pass the crow. I’ll have another helping.

Dear readers,

This is just to let you all know that I will be away from the blog again this weekend, since I will be traveling to visit family in another state. I plan to be back at blogging the weekend of October 22-23.

Why is it that when most people meet someone new, one of the first “getting to know you” questions they ask is, “Where do you work?” or “What do you do?”

Is it because we as a society identify others by their job or career?

I was unemployed for a very long time during the last decade, and I absolutely hated it when I would go to any kind of event and someone who was trying to get to know me better would ask, “Where do you work?”

And I would always answer truthfully. “I’m unemployed right now, but I have a master’s in biochemistry.” As if it were any of the person’s business.

I remember one person to whom I gave that answer; the person immediately replied, “Hmmm…You don’t often hear the words ‘unemployed’ and ‘biochemistry’ in the same sentence.” Excuse me, could you stand over there for me? You reek of ignorance.

One gentleman I know in my hometown once said, “Why do people have to ask where you work when they first meet you? What if you’re unemployed? What if you’re on disability? What if you can’t work?” As I listened to him, the more right I realized he was.

This gentleman opened my eyes to the fact that it’s actually insensitive to ask someone where they work, or what they do for a living. It’s none of your business.

I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of this lots of times. I remember back when we lived in Baltimore and I asked a lady I knew from church where she worked. She replied, “I’m on SSI.” To say I felt sheepish was an understatement.

Here’s an alternative: Next time you are asked, “What do you do?” tell the person what your hobbies are—what you do for fun. It’s a much better answer, for it tells people what you are really like. If I told you that I am a scientific editor, what would that tell you about me? How about if I told you that I love to travel to the beach?

Please think about it.

Every year, one of the professional editors’ organizations to which I belong (ACES, American Copy Editors Society) holds a conference in a large city in the United States. Ever since I joined ACES almost three years ago, I have wanted to attend. I very much want to network with other editors and refine my copyediting skills and knowledge.

Alas. There has always been something precluding my attendance.

The first two years that I was an ACES member, the problem was the same thing that was canceling everything in the world. It starts, of course, with the letter C and ends with the number 19. (The conferences for those years were made virtual, but I didn’t want to be at home and look at people’s images on my computer; I wanted to have the total experience.)

Then came the following year. I wanted to go, but the conference was in San Antonio, Texas, which would have required a pricey flight. After looking at my business income and financial records, I sadly resigned myself to the fact that this conference was out of my reach.

This coming year’s (2023) conference, however, is in a city to which one can drive from Maryland in a day: Columbus, Ohio.

Columbus is now my target.

I have been through the greater Columbus area on I-70, but I’ve never actually been in the city itself. The more I think about Columbus, the more interesting it sounds.

And the more in-reach this conference sounds. The early-bird registration opens at the end of this month and runs until the day before Thanksgiving, after which the conference fee increases. My goal is to be able to register during the early-bird period.

If I am even luckier, my husband will get to tag along. He can tour the city while I am at the conference meeting and networking with other editors and attending seminars to enhance my editing.

Wish me the best, everybody. COLUMBUS OR BUST!

Greetings!

In this post, I would like to address a few errors that I often see in writing.

1. “Affect” vs. “effect.” “Effect,” written with an “E,” is a noun. It is a result of something. For example, “Lung cancer is an effect of smoking.” However, “affect,” with an “A,” is a verb. It means to cause something to happen. For example, “Smoking negatively affects the lungs.” The best way to remember the two spellings is to remember that “affect” is an action, and both “affect” and “action” begin with the letter A.

• “Immigrate” vs. “emigrate.” I have to admit that I had a hard time with this one until recently. One immigrates to a country and emigrates from a country. For example, if a person leaves Canada to come and live in the US, this would be written as “She emigrated from Canada and immigrated to the US.” The trick for this one is to remember that “emigrate” and “exit” both begin with the letter E, and when one emigrates from a country, one exits that country.

• The use of the word “adult” as a verb. I have seen this in several Facebook memes: “I don’t want to adult today,” or “Realizing you have food at home is part of adulting.” The word “adult” is either a noun (“He is a young adult,”) or an adjective (“The children could not watch the adult movie.”). It is not a verb. (This is one of my major pet peeves, so I had to restrain myself while writing this paragraph.)

Lastly, I wish to discuss the use of “suicide” as a verb. Until a few years ago, I did not know that the word could be used as a verb. I was first alerted to this by a doctor who told me that her patient’s daughter “suicided” ten years ago. This unfamiliar grammar (as well as the plight of the poor mother) struck me almost immediately, and it was only recently that I looked it up in Merriam-Webster and was surprised to see that the faithful dictionary acknowledged that “suicide” can be a verb. I learn something new every day.

**EDITOR’S NOTE: I will be away from the blog for at least the next week while I tend to matters involving my aging parents. Thank you for your understanding.

Since today is September 11, I really want to write about my feelings and thoughts on what happened on this date 21 years ago. Kindly refrain from criticizing me for writing this because it’s “not professional.”

Everybody who remembers that horrific day remembers where they were when they first heard the news. I was working in a university research lab at the time, and that morning my boss, a coworker, and I were cleaning out one of the lab freezers. While we were toiling away at this unpleasant task, a young woman from one of the other labs on the floor appeared in the doorway and stood there. This woman often visited our lab, since she and my boss were friends. But that day, she had a different reason for coming to see us. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center,” she said.

I remember how her voice was completely devoid of emotion because she was in such shock.

A little radio in the lab was turned on, and I got on one of the computers to look at news sites. “What a horrible accident!” I was thinking. If only it had been…

The radio soon announced that the second tower had been hit by another plane, and soon afterwards, that there was an explosion at the Pentagon. That news especially hit home for me, since the Pentagon had been my father’s workplace for decades (although he had since retired). And as if all that wasn’t enough, then came the news of the plane crashing into a field in Pennsylvania.

“Do you know how many people are dead? Thousands!” my boss barked into my face as if the whole disaster were my fault.

“Jesus will come,” my coworker, a Christian who spoke broken English, said to me, trying to be soothing. Although I was a Christian (and still am), the thought of Jesus coming frightened me; I had always found the Book of Revelation terrifying.

Around noon, everyone at work was sent home, and when I arrived at my apartment, I alternated between watching the TV news reports and lying in bed. I could do nothing else—not even eat. I just tried to shut everything out because I couldn’t take any more.

Do you remember where you were?