This blog introduces a new information set I have recently been exposed to. I took a course on CyberSecurity and found out that coding and writing commands demand the same attention to detail and syntax as other writing. Most of the time, when we had trouble getting a command to work, we had left out an end quotation mark, or misspelled the command word. That was just as frustrating as getting back a manuscript with lots of errors marked by a proofreader.
“Share Your Screen”
We proofreaders want so much to get things “right,” and that can be a very good thing. Without the motivation to be a perfectionist, how much more would be missed? And what do we do about it when we find an error? The best way we found to take care of these issues in the class was to ask for someone to put eyes on our work. “Share your screen,” was the most frequent response to the complaint that a command was not working. It usually only took a few seconds to find the misspelled word or missing punctuation mark. On occasion, the computer or virtual machine itself was the problem, but most often it was a simple case of bad writing.
On the command line, the script or command works and returns an expected result, or it does not. It is very simple and quick to see if things are working and make any changes needed until things do work properly. The same idea applies to writing books, blogs, or articles. Editors and proofreaders are trained to find the places where our writing needs a little adjustment to be “right.” Different manuals of style and genres of writing may change exactly what that looks like, but there is still a benefit to having another set of eyes on our writing.
Publishing
The main difference between working on the command line and writing a document of some kind, however, is how quickly we “publish” our writing. Every time we hit “enter” the command or script would immediately run and we would find out if it was “right” or needed work. Like publishing a book and immediately finding out if there are glaring errors, or if it worked for the reader. A major benefit of writing an article as opposed to a Linux command, is the opportunity to have someone look at it, examine it, give feedback and corrections, before publishing to the general public.
So, next time you hire a professional editor or proofreader, remember that their job is to make sure you publish a wonderful piece of writing, and their extra set of eyes are trained to find all the little things that could make your document not “work.” I have a much greater appreciation for this skillset after taking the course.
Happy writing! And let me know if you want another pair of eyes on your work. Comment on this page or go to the Contact page and let’s talk!