Hi, there. As the *ahem* neatly-worded banner has told you, this is the Copyediting Clinic.
I spend a lot of time in Got Issues, looking at drafts, and occasionally commenting on them. The first thing I always look for in an issue is the spelling and grammar; they could be the sticking point between a realistic issue and a mess. Unfortunately, there are a great deal of non-native English speakers in the forums, people who haven't the time or motivation to properly check for spelling or grammar in their issue, or those who have written a good issue but simply don't care about the readability.
I can only imagine our poor, overburdened Issues Editor (RIP Sirocco) spewing profanity at the screen upon reading the thousandth misplaced comma or orphaned apostrophe in an issue, shortly followed (I can only presume) by a quick delete or throwing something at the monitor.
This is why I've started this Copyediting Clinic: to help the Issues Writers of NS to write better and more readable issues, and to slightly relieve the burden on our sole remaining Issue Editor.
If you are the writer of an issue that you want me to check, simply post a link to it here and I'll get to it as soon as possible. If you are *not* the writer, however, you want me to have a look at it, just put the link and I'll have a glance. I shall also gladly make sure the variables are formatted correctly, as that seems to be a common issue as well. In the future, should the flow of issues pick up hereabouts, I may find others to help me out, but, for now, I'm fine all alone.
For the record, I am British and use British English (as the site does), however, I use the Oxford Comma as the Americans do, as it makes things easier to read. I have a great deal of writing experience and knowledge of realistic dialogue, and happen to have moderate OCD, making it difficult to miss the errors.
