I just know where to look it up

[redbird]

I'm not actually expected to know everything.

It's better than that: I get serious extra credit for knowing everything. For catching mistakes in a reprint of the Gettysburg Address; fixing the date for when the Old Trails Highway became part of Route 66 [1]; knowing that the 1975 amendment to the Voting Rights Act wasn't about literacy tests; that it's "los Estados Unidos," not just "Estados Unidos"; that Wovoka didn't revive the Ghost Dance, he created it…

Most of that is the history degree, but high school Spanish keeps coming in handy too. As does the sort of familiarity with math that has me look at a page, and think "that isn't a fifth," then do the math to confirm that it's actually about 2/13, and decide that "one sixth" is close enough, for fourth grade social studies.

Have I mentioned in the last couple of years that I like being a copyeditor?

[1] I'd not heard of said highway before; I just got curious because the ancillary page I was looking at said only "1930s", googled, and discovered it was actually 1926.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I think I know (at least to the point of being suspicious of certain "facts") different things than you do, but yes, that's one reason I also like being a copy editor.