- Fiction books. Common issues here are point of view, verb tense, spatial continuity and characterization.
- Nonfiction books. In true stories, spatial continuity and characterization tend to take care of themselves, but point of view and verb tense still need attention. Clarity can be a special challenge as authors attempt to describe complex real-world events and situations.
- Children’s books. These require a careful balance of keeping the language appropriate to grade level without talking down to or boring the reader.
- Screenplays. Formatting is key to a successful script, along with remembering that every word must describe a sight or sound that can be captured in the final film.
- Academic papers. My favorite project of this type was a Master’s thesis in a technical field. The text frequently reverted to the student’s native Turkish, which I did not speak. Since online translators were not yet available at the time, I used a dictionary and learned some Turkish grammar.
- Legal transcripts. These follow special formatting rules, some of which vary by jurisdiction.
- Website content. Key areas of focus here are fact checking, search-engine optimization and conformity to the client’s public-relations strategy.
“I want to go to Indiana and learn the language there.” At four or five, that's what I was going to do when I grew up. I thought Indiana was where the Indians lived, and I was going to move there and do some important work or other to make life better for them. Whether I was thinking of Native Americans or people from India, I can’t say, but most likely I just thought they were all the same people. Most of what I knew about "Indians," I had learned from authors like Richard Scarry and Rudyard Kipling , so you can imagine what kind of culture I thought I would find when I got to Indiana. Detail of a Richard Scarry children's book illustration But I had a reason to be so focused on the language. A summer or two before, my parents were getting ready to be Christian missionaries and had enrolled in Wycliffe Bible Translators' Summer Institute of Linguistics. This is a program of accelerated graduate-level courses designed to prepare missionary candidates to be Bibl...