User:Smck0

Hello, my name is Sandra, and I am a word nerd.

I am also a professional editor at a mid-sized university in Canada. For several years, my particular area of expertise was editing content for online courses. Alas, over the past couple of years, the powers that be at my university have eliminated this function, deeming that professors who possess PhDs are capable of writing both comprehensively and comprehensibly in any medium, Web included. Anyone who has suffered through an online course consisting of some bozo's 40-year-old lecture notes that have been cut and pasted into a PDF will instantly recognize the wisdom of this decision.

So while my primary function has been rendered redundant by Those Who Know Better, I am still gainfully employed, usually editing grant proposals, project descriptions, three-year strategic plans, and the like. At the moment (early Dec., 2007) I am copy-editing a book on online teaching. This book has been very challenging, since it employs 23 authors stretched across four, possibly five, continents, two content editors, a digital licensing specialist, and me. Oh, and the book is being written and edited entirely online, though its published form will be in hard copy. However, I do have a bit of free time (not much) and the freedom to expand my professional horizons. Thus I have decided to put my expertise in online writing directly on the line (so to speak), and will attempt to fill the gaping holes surrounding Writing for the Web in the Rhetoric and Composition Wikibook. In keeping with the spirit of Wikipedia and Wikibooks, my advice is free to anyone who wishes to partake. But caveat emptor: in general, you get what you pay for. This is a universal law of commerce, and I believe it to be a fundamental precept of karma, too.

I sincerely look forward to whatever dialogue ensues!