Alison Terry

You could say that I’ve spent a lifetime
working with the written word.

​As a child, I enjoyed setting my friends essays to write, just so that I could have the pleasure of correcting them. Not the best way to keep friends, but perhaps a hint at my future career path.

Being hardwired for attention to detail is something of a neurotic habit. Example? I kept having to import text from Word for this website rather than typing anything directly, since the font settings don't include proper apostrophes. (Look at that ‘don’t’ – which I typed in just now – and compare it with this second one.) I’ll also notice things like:

• the length of dashes (is it an en-rule? an em-rule? a minus symbol?)

• whether a beta symbol (β) is actually an Eszett (ß)

• when a lowercase ‘x’ should really be a multiplication symbol (×).

The uneven gap between the top and bottom of that bulleted list is already driving me nuts, but I’ve given up trying to fix it in web design.

So, you see: there is no end to the fun.

Clients sometimes contact me just for a quick bit of grammar advice, which I’m always happy to give freely. And unlike my 10-year-old self, I’m not arrogant about ‘corrections’ – after all, not everyone is (or would want to be) a punctuation fetishist.

Although I enjoy being nerdy, I never lose sight of my real task: helping you present the information as clearly and precisely as possible.