What do the regulars here do for a living?

[LostAllMySocks]

Hi,

I wondered if I could ask what the regulars on Pedant's Corner do for a living?

I'm just wondering because my DS is an unstoppable force when it comes to nitpicking grammar, and I feel as though this must be a skill that someone wants.

In additon to nitpicking grammer, he also loves long dry texts, like the online copy of the Highway Code. He also really likes any rule-based systems. The larger and more complex they are, the happier he is. I think law is out because crime gives him the heebie jeebies.

I would be really glad to know which career paths are open to people who have this laser vison for typos and grammatical slips.

Thanks!

I was in marketing and PR. English degree

Does that mean that you did a lot of writing and copy editing and that sort of thing?

Yep

could he do corporate law or similar though? Not all law practices revolve around crime!

There are other areas of law besides criminal law. Contract law may suit him.

I’m a lawyer in a role which involves a lot of drafting.

Thanks, this is great!

Can you get a job in law without doing a general law degree? We looked at law degrees and they all seem to have a mandatory criminal law section in the first year.

Ds really reminds me of Sir Humphry Appleby, because he just loves to read these long documents and memorise the contents. He's read a massive 300 page instruction manual for a card game recently and is vicerally frustated because he can't find anyone who is a gripped by the nuanced detail as he is.

He tried explaining it to me but he has a great desire to go straight for the nitty-gritty detail without any preamble, so it's hard to keep up.

Today we saw a powerpoint slide where someone had kindly tried to give a simplified version of a complex piece of legal jargon. DS just couldn't let it go, because it was subtly wrong. In the end I had to delete it, so we could move on.

I'm not much of a regular on here, but do pop in from time to time. I'm a language teacher. I teach French, German and Spanish, not Engish. If you want to know about grammar rules though, ask an MFL teacher, not an English teacher (in my experience)!

We looked at law degrees and they all seem to have a mandatory criminal law section in the first year.

yes because crime is a compulsory subject on a law degree. You can't get a law degree without studying it.

I’m a novelist alongside a day job teaching Eng Lit and creative writing at a university. I am a series editor for two academic book series too.

Copy editors and proofreaders need a laser focus for typos, grammatical errors etc.

Translation (I'm a translator) Extremely niche and now a struggling industry (depending on the language), but reading machine translation and finding the errors is also a skill. There are related jobs, AI is not as good as people think it is.

Working for the EU/EC or an international body that produces page after page of drivel vitally important information?

Technical writing, auditing, or report writing?

Criminal law is a very small part of a law degree. He’d probably find it quite interesting as well - it’s not blood and guts but concepts like mens rea and actus reus.

Thanks, this is really good to know. Do you know if there is a good first year crinimal law textbook that we could look at? That would give us a really good idea of what it involved. We've got the A level one already.

I'd decide if he wants to do the degree first. Clarkson and Keating was the book I had on my LLB.

That's not entirely true. The sexual offences section of the course was pretty grim.

Oh dear. Yes he wouldn't manage that.

He does like a good MN parking thread, but they're quite tame. I'm not sure how you get into that kind of law without learning all the grim bits too.

He is an adult or nearly one? Surely he could cope with a couple of classes on sex offences?

Archives as a career?

The nasty bits of criminal law are really a tiny bit of a law degree (or post degree law conversion course). TBH you could probably still get a good degree class even if you skipped the sexual offences lectures completely.

Tax law is excellent for pedants if he's reasonably numerate, and the pay can be very good.

He could do some sort of regulatory law. Import, export, customs etc. Complex and detailed. You also need to forge good relationships with clients.

I think it's probably best if we look at the textbooks for tax law and regular law. Maybe we will get an idea from those about what it involved. Thanks so much for this. It's really so helpful.

To be honest reading law books out of context without being at uni isn't a great idea.

Also what is regular law? I've never heard it in 20 years in the profession.

He needs to do his own research and not have his mum do it for him. Proper research. I say this with no animus because it is coming across quite badly and amateurish here. You don't want that coming across to a prospective university.

If he's an unstoppable force with nitpicking grammar why is his mum doing his research?

Nitpickers often think they are smarter than they actually are.

Ds really reminds me of Sir Humphry Appleby, because he just loves to read these long documents and memorise the contents. He's read a massive 300 page instruction manual for a card game recently and is vicerally frustated because he can't find anyone who is a gripped by the nuanced detail as he is.

On second thought law isn't a good shout. Much of the job is explaining very complex points to lay clients and finding a way to do thaf. If he can't do that and gets visibly frustrated at people who can't understand every detail then it's not a good idea for a career. Law isn't memorising and regurgitating complex facts at people.

My sibling was a proof reader who became a plain English specialist which they do very well at and make a good living at.

They help companies write documents and policies that are easily readable. They are also working with the legal system in their country to make legal documents and jargon more understandable to every day people. As well they re-write government forms and documents so people can more easily understand them.

They are a total pedant but in a nice way!

To be fair there are virtually no fields of employment where you can get away with getting grumpy at people who don't understand the topic as well as you do/do understand it but differ in their interpretation. That's a character trait he's going to need to work on whatever he does.

Agreed.