In “MS Hope MS Heroes”, the MS Society of Canada’s BC & Yukon Division member newsletter.
I have a couple of good friends with MS, one of whom works for the MS Society. I’ve raised money and volunteered for the Society before, but this was my first opportunity to use my professional training and skills in the process! My friend put me in touch with the local Communications Manager, and this piece of blatant nepotism skillful networking helped said Manager respond to reader demand for more news about MS research advances, while helping me add to my nascent portfolio. Win-win FTW!
So. The weird capitalisation errors. Not mine, I swear1 – and I can prove it! I’m going to be writing at least one more article for the same publication, and possibly many more (it beats being a route marshal for the annual sponsored walk, which always seems to take place in a rainstorm). I do feel that I should point out the errors in order to avoid a future repetition, but as the editors and many of the other staff are volunteers, I don’t want to be mean.
Something tells me that my next email might take almost as long to craft as the article itself…
1 Unlike any errors in this blog post, before Richard says anything.
Nice!
Here’s something on the topic you might find interesting.
Thanks!
I read about that. It sounds very interesting indeed (and the MS Society has just announced a grant competition on the subject), but at this stage it has a wee whiff of anecdata around it. Let’s hope it pans out! It would be simply amazing to have a surgical “cure”, even if it only helps a subset of patients.
Anecdata, interesting word. Nice job- that’s an interesting read (it would be great if more scientist writers wrote these kind of stories up accessibly, maybe they do?).
Maybe – although they must be hiding! The MS Society people seemed rather surprised to hear that I was keen to write for them!
The scientist I interviewed for the piece was very keen on the public outreach thing. She said that she and many of her colleagues also do lots of event day volunteering, as well as presentations to donors and patients. It seems to be a very close-knit community, much more so than the cancer research field I’m used to professionally, which is obviously much bigger.
Cool, congrats!
That’s fantastic! It’s nice to hear of a group that does so much outreach and sees the value in it. We get a lot of phone calls from reporters and news stations, and very few (if any) department members will respond to these requests. So, I can understand why the MS Society people were surprised when you told them you’d write this!
Congrats!
Nice work! By the way (since we’re all disappointed that Richard has yet to correct anything here) the word ‘nepotism’ refers specifically to favoritism conferred by relatives. The word you wanted to cross out was ‘cronyism’.
Thanks all!
Alyssa, it’s too bad that your colleagues aren’t keen to respond to those requests. Knowing your background and interest in outreach, do they refer a lot of reporters on to you, or do they just say no?
Jenny, thanks for that! I had a feeling that nepotism was just for family members, but couldn’t think of the correct word.
I wasn’t going to say anything.
Nice article though. :)
Congrats Cath. Nice article!
(I guess I am hopelessly clueless but let’s put it this way “if i was the editor of this, or working at the paper, I’d like to know what I did wrong since I don’t have a clue”. /before coffee in the morning)
Heh, Åsa, it took me a while to spot the error(s?) as well. “Myelin Water Imaging” is not capitalized every time it is used. There might be more, but that’s what I found.
There’s another blog post error, then: I need to specify which Richard I’m referring to!
Åsa and Eva: there are also a couple of sentences beginning with the word “myelin” that are missing their capital letter.
There is but one Richard, and Beta Gal is his prophet.
…and he has no idea what Other Richard is talking about. Most of the time.
And if Richard (Grant) won’t come to the typo, the typo must come to Richard (Grant).
Cath: ahh… I see. missed those ones.. I was looking for an Obvious one ;) haha, like there isn’t anything as obvious as missing the capital letter in the beginning of a sentence.
Eva: Thanks! strenght in numbers, right?
Yes, I seem to remember learning that fairly early on in my education…