Wote - not just a town in Kenya

Hello, my name is Cindy, and I am a ranter. This has been a recent revelation, and I have decided to embrace it. I haven't yet decided if there's a 12-step program that would aid me with this issue. No matter. 

Grammar was the target of my last rant, along with its cousin, proofreading. I was harsh, maybe too much so. From the elevated status of my soap box, I did feel empowered. However, I saw a piece of writing this week that made me think twice about my distaste for grammar.
 

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In a resume for a writing position in my department at work, we found one in need of some well-placed commas. And then came this sentence starter: "I wote several articles..." Wote gets a squiggly red salute from Microsoft Word. I'm sure if this person ran spellcheck it would have been caught. Research seemed to be the best solution to see if the person had a reason for adding the word wote to the Word dictionary. Here's what I found:

• Wote, capitalized, is a town in Kenya. It is southwest of Nairobi, and sits on the edge of the desert. An unlikely culprit. This person was so white (a picture was included on the resume), unless Wote is the location of a foster child he or she sends money to through a children's charity, it's probably not the cause of the error.
• WOTE, all capitalized, is an acronym for Workshop on Trustworthy Elections, an educational seminar put on by the International Association for Voting Systems Sciences.  Again, based on the briefest of glances at the experience listed in the resume, I just don't see it.
• wote.com is the location on the World Wide Web of Write on the Edge. It is a technical communications company. This sounds more promising. Perhaps this person was a freelance writer for Write on the Edge. Now I have the reason to give him or her the benefit of the doubt.

What ever the case, back to the rant. In an admittedly shallow search of Google, I could not find wote used as a verb. And the number of times I had to stop and divide the sentences in this resume into manageable chunks was frustrating. So perhaps my problem with grammar stems from a few things:

• I have a naturally affinity for language. Subject and meaning still interest me more than grammar, but this resume made me stop and think about the importance of underlying structure. My ear for the natural ebb and flow of language allows me to use grammar somewhat innately, though the details plague me. I would cast it as similar to gross and fine motor skills. I am definitely gross-oriented.
• Second, I am a global thinker. Big picture, big picture, big picture. Say it with me. Big picture. Grammar is definitely on the picky detail side of the picture.
• My attention is generally focused on what comes next, not what I've already done. For me, the adrenaline rush comes with the creation of meaningful content. Once I've got the meaning on paper, I would just as soon leave the details behind and find the next big thing. I get caught up in the rush to move on.

I have had people tell me to just slow down (yawn) and I will do better. As I will be entering the sixth decade of my life in a few short weeks, I'm thinking not so much. A better approach might be to pick up a few more tools here and there so I can do it right the first time, rather than being hauled back to revisit it again. That, and I'm still looking for a good proofreader to call my friend.