Hi guys

I'm not yet part of SY but will be within the next month or two. Obviously, I look at your sites to get a feel for things and like what I see. Every one I've visited so far uses English for its text.

Some of you could do with a proofreader and/or copywriter (no, not a copyrighter, a copywriter). Please excuse me if I appear to be unintentionally patronising or superior with what follows but I do see quite a few sites with errors of phrasing and grammar and occasional spelling mistakes in the text on home pages etc. Mostly, they're minor errors but, well, an error is an error and unfortunately, software grammar and spelling correction is unreliable.

I suspect that this affects those whose first language is not English more than native English speakers but the latter are not immune. I don't know if it puts off buyers or visitors but it certainly wouldn't do any harm to be accurate. I'm speculating here but I do wonder if it has any effect on SEO too (I'm by no means an SEO expert though).

So I'm offering to be a proofreader and copywriter for you. If you would like me to look over any text that you have on your Symbiostock home page or other pages, in the co-operative spirit of Symbiostock, I am happy to do so gratis/for free/nada at least for now. I will respect your confidentiality and be completely discreet about this.

I have some other thoughts (including conditions, occasional charges and things I won't do) but I'll wait until I've had some responses to this post before I discuss those.

As to my qualifications for doing this, I'm not a professional copywriter but English is my first language and I am a widely published author of scientific papers from my days in visual optics, physiology and cancer research. And I'm an unreconstructed grammar Nazi who bites his knuckles when he sees "their" instead of "they're" or "your" instead of "you're" 

So whaddya think?

Russell

PS Can you imagine how many times I proofread this post 

Providing you do not use "whaddya" I have no objection to you or anyone pointing out any spelling or nasty grammatical errors they spot within my site, here or privately, it would be appreciated it as I do want it to be correct 

Tinny - you've got a PM.

Glenn - I'll cast my eyes over your site later. If you want me to contribute to PR stuff, I'd be delighted to. I think that a collaborative effort is needed on writing that sort of stuff so that all the bases are covered in terms of the messages we want to put out there.

I'm surprised that nobody's bawled me out on my intentional punctuation error in the OP...

I have now implemented most of Russell's suggestions on my front page, any spelling and grammatical errors are mine.

Is the advice worth paying for if you wanted an in depth report?  Yes I think so,  English is my mother-tongue and I have problems proof-reading my own work