Freelance Editing Opportunity

I am practicing surgery but would love to get more involved with editing and writing. To that end, I have started this blog. And I have an idea for a writing/editing venture. I would like to offer my services to all the scammers out there whose command of the English language, particularly English as spoken in the U.S., is lacking. I believe I could greatly enhance the credibility of the scam with some deft copy editing. Here are three examples taken from real emails.

1. I recently received this email from a former resident. The subject line read “Help!!!” The unaltered body of the email is as follows:

” Hey, Am in a deep mess right now,I came down here to London,England for a short vacation unfortunately I was mugged at the park of the hotel where I lodged,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off me but luckily for me i still have my life and passports with me.

“I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and my return flight leaves in the next few hours from now but I'm having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let me leave until I settle the bills. The hotel manager have been so kind by taking me to a local library to shoot an email to you as i have explained to him that the bills is going to be taken care of by you.

“Am freaked out at the moment.

“Stephen”

As you can see, there is a lot to work with here. Ignoring the multiple punctuation, spacing, grammar and capitalization errors, deep mess, lodging, shoot an email and Am freaked out are red flags that something may be amiss. My resident’s email had been hacked and no money changed hands.

2. Another to my son who offers private swim lessons:

“I want to Schedule and reserve for a swimming class/lesson for my clients.You are to provide an instructor for my clients. They(my clients) will be total of Five(5) Adults in number that will be part of the swimming classes for one week(1st of October-7th of October 2010). One(1) hour class or session or learning per day.

“Get back to me with the total cost(in USD or EURO or GBP) of the swimming classes for the Five(5) Adults for the one week.One hour per day. Note that my clients' Logistics Agent will take care of their Feeding,Accommodation,Air flight/Transportation and others Logistics while they are in your country.So you should not bother about that. Hear from you.”

Again, there are a number of areas that require attention. It looks like proofreading is not their strong suit.

3. Response to a Craigslist posting involving furniture:

“…I will give you an extra $25 if you take down the advert immediately.”

Who says “advert” in the U.S.?

So, to all scammers: if you are experiencing poor responses to your email inquiries, contact me and I will help. Just send me your bank account number and any relevant passwords and my Logistics Agent will take care of everything.