When I agreed to take on the job of technical reviewer for WordPress: The Missing Manual (too lazy to put in an affiliate link, but you can read about the project in my portfolio), part of the promised compensation was a copy of the book after it was published.
The publication date came and went, and no book appeared in my mailbox. I was reminded of this fact when someone posted an interview with the book’s author, and was just about to ping my contact at O’Reilly when he emailed me to ask my opinion about another proposed WordPress book and I was able to get the problem sorted out. (As for the proposed book, it’s a potentially interesting idea, but still only an idea, and I wouldn’t be the one writing it, so I won’t comment further.)
The book itself arrived in the mail a few days later, with my name and bio in the credits. Of course, if I’d realized they were going to lay it out quite as they did, I would have left off the “rhymes with sketch” part, because it looks a bit odd coming after the description of what I did. To me, after so many years of using “rhymes with sketch” as a pronunciation guide for my name, it seems obvious that this phrase should be kept with my name, just as if it were “Jr,” but I suppose it wasn’t obvious to the typesetter.
It’s hardly a standard suffix, after all, though in this era of audio and video media, people like me have to provide such glosses in self-defense, or hear our names mangled and lose the possible marketing value of public mentions.
Anyway, I think it’s a solid book for those who are new to WordPress, whether they use WordPress.com or WordPress.org. I enjoyed working on the project and appreciated the author’s willingness to listen to suggestions. I’ll just have to think of a better way to format my mini-bio so I can avoid having my pedantic little toes curl next time I see my name in print.
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