Useful Information This editor is a WikiGnome. This user is a member of the Guild of Copy Editors. This user is a random page patroller. Is human. This user is a participant in the Grammar WikiProject. en This user is a native speaker of the English language. Personal This user supports protection of the environment. 86 This user has visited 86 of the 205 countries in the world. This user has visited 50 of the 50 United States. 50 This user has visited 13 of the 10 provinces and 3 territories of Canada. 13 This user loves playing bridge, and does so professionally. This user is an ex-birder who has seen some 3000 species. This user is a certified scuba diver. This user wants to tax the rich to provide health care, education and welfare for everyone.† $ £ ¥ € Grammar ANAL 5 This user is incredibly stringent with professional grammar. its & it's This user understands the difference between its and it's. So should you! infin¦ itive This user chooses never to split infinitives. whom This user insists upon using whom wherever it is called for, and fixes the errors of whomever he sees. which & that This user knows how to use which and that correctly. Latin Plurals: "Data is are..." This user uses "data", "media", "memoranda", "criteria", and "agenda" as the plurals of "datum", "medium", "memorandum", "criterion", and "agendum". “,;:’ This user is a punctuation stickler. since This user dislikes the use of since to mean because. Majority ≠ right This user recognizes that even if 300,000,000 people make the same mistake, it's still a mistake.

Welcome, all. I'm Atakdoug. Here, I'm an occasional Wikignome, most of whose edits are corrections to the grammar, punctuation, and spelling of our well-meaning but sometimes less than perfectly erudite contributors. Note: I am a poor typist so when you see that I've written "teh" or "shoudl" somewhere please just correct it rather than reverting what may be a much more substantial set of fixes. Also, forgive me; I'm fallible. A little.

My primary profession, in which I've engaged for well over twenty years, is tutoring those who're planning to take graduate admission exams, primarily the LSAT (law school) and MCAT (medical school), each of which I am more knowledgeable about than almost anyone else in the world, but also the GMAT, GRE, SAT, and other tests. If you want to know more or to contact me, see my website at DougCouchman.com.

I also play bridge seriously, mostly for fun but also as a teacher and paid partner. I'm active in the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) and was the two-term chair of the league's Advisory Council through 2024; I still hold several other ACBL positions. (Masterpoint Committee, Laws Commission, Competition and Conventions Committee...) Relatedly, I am an arbitrator (certified as a chair) for the Institute for Bridge Arbitration. My law background (UC Berkeley 1996) helps with this but the primary prerequisite is my willingness and ability to digest and use complex information.

In real life I live in Arizona, but I consider myself a citizen primarily of the planet that we seem inexplicably to be doing our best to destroy.