The copy editor is IN

[hilarity n. suze]

...sometimes I really do wish I could turn it off.

I'm reading a book. It starts out by saying something like, "Usually, I would think of spring at the beginning of the year, not the end of the year. But I'm in the Western Hemisphere, and she's in the Eastern Hemisphere, so..."

Say...what? The eastern hemisphere has spring at a different time of year? Wouldn't it be...the northern/southern hemispheres she'd be talking about?

Blew air through my bangs and kept reading. I have kind of a tenuous grasp on geography (that's putting it mildly, I can barely find my way home), so if I were editing this book I'd look it up to make sure, but I'm not, I'm reading it. For pleasure.

Sixty pages later she wrote "faired" when she meant "fared."

I think I should write to St. Martin's and complain. This kind of shit never happens in books I edit. And when I run into errors like this I really, really, really want to change them.

I think I'll watch a movie.

[iampunha]

Originally Posted by hilarity n. suze

...sometimes I really do wish I could turn it off.

Yup.

Everywhere I go.

When the wife and I go to a restaurant, I find what I want and then I close that menu right quick before the error count reaches critical mass and the meal is ruined.

My Facebook feed is populated by reasonably intelligent people. In fact, you can tell if I added someone for a game because their English is decent at best and remedial at worst. (I prefer to add people who speak no English because that way I can't tell how poor their writing is.)

Signs, packaging, anything done for a movie -- the headlines are all the way across the page in two lines. That would never fly at an actual newspaper.

Job ads are particularly hideous. For about a year there, folks would write those godawful "Can you find the error in are sentence?" things where they included more mistakes than they realized. Nobody ever followed up with me on one of those ... These days, they just can't get lists to be consistent.

I read really selectively when I am not at work because I can't stop finding mistakes. I don't like books anymore because either editors are afraid to remove the crap from writing or it's a feature, not a bug.

The good thing about all of this is that my inability to let anything go is crucial 99 percent of the time at work.

The bad thing is that five pages into anything, I'll be enjoying myself, not yet having seen anything cringetastic, and then I'll find an error two copy editors out of 500 would spot, and the experience'll be ruined. I won't even want to finish the thing.

[Harry]

My favorites are the errors in letters from schools and school districts.

[iampunha]

Originally Posted by Harry

My favorites are the errors in letters from schools and school districts.

Numerous school news releases have contained fundamental writing errors, including the occasional dropped verb. I expect that kind of thing from the city, where the primary requirement is that you own business suits (even the city lawyer's writing is garbage), but schools are supposed to be better than that.

Oh, and everything always has lots of exclamation points!!!

Then there's the county retired teachers association, whose secretary/media liaison can't figure out how to uncapitalize everything she writes.

[Wolf Larsen]

The local paper is spell checked but not edited. It pays little, so most of the people there are right out of journalism school. The number of word choice errors is painful. (Well, that and the leftist slant, but I take that one for granite.)

(Snork, couldn't resist.)

[Scarlett67]

I find that it helps to think of myself as having a coin-operated brain (a phrase I've borrowed from a colleague). It doesn't pay to get all het up about errors unless I'm being paid to find them. Sure, I may notice, and I may chuckle at the amusing ones, and I may cluck at the egregious ones. But life's too short to let it ruin my day. Shit happens. The world is imperfect. There are worse crimes than a homophone error or a grocer's apostrophe. Let it go.

[BJMoose]

Yup. Once a copy editor, always a copy editor (even though, in my case, I ignored a journalism professor's suggestion that I become one).

Book editing really has gone downhill in recent years. While it is no surprise that obscure publishers appear to do no more that trust whatever spellcheck software they have, I find that some of the old-line publishers are getting sloppy, too.

(But I'm the sort who is annoyed with the decrease in the use of ligatures, doubtless a consequence of the fact that nearly all typesetting is done by the author.)

[SmartAleq]

I try to just let my eye run over the errors and I try to be kind and keep in mind that the age of the proofreader is over, so homophones abound unchecked. Sometimes, though, it's more than I can bear, like the Spinrad book I chucked across the room because the main form of transportation in the book was variants on the bicycle, all of which were "peddled" wherever they went. I just could NOT stop my brain from interpreting the world as being chock full of itinerant bike shops. RAEG!

[hilarity n. suze]

I work for a publisher, and often, what I get are things like: "We're trying to keep the budget for this book down, so don't spend more than 10 hours on the edit." There are some books this works for, and some it doesn't.

I also do some freelance work. I would like to go totally freelance, but there is less and less demand as mistakes proliferate and people don't care.

What really bites, though, is that when I write something, all these obvious mistakes just disappear. Until I've submitted it. Then I see them.

[jali]

The one phrase that annoys me the most on Facebook is the response to "thank you".

Your welcome.


This is written 9 out of 10 times and I have to surpress the urge to post a correction every time.

[Scarlett67]

Originally Posted by hilarity n. suze

I work for a publisher, and often, what I get are things like: "We're trying to keep the budget for this book down, so don't spend more than 10 hours on the edit." There are some books this works for, and some it doesn't.

I also do some freelance work. I would like to go totally freelance, but there is less and less demand as mistakes proliferate and people don't care.

I'd like to disagree. There's plenty of work. Book publishers are not the only entities that hire freelance editors. Corporations, nonprofits, journals, individuals, government, educational institutions . . .

One of my best clients is a major NYC fiction publisher. They are glad to pay, and both project managers and authors keep asking for me to work on their books again and again. So let's not nail up that coffin just yet.

Folks need to remember, too, that just because you see an error doesn't mean OMG NOBODY CARES. Yes, editing budgets are being cut. But it's always been true that for every 1,000 things the editor catches, maybe one slips through. Or the proofreader erroneously changes it back. Or a prima donna author asks for a error to stand (if I had a nickel for every time . . . well, I'd have a lot of nickels). Or there's an error in the cover blurb that was quickly reviewed by a harried staffer. And we do a zillion other things besides catching errors of language and fact. We format files and insert typesetting codes/styles. We create tables of contents. We ensure continuity and consistency in figure captions, cross-references, table formats, list items, yada yada yada, keeping meticulous notes on EVERYTHING.

Some of it is damned tedious. I'm thinking of one of my current projects, a culinary textbook. Recipes can be a huge pain, because of the enormous number of individual items that must be made consistent. Units of measure, treatment of ingredients ("garlic clove" or "clove of garlic"? For "olive oil" in the ingredients list, is it also "olive oil" in the instructions, or just "oil"?), consistent phrasing of common instructions ("Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, . . ."), and on and on and on.

I know that some of you know exactly what copyediting entails. But a lot of people labor under the misconception that it's rather like running spell-check, and we just read the thing tra-la-la looking for typos and blunders. If only.

We editors have to engage in a bit of doublethink. We strive for perfection, yet we know that when we get our copy of that "perfectly edited" book, we'll open it and what will we see first thing? A big fat error. And life goes on.

Speaking of editing, I must return to copyediting a rather thrilling sci-fi adventure . . .

[Panacea]

I am working on a project in which I am trying to use a "study" that was done by somebody else.

I put "study" in scare quotes because this book is practically useless. It has a bunch of verbage in the front but the bulk of it is about 100 pages of computer printout and a dozen graphic plates. Not only is the printout basically an incomprehensible wall of numbers but the graphic plates are impossible to read (labels plotted on top of one another, for example).

Look, people. Engineering reports by their very nature are difficult for lay people to understand. You have to make your writing clear, concise, and succinct. Your study is useless without tables listing the design parameters. Your printouts are worthless without summary sheets. And fer chrissake, your verbage should MAKE SOME FUCKING SENSE.

I had already decided that if this report had been sent out with my company logo on it, the author would have been fired, when I was reading through it looking for something and came across this sentence:

"Most of these problems can be eliminated by proper channel maintenance and have been exasperated by debris left from Hurricane Katrina."




I actually threw the book across the room at that point. Goddamnit so much.


.

[iampunha]

Originally Posted by Scarlett67

I know that some of you know exactly what copyediting entails. But a lot of people labor under the misconception that it's rather like running spell-check, and we just read the thing tra-la-la looking for typos and blunders. If only.

When I saw newspapers consolidating copy editing and design, I knew the days of people having no clue what copy editors do were nearer because design and editing are different spheres:

Unwashed Person: "What's copy?"

Copy Editor: "Text."

UP: "Oh, so you, like, check spelling and stuff."

CE: "And about 50 other things."

UP: "Oh. That doesn't sound hard."

CE: "In what one circumstance is under way one word?"

UP: "Um, when there's no space? Hahaha idk."

CE: "It's one word when you're using it in the nautical sense. Otherwise, it's two words."

UP: "OK, so?"

CE: "So knowing that is my job. Also stuff like preventing us from getting sued."

UP: "Oh, wow! So you're a lawyer?"

CE: (Yeah, that's why I'm getting paid $27K to do two jobs. Because I have a law degree.) "No. I'm an editor.

::pause:: "Look, something shiny!"

UP: ::runs off::

[Carolia]

My inner English teacher never goes off duty. I cam drive hubby up a wall correcting all the errors I find in daily life. Ugh.

[3acres]

Originally Posted by NinetyWt

I actually threw the book across the room at that point. Goddamnit so much.

Gosh, you seem exacerbated.

[Euryphaessa]

Originally Posted by iampunha

CE: "In what one circumstance is under way one word?"

UP: "Um, when there's no space? Hahaha idk."

CE: "It's one word when you're using it in the nautical sense. Otherwise, it's two words."

I was not aware of this. Thanks!

[iampunha]

Originally Posted by Euryphaessa

I was not aware of this. Thanks!

Specific to AP -- but since my work is all AP unless it's for the publications that are all about pretty pictures, AP is the default.

(If only it were also the default for AP writers.)

'd be fun to do a thread where various of us chew through something good just to show folks the difference between what gets published anyway and how good something published can be.

[Panacea]

Originally Posted by 3acres

Gosh, you seem exacerbated.

YOU BETTER BE GLAD I LIKE BEASTS THAT CAN TALK

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by NinetyWt

YOU BETTER BE GLAD I LIKE BEASTS THAT CAN TALK

Looks like you missed your period there.

You folks are reminding me of why I may have chosen not to become a professional copy editor. Fixing errors in spelling and grammar is actually rather simple since most mistakes are rather obvious to anyone with a decent memory and some eye for detail. Editing for style is the real drudge work.

Still, I feel the art has declined some in recent years. Just last night I saw an illustration that had fourteen numbered items in the list but only thirteen numbered items in the accompanying diagram. People who miss stuff like that should consider a career move to sausage making or somesuch.


Anyway, here's to all you copy editors whose labors we dont notice!

[Scarlett67]

Originally Posted by BJMoose

Anyway, here's to all you copy editors whose labors we dont notice!

Thank you.

[Baldwin]

It can be one word: "Time to get underway!" but "under way" is also correct. (Though having it as one word is closer to the original Dutch word.)

God bless good copy editors. I just had a story published that I'd already revised three or four times. But when it finally got in front of a professional editor, he suggested about six more minor changes -- and they were all good suggestions. (There weren't any spelling or grammatical errors, of course, but there were a few awkward spots.)

I read an entire novel that had obviously never been edited in any meaningful sense. It'd been run through spell check -- and it was chock-full of homophones. I bought it through Barnes & Noble, but I think it was essentially self-published.

It's remarkable how sometimes an obvious factual error passes in front of many people without being caught. Because Dean Koontz isn't noteably bright and has little grasp of science (besides not being exactly a great writer), he thought that the human brain weighs six pounds. He put that mistake into dialogue in his crappy novel Phantoms, which was later made into a crappy movie. So a mistake that any fifth grader should be able to correct remained intact from the author, through the book editor, through whoever read the book at the production company, through the adaptation into a screenplay, into the shooting script, past the director, and out of Ben Affleck's mouth.

[Amythyst]

Originally Posted by Scarlett67

I'd like to disagree. There's plenty of work. Book publishers are not the only entities that hire freelance editors. Corporations, nonprofits, journals, individuals, government, educational institutions . . .

I wish courts hired copy editors. I've taken to editing judicial rulings as I read them.

I love the copy editors at my office. I'm one of the few editors who encourages them to ask questions. I'd rather look stupid in front of them than have subscribers report an error in my work!

[threnody]

Originally Posted by Harry

My favorites are the errors in letters from schools and school districts.

During a brief church-going phase, my mother volunteered to do the church newsletter/christmas carol leaflet.

That year, our parish was full of bad angels, as we all sang with one voice

Hark the herald angels sin!

[Steerpike]

I used to edit a journal about large North American rodents, and some of the contributers badly needed a coypu editor.