Love, Your Copyeditor

Typo Du Jour: Starting Lineup

2012-01-17T14:23:00.002-05:00

After admissions and salaries had turned nineteenth-century baseball into a processional sport, the city grid had collapsed aroundthe Elysian Fields’ dreaminess, and what had once been special was lost foreverunder the concrete.

Oh, so that's why the game takes so long!

Love,
Your Copyeditor

A Topical Breeze

2012-01-05T11:40:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, cats and kittens! I hope your holidays were grand and that your reentry into the working world (presuming you work and are not slackers/trustifarians) hasn't been too jarring.

As for me, I never stop working.

Each year around this time I like to make resolutions about...guess what? Copyediting. I like to ask myself what I can be less of a hard-ass about, whether the year that's gone by has pushed us culturally closer to accepting formerly taboo constructs and, if so, to review what the arguments are, either for or against them. Each year I strive to add a new word to my mini style guide that goes against W11 or Chicago. Because language is usage as much as it is grammar. Will this be the year of "goodbye" (W11 still says it should be "good-bye")? Maybe so!

Someone brought a website to my attention, and I'd like to share it with you and hopefully spark some discussion.

While I love the clever and irreverent writing style employed by the author, I don't happen to agree that these are the twenty most controversial rules in the grammar world, not least of which because very few of them are about grammar, or the technical aspects of what makes a language function, have meaning, or make sense. Many of them are about usage, or the informal agreements we share about what words mean or about what kinds of utterances are acceptable under what conditions.

Item #3, Double Negatives, is about grammar, for example. And I disagree that they can ever be grammatically correct, unless what you mean to say is something positive. They are mini logic problems, and logic always has a right answer.

The sentence "I don't have nothing for you" effectively means "I have something for you." And that is rarely what a speaker intends.

Let's break it down:

1. I don't have nothing for you.

2. It is not the case that I have nothing for you.

3. ~ (I have nothing for you.)

4. ~ (It is not the case that I have something for you.)

5. ~[~(I have something for you.)]

6. ~ ~ I have something for you.

THEREFORE

7. I have something for you.

6→7 because ~ ~ P≡P.

Meanwhile, item #17, about the correct spelling of e-mail, is more about usage. Increasingly you will see "email" used in print despite it not being endorsed by the dictionary of record. I'm not sure I'll ever accept "email," mostly because it looks like a Frenchman's name and linguistically asks to be pronounced "eh-MAYL." I have no problem with "eBooks," however, because this type of midcap style has been cemented by eBay and iPad and we know how to say those words. Perhaps instead the time has come to start a campaign for "eMail."

Anyway, there's a bunch of interesting stuff here. I hope you'll chime in with a comment to let me know your thoughts. Maybe one of you will be the catalyst for a new resolution.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Automatic for the Panamanians

2011-12-18T14:57:00.000-05:00

Typo du jour!

Panamanian president Manual Noriega offered to assassinate the leadership of the Nicaraguan government, but in return he wanted a commitment from the White House to lift the ban on US weapons sales to Panama.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

"Hells no!" --George Washington

2011-12-09T12:56:00.006-05:00

I wish sites like BrainyQuote and ThinkExist would disappear. Then I wouldn't have to tackle stuff like this:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us,” Ralph Waldo Emerson famously claimed.

And the corresponding endnote:

000 "What lies behind us": widely attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, although the original source is unclear.

Um, unclear? Unclear to whom? The morons who compile quote clearinghouses? The query I decided on does not adequately reflect my scorn.

AU: Only properly vetted quotations may be used. In doing the research, one discovers that this quote was definitely not Emerson: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/01/11/what-lies-within/

Please recast both the main text and the note.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

This Guy's in Disguise

2011-12-01T16:18:00.005-05:00

Here's one way to avoid battle:

Soon he was on his way to Germany as a newly minted military police office.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

The Big Leap

2011-11-14T11:54:00.004-05:00

Ahoy there, cats and kittens.

I have some incredibly cool news to share with you!

But first, a bit of history. Eleven years ago I moved to New York City from Washington DC, where I'd been working toward my master's degree. I'd just been laid off from my part-time job in public relations (which I totally sucked at anyway, hence the bull's-eye on my back that led to my expendability). My insightful bosses at the PR agency said, "Why don't you get into publishing?"

So I did.

I started small, with an in-house freelance copyediting/proofreading job that a friend from high school helped me get, but soon I was hired by one of the Big Five publishers, in the managing editorial department. Every couple of years after that I'd either be promoted or would move to a different company or both. All the while I was slowly building my freelance copyediting empire, taking on so much work at times that occasionally I would need to take some vacation days at the day job to keep up with the night job.

Why all that work? Well, in case you weren't aware, publishing pays bupkes, especially at first. But more than that, I just loved copyediting. I loved being able to work so closely with a text and forge a vital link with an author on his or her way to reach the reader. My day job didn't allow much of that. And as time marched on and my responsibilities increased, my connection to the books got ever more remote. I loved the people I worked with and I loved the security of knowing that I was a valuable member of a team responsible for bringing terrific books into the world, but I was beginning to feel a lack. And a restless notion kept chewing at me....

So one day I asked myself this: Could I ditch the day job someday and just be a copyeditor? Could I make the leap from corporate security to the full-time freelance lifestyle and not only survive but flourish?

Well, "someday" has come. And so far, I've been richly rewarded with lots of new projects!

So today I am blogging from home for the first time in a long time, and home is my new office.

I am tremendously excited to get started on this adventure. And I hope to be able to continue to share my funny stories from the road.

Thanks for being one of many reasons why I love my new (old) job.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Your Copyeditor Recommends...

2011-11-01T17:10:00.005-04:00

Hello, wonderful people!

For the second time on this blog I am outright endorsing (possibly even insisting upon) your purchase of a book, which is on sale as of today:

I can promise you that it contains these amazing things. And much, much more!

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Some Guy, Whose Initials Are Not TK

2011-09-26T12:57:00.005-04:00

One of my favorite types of books to work on are illustrated books--you know, coffee-table books. Design. Visual Art. Culture. Books-as-objects. The kinds of books that will be the last to die, if you believe all that doomsaying about books.

I was looking at a first pass of just such a book, about a certain music festival. Full of really gorgous photography...and disastrous captions.

Every other person's name was misspelled or misidentified.

But then there was my favorite. On a spread with photos of three other people was a photo that looked like this:

(photo by Melanie Parker-Levi, on Flickr)

And the caption read: Some Guy.

I was gobsmacked. My gob. It was smacked, I tell you. I mean, who the hell doesn't know who this guy is? What rock has that person been living under for the past twenty or so years? I realize that perhaps not all the captions were supplied by the author and had to be written by the designer, who may be twenty years old and therefore clueless. But really? Some Guy?

There is a shorthand that we use in this industry for things we either don't know or are waiting to know. That shorthand is "TK." The book was filled with TK information. TKs aplenty. But for some reason TK wasn't good enough for this mystery man?

The first person to comment with Some Guy's identity makes my Monday worthwhile. Do a dumbass designer a favor and tell me who this is.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Everything I need to know about love I learned from God. And the Cybermen.

2011-09-20T12:22:00.004-04:00

It has been far too long, cats and kittens. I've been working tirelessly (aka without tires) but without much worth sharing. Run-of-the-mill goofs, tired malapropisms, humdrum typos.

Last week I started a project that I assumed would lead to some of the most uproarious blog-worthy discoveries. It is, would you believe, a Christian marriage manual. I tend not to work on either religion or self-help, but I thought certainly a hybrid of the two would be sidesplitting.

The bizarre thing is, it's actually pretty good. Jargony. A tad repetitive. Soft on logic. But not the train wreck I was secretly hoping for.

Also, it contains this wise counsel that I endorse as a Whovian but think might be a theological stretch:

Delete every adulterous thought before it takes hold of you. Ask yourself, “Does this thought honor God or not?” If it doesn’t, throw it out! Delete! Delete! Delete!

I'm pretty sure the author is not intentionally referencing Doctor Who, and I think it's probably harmless to avoid mentioning it. To him, anyway. I couldn't let you go without this geeky goodness.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Hey, Good-Lookin'!

2011-08-19T13:02:00.003-04:00

Just finished work on a novel where the characters have only three reactions: nodding, shrugging, and looking. Here's a good-lookin' sentence if ever I saw one.

She gave us one of those what-are-you-up-to looks to which we both innocently looked back.

AU: A bit awkward, no? Perhaps something like "...looks, which we pretended to innocently ignore"?

Love,
Your Copyeditor

How Irregular!

2011-07-26T08:06:00.006-04:00

Kids these days. Just as mean and insensitive as ever:

Other kids called her a “braniac,” and she had a tough time socially during middle school.

At least she didn't have a tough time in the girls' room.

I See London, I See Monaco

2011-07-18T20:34:00.007-04:00

Thirty-five seamstresses and designers at MGM’s wardrobe department in Hollywood had created [Grace Kelly's] wedding gown, using one hundred yards of silk net and twenty-five yards of silk taffeta. The underwear designed for the occasion had a silk crepe sheath.

AU: Unclear what’s being described here. Do you mean underskirts or petticoats? Not sure why there’d be specially designed underwear, as in panties or bras, or why these unmentionables should be mentionable.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

I Get Knocked Down...

2011-07-12T12:49:00.006-04:00

You ever have those work-related dreams whe there's some important meeting you should be at but you're not or some project that's due that you've forgot about entirely or you're trying to cover your ass for an unspecified transgression to a faceless boss whose voice is like that of the adult characters in Peanuts? No? Liar.

I thought I'd share the result of one of these dreams. Even if it means publicly admitting I'm not perfect. I had to send the following e-mail to a production editor:

Dear __________,

I had one of those work nightmares last night
(I'm sure you know the ones), and I dreamed that I had the wrong spelling of something on my style sheet. And it's true. I did. Please change "Chumbawumba" to "Chumbawamba." My apologies. I remember highlighting it to go back and fix and I thought I did.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Brought to You by TK, God of What Is to Come

2011-07-04T08:46:00.009-04:00

Hello, and happy Fourth of July!

It's been awhile, but that's because I've been working on five (5!) projects simultaneously, all with deadlines very close to one another. Trying to make up for all the work I missed out on while I was teaching. To any other copyeditors out there, a word of warning: Never, ever do this! I can do this only because I am awesome. And also insane.

Two out of five are finished, to which I say "Hooray!" And possibly also "Good riddance!" However, I'm dangerously close to being done with one that I'd rather keep forever. Or at least a while longer. To make it truly perfect. Unfortunately, two weeks is all the publisher could give me. It is the manuscript of One of My Favorite Authors, whose comments about my work on his previous book led to the creation of this blog. How meta!

The funny thing is, I'm loath to share too much with you about it for fear of creating spoilers. The last thing in the world I'd want to do is piss off One of My Favorite Authors were he to visit here. So instead of spoilers, I give you teasers. Specifically, the vocabulary list from the style sheet. It will likely allow you to guess whose book it is and give you a tiny taste of what is in store without spoiling anything. What's in store is amazing, by the way. And occasionally heartbreaking.

And, to One of My Favorite Authors, it's been a pleasure, as always. And this had better not be all.

VOCABULARY:

African American

Airedale

aka

a.m.

Asperger’s

Aspergian

ax (weapon)

ball game

barrelly

beardionnaire

béarnaise

beefsteak

big-box

brain cups

brain-explode (v. trans.)

capoeira

cerebrospinal

Chardonnay

coelacanth

cofounder

confectioners’ sugar

conti-country

coprophage

costar

cryptid

cryptozoology

dickfish

doo-wop

earth (the ground)

Earth (our planet)

Fail Whale

foxbat

fun-seeming

God’s eye–making

good-bye

good night

Gumstone

ham radio

hasenpfeffer

hoboes

hors d’oeuvres

humanhead fish

ice fishing

Internet

jackalope

Jai alai

jet-pack

jingleheimer schmidt

jockism

keelhaul

knickknack

kung fu

LARPer

lip-brain

loop-de-loops

lulz

makeup

manticore

mecha-brain

mega-squid

mole-man

morcilla

naïve

namecheck

nanobots

normally-breathing

NPRmy

nunchucks

Octember

onstage

papier-mâché

Parkour

penny-farthing

pétanque

p.m.

powercess

powercessful

pre-Columbian

pruno

pseudoephedrine

pteranadon

re-dehydrating

re-deposited

retconning

sandbar

sci-fi (adj.)

sex-jester

sexretary

shape-shifter

show-offy

social Darwinism

sour melon

spank-a-dank

speed metal

sub-stache

supercar

supermachine

tasering/tasered

telepathy horns

telltale

thought-port

time-share

timestream

toothfish

toxoplasmid

US (adj. preceding noun)

Van de Graaf generator

vegannibalism

website

Weltanschauung

Greetings, Enemy!

2011-06-13T12:54:00.003-04:00

As the Union troops closed to within musket range, they fired their single shots and rushed forward yelling, “Hi! Hi! Hi!”

AU: A brief explainer about how they weren't shouting hello? This isn't a war cry you hear much these days.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Military Intelligence

2011-06-07T12:52:00.007-04:00

I'm back! (Cue Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle." )

Someday soon I'll post a good encapsulation of my experiment with teaching (I need a bit of distance before I'm ready to put a stamp on it), but right now I'm elated to get back to what I really love doing, which is copyediting.

I've started by taking on some serious nonfiction--military history, one of my favorite subjects--and here's a shiny bauble of a booboo to share with you:

The strategy wasn't complicated: ~~French~~ Trench warfare to hold the fort.

AU: As meant? As much as I love the French, that doesn't seem like a good strategy.
Love,

Your Copyeditor

In the Boom-Boom Room

2011-04-01T11:12:00.012-04:00

The second part [of the book] examines the boom in concert halls in China.

AU: "amazing increase in the number of concert halls"? "skyrocketing demand for new concert halls"? My hunch is this pun wasn't intended.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Those Who Can Do

2011-03-30T11:51:00.009-04:00

Conspicuously absent? Moi? If anyone had told me exactly how hard and how all-consuming this teaching thing was going to be or how many good manuscripts I'd have to turn down, I might not have signed on. I'm halfway through the semester now, and I have to admit that despite it being exciting and new and interesting I'm somewhat looking forward to it being over. Not just so I can get back to blogging, but so I can get back to copyediting. Meanwhile, that tired old saw keeps repeating itself in my head:

"Those who can't, teach."

Except in my case it looks more like:

"Those who can't teach."

And there's a little cartoon arrow pointing from it to me. Nobody has told me that I suck, and it's not as if my students are asleep during lectures, but most days, I feel inadequate. It's humbling. And you all know how much I like being humble.

Today I want to give some serious love and respect to the teachers in my life. Those who can both teach and do. Like Therese Cox at &7 and Jackie Jacobi-McCauley at And One Day All Will Know. And of course the venerable Dr. Mandik at Brain Hammer. I'm looking forward to getting back to being one of those who can . . . and doing. And sharing with you.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Paging Dr. Zoidberg!

2011-03-08T13:05:00.005-05:00

Let me be perfectly clear. I love experimental fiction. I love authors who are in love with the English language and are keen to do interesting things with it--who want to go beyond storytelling and make new shapes in our imagination with words, making the strange of the familiar and vice versa.

What I don't love quite as much is a new breed of author who considers him- or herself a writer of experimental fiction but is really just a maker of word salad. Merely replacing the "right" or "expected" word with a word from a wildly different context does not make one a clever writer, especially if the substitution or juxtaposition comes at the expense of sense. It makes the writing into a kind of Frankenstein's monster--body parts a go-go.

So today's examples are from a novel I recently worked on where the author was far more interested in using language "inventively" instead of telling a story well, some of the funniest being cases where a physical feature is being described. You would think the author was an alien who'd never seen a human being before!

Her knuckles stretched to embrace the varnished box.
It caused A____ to draw in sharp little breaths that stabbed her lungs, which she immediately tried to remedy by starting at the draw of L____'s neck.
Her stomach jerked and struck in like a closed fist.
She wrapped her legs around L____, whose weight rubbed up the middle of A____'s torso and chest.
They laughed around two sharp corners.

AU:

1. Knuckles can’t stretch or embrace anything, let alone a coffin-sized box. Maybe "knuckles brushed the surface of"?

2. "staring at the line of L____'s neck" meant? Or "staring at the way L____'s neck was drawn"?

3. "jerked and pulled inward" (i.e., "contracted") meant?

4. The chest is a proper part of the torso. Recast.

5. "laughed as they rounded" meant?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

The New SNOOT Salute

2011-02-28T13:36:00.007-05:00

So the day has finally arrived! I begin teaching the NYU copyediting course this evening.

I'm tremendously excited, albeit a bit nervous. My theatre background will certainly save me from any significant stagefright incidents; nevertheless, it's a nervewracking moment whenever one is expected to be "on" in front of a roomful of strangers.

But I've prepared as much as possible without getting to a point where it would sound canned or rehearsed. My syllabus is airtight...maybe I ought to call it an Airbus.

I've even got some fun handouts (does anyone out there but me remember when they were called "dittos"?) for my students to take home.

Because I'm all but mandated to grade in a way that includes "class participation" (something so nebulous and subjective that it makes me cringe), I've decided that one of the best ways to get them interested is to assign them "Authority and American Usage" by David Foster Wallace. My thought here is that if they can't find something in this essay that sparks their interest, indignation, or imagination over the course of the semester--something that could be the jumping-off point for an in-class discussion--then they shouldn't be copyeditors. Or get a good participation grade.

The unfortunate part is that I can't just hand them the whole essay. It's too long to be considered fair use. So they get the first few pages as a teaser and a plea for them to spend the $8.99 or whatever on the paperback of Consider the Lobster so they can read the whole thing. If the last line of the teaser doesn't grab them, the one that ends with what might be my favorite quotation from the piece, I'm in for a long ten weeks:

"We Are the Few, the Proud, the More or Less Constantly Appalled at Everyone Else."

I can hardly wait to meet my new SNOOT recruits.

Wish me luck!

Love,
Your Copyeditor

When Ad Hominems Attack

2011-02-24T13:57:00.005-05:00

This type ohhh was sent to me by one of my favorite freelance copyeditors, who is doing a project for me at the day job. So while it doesn't come from my own direct experience as a copyeditor, it was too good not to share:

C____’s answer was his standard ad homonym--that H____
was an over-his-head waif . . .

Does it get any more meta-awesome than that?

I don't think so.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

One Toke over the Line

2011-02-16T10:12:00.003-05:00

His complexion was that of a well-fed Keith Richards,
and he smoked joints now to ease his complaining joints.

AU: Having two distinct senses of the word "joint" in the same sentence seems awkward. Perhaps make the first one "grass" to keep with the nostalgic reference?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Drinking and Driving (to Brainerd?)

2011-01-28T17:07:00.004-05:00

Mr. ______'s car was in the parking lot. An old,
beat-up tan Sierra ~~saloon~~ sedan.

AU: As meant? Also, reference to Fargo intentional?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

They Could Be, Possibly, Large Men

2011-01-25T13:34:00.000-05:00

Not just a mistaken reference, an inadvertent commentary on a well-known grammar debate. Well done, Slightly Out-of-Touch YA Author!

He flipped his iPod to a ’90s shuffle and heard songs he didn’t know by Pavement and They ~~May~~ Might Be Giants.

And Now for a Look at Our Weather

2011-01-12T10:43:00.000-05:00

The fire burned and the debris came down like snow from apocalypse.

AU: Change to "like snow in a nuclear winter" or similar? Not all apocalypses have snow.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Serial Offender

2011-01-05T13:46:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year!

While I warm up my engines for 2011 and prepare to bring you more hilarity from copyediting's front lines, I give you yet another wonderful example of why the serial comma should be king:

Love,
Your Copyeditor (who, by the way, supports Mr. Haggard's right to have any kind of relationship he wants)

On "Doing It"

2010-12-21T12:27:00.011-05:00

Being a copyeditor has its trickier social elements. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not that we are dull and don’t have anything to talk about at cocktail parties. Instead, it’s that we are continually asked to “look over” the work of unpublished authors before they send them off to be ~~rejected~~ reviewed by a publisher. Moving in the circles that we do, most of us have friends and acquaintances who are would-be authors, and some of us are asked to perform our special circus tricks on the fledgling manuscripts of people we’ve only just met at the aforementioned cocktail parties.

I can’t speak for my fellow copyeditors, but my knee-jerk response to these propositions has always been no. Just plain no. Not maybe. Not possibly. But no. For the longest time I’ve been confident in the belief that it would cause more problems than it would cure. The request is unfailingly and unapologetically without reference to payment, which is irritating but not the main reason I decline.

The work could be dreadful—as in, “I have to occasionally look away from the screen and wince” dreadful—which would make all future encounters with the “author” painfully awkward. The work could be decent but full of mistakes and could lead to bruised egos (new authors are frequently less receptive to constructive criticism than they believe themselves to be) and strained relations. Again, awkward. Many are under the bizarre impression that if a professional copyeditor has reviewed the work, then it’s a wing and a prayer away from a book deal. Copyeditors aren’t agents (usually). Nor are we generally in a position to strong-arm an acquiring editor into reading a new author’s work.

But last week I had the distinct pleasure of doing my voodoo on the work of a good friend. In fact, so confident was I that my friend of ten years had been hard at work for most of that time in crafting his version of the Great American Novel that when he told me he was finally applying to the MFA writing program at Columbia University and that he’d like my professional recommendation, I immediately asked if he’d also like me to review his submission before he sent it off. I had seen a much earlier draft of his work and so I felt secure in describing his potential in glowing terms, yet I wondered what he’d been doing since. Granted, it was only a twenty-five-page sample, but it was hard work and it was an insane thing for me to do. Imagine being friends with someone for that long and finding out that he’s more artifice than art.

But that isn’t what happened. I discovered instead that my faith was well placed. They were twenty-five pages of the most inventive and daring storytelling I’ve seen in quite a while. They were shot through with mistakes, naturally, but none of them so grievous as to fell the forest. And I know my friend has a thick skin and my frank approach wouldn't trouble him in the slightest.

So this week I learned that copyediting is a little bit like sex. It’s an honorable profession if you do it casually for money. But if you do it for free, your standards should be incredibly high and it had really ought to be for love.

Good luck, C.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

From Each According to Her Ability

2010-12-10T11:00:00.003-05:00

So here’s a new wrinkle.

I’m currently copyediting something that falls under two categories that I generally do all I can to avoid: business and conservative politics.

Mostly I avoid them because I don’t think authors from either category technically speak English, so it’s hard to know what it’s my job to correct. I’m not being glib. Business-speak and neocon-speak really are their own languages, and there are those who speak them fluently and don’t mind one iota when whole books are written in what appears to outsiders as jargony babble at best and propaganda at worst.

But what is my professional or ethical responsibility when, because of the rampant anti-logic and jargony babble, the author says something that completely and totally undercuts his agenda? Not only says it, but underscores it as one of the touchstones of his entire argument?

(Hint: this conservative zealot, in trying to make a specific point about corporate responsibility, accidentally ends up advocating . . . capital-S Socialism.)

Should I sit back and be smug and put commas where they’re supposed to go and pretend I don’t notice this glaring and amusing misstep, hoping the liberal press will zero in on it for a big lampoon? Or should I try to point out the problem and ask for the author to use different jargony language that obfuscates the point and helps avoid the devastating objection?

Since we supposedly still live in a democracy, I’ll leave it up to your vote:

Inform
Don’t Inform

(No votes on this post counts as “Don’t Inform,” btw. So exercise your rights!)

Love,
Your Copyeditor

It's Not Personal, It's Business(speak)!

2010-12-08T15:13:00.003-05:00

First, you must know that (a) this comes from a business book, (b) the author calls himself a communications expert, and (c) we can be 99.9% sure he's not being intentionally funny:

In business, the most successful people rarely talk about the bottom line, profitability, or even success. Those are just goal posts along the journey.

AU: Mixed idiom. How about "mile markers along the way"?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

The Most Mentally Stable Pastry!

2010-12-02T08:55:00.002-05:00

Easier to laugh at!

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Engrish and Other Atrocities

2010-11-24T17:14:00.006-05:00

For those of you still checking in on me, hello! And thank you! Today I'm officially back to blogging. The rumors that I stepped on a land mine are greatly exaggerated.

My dad and I had a truly amazing and life-affirming trip to Southeast Asia, and I think that some of his demons were, in fact, slain. But it would be a lie to say that I didn't come back with demons of my own to wrestle with.

Anyone who knows me or knows what I do is acutely aware that I am hypersensitive to errors. It's my job. It's my talent. Most of the time, I find them funny and I invite others to laugh along with me. We all see these mistakes everywhere, and often it's interesting to see them in foreign contexts. Which is why blogs like Engrish exist and why they're so frequently visited. I've been a longtime lover of Engrish, thinking it harmless and quaint to amuse myself at the expense of nonnative speakers.

However, now that I've had my own opportunity to be a tourist in places where English is spoken but not truly practiced (no, not America), I'm struggling with my natural inclination to have a laugh. Because the places in which these errors occur can be staggeringly unfunny. Like at the Tuol Sleng Prison Meseum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I took this photo of the edicts that the evil monster Pol Pot had posted for the incarcerated and doomed prisoners who would eventually die en masse at Choeung Ek. It is displayed in three languages: Khmer (Cambodian), French, and English. Or, more honestly, Engrish.

(click for larger image)

My French is pretty good. I'd never call myself fluent, since I've never lived in France. And the French seems, for the most part, internally consistent and clear in meaning. But the English is atrocious. It's not just the rampant misspellings and poor punctuation, it's word choice and mistranslation. One has to try really hard to figure out what's being said. My first reaction (after the horror at the thing itself) was to want to run up to the museum office and ask if they'd like someone to help fix the English on all of their signage. But I asked myself as I stood there looking at it, "Does it matter? And if so, why?"

I haven't decided, actually, whether it does. On the one hand, I believe that official English should be flawless--when the language is used to instruct or illuminate, as at a museum or at an airport or in a legal document, the information being presented should be free of mistakes or misuse. It is a representation of the knowledge of the institution.

On the other hand, I recognize that perhaps this is a privileged attitude. That my wish for mistake-free English in official contexts in non-Anglophone countries takes for granted the more important fact that an attempt at English was made at all. No attempt was made at German. Or Spanish. Shouldn't I be glad that my needs as an English-speaker are being addressed?

On the other other hand (yes, I know we're up to three hands by this point), if I allow myself to accept the mistakes, I run the very real risk of finding them "cute" in a fetishistic kind of way, what Susan Sontag famously argued against in her treatises "On Photography" and "Notes on Camp." Finding other cultures' artifacts or expressions cute is an act of imperialism. It is to take away their legitimacy in some way, to do a kind of violence to their personhood and identity. To remove the power from the image or the word. To dilute the message. And this is one case where the power of the message absolutely must, at all costs, be retained.

So I'm stuck. And while this won't keep me from posting a few less-controversial Engrish photos over the next week or so, I really would like to know what you think. What is your reaction to institutional Engrish or Engrish in general?

Love,
Your Copyeditor

The Bars Are Temples, but the Pearls Ain't Free

2010-10-07T15:17:00.005-04:00

Hello!

So would any of you like to guess what my excuse is this time for being sparse with the postings? It's a doozy!

Up until late last week I was taking on tons of work and could not stop to blog. You see, I had to rack up the extra $$$ for my epic journey that begins...tonight.

I am headed off to Southeast Asia on a trip with my dad. He's a Vietnam veteran who has been wanting to return to the places that he fought in, to make his peace with war, and now that he's retired he can finally go. I am along for the ride as his travel companion and scribe. After all these years of being a copyeditor and erstwhile short-story writer and working in the publishing business, I believe it's finally my turn to write a real book.

So my trusty Moleskine is packed and ready to go to:

Bangkok (one night...no, really)

Chiang Mai

Mae Hong Son

Luang Prabang (I call it interrobang just to annoy my dad)

Hanoi (just to Hanoi my dad)

Da Nang

Hoi An

Saigon

Chau Doc (what's up?)

Phnom Penh

Bangkok (one night...again!)

I won't be back until November, but I will be back. I've shored up a nice little bundle of funnies and foibles to share with you.

In the meantime, be good, cats and kittens. I'll see you on the flipside.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

My Voice Is a Little Horse

2010-10-01T12:14:00.004-04:00

The train had suddenly gone from a slow ~~cantor~~ canter to a noticeable trot.

Today's mistake also gives me the perfect opportunity to say a slightly belated happy holidays to my Jewish friends. I hope when y'all wrote your names in the Book of Life, you didn't misspell it.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Walkies, Gromit?

2010-09-22T14:09:00.008-04:00

What is up lately with all these people who don't know when to say "walking to" and when to say "walking over to"?

I've seriously had three manuscripts this month in which the author demonstrated complete ignorance of the difference.

People walk to places that are significantly far away.

example: I walked to Brooklyn from Midtown.

I walked to Canada to escape the zombies.

People walk over to places, people, or things that are relatively nearby.*

example: I walked over to him to say hi.

I walked over to the window and closed it.

*Note: "walked up to" is generally an acceptable variant when it's a person. Context-specific for objects.

But the one and only time where a person can "walk to" something nearby is reserved for the very special context in which the walker is just learning to walk--i.e., a toddler.

example: Honey! You'll never believe what happened! She
walked to me! Our little girl can walk!

Anyway, stop walking all over the English language already, you wacky authors. This is poop you should be able to scoop yourselves.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Deep Impact

2010-09-15T14:17:00.004-04:00

I am sick to tears of "impact." I've just spent the better part of two hours systematically searching through a manuscript to root out all inappropriate uses of the word. OK, that's not all I was doing for two hours, but it sure felt like it.

Unfortunately nine out of every ten uses of the word I see or hear lately is inappropriate use.

You know what impact is?

1. A really lame typeface
2. A physical process in which one object strikes another object, often creating a dent or hole
3. A dental term for when teeth get stuck while trying to emerge

You know what impact is not?

1. A good way of getting out of knowing when to use "affect," "effect," or "influence"

My good friend Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary breaks it down for you:

Effect and affect are often confused because of their similar spelling and pronunciation.
The verb affect usually has to do with pretense: *she affected a cheery disposition despite feeling down*. The more common verb affect denotes having an effect or influence: *the weather affected everyone's mood*.
The verb effect goes beyond mere influence; it refers to actual achievement of a final result: *the new administration hopes to effect a peace settlement*.
The uncommon noun affect, which has a meaning relating to psychology, is also sometimes mistakenly used for the very common noun effect. In ordinary use, the noun you will want is effect: *waiting for the new law to take effect* *the weather had an effect on everyone's mood*.

I hope you've found this impactful.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

In Your Eyes (The Rods, the Cones)

2010-09-09T15:21:00.004-04:00

It occurs to me that I'm going to lose eyeballs if I keep up with this erratic blogging schedule.

That's the Interweb term for you guys. Eyeballs. Which squicks me out because I have a hardcore eye phobia--ommatophobia, for those Latin fans out there.

Yet this week I've been forced to cope with my fear as best I can because I realized that (a) I hadn't been to the eye doctor in three years (no, five! said the nice folks at Moscot), (b) my reading glasses prescription was no longer doing it for me, and (c) I've encountered a deluge of awful eye-related language in various manuscripts I've been working on.

Authors, here's a freebie: People do not "cut their eyes "at each other. Unless they're Luis Buñuel. Also, people's eyes do not fall to the floor, their glance or gaze falls to the floor. Ew. Seriously. I know Halloween is coming, but stop it.

While I managed to plead my way out of the dilation portion of my eye exam, promising to call immediately if I experienced any "floaters," "filminess," or "flashes," I wonder about whether I'll successfully plead my way out of things like this:

[He] began to sketch and scribble as his head turned in
all directions, his eyes shooting back and forth.

To which I say, because the only genre here is historical/detective novel:

AU: Kind of like in the Exorcist? Maybe "as he turned this way and that, his eyes darting to and fro"?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Covered in E-Ink

2010-08-24T12:42:00.004-04:00

Lo, dear readers! It has been a while!

I have been having the fortunate experience of copyediting not one but two novels that were actually--gasp!--pretty well written and intrinsically entertaining. A joy for me, but a dearth of material to share with y'all.

One of these projects, though, was an encounter with a new creature the likes of which I'm wondering how often I'll meet again. It is an eBook original. That is, it will never be a printed book. A far cry from the Print On Demand vanity project, it was acquired by a relatively new team on the publishing scene but with veteran players, a publishing company that is dedicated exclusively to eBooks. This company started out acquiring the rights to re-publish existing work in electronic format but has since expanded its MO to publish original work as well, and this is their very first front-list title.

I was honored to be asked to copyedit it, but let me tell you, folks, I was conflicted about What It Portends.

If it had been a ho-hummer of a story or one not particularly well told, I'd have been less conflicted. I still see eBooks as the redheaded stepchild of the industry, wearing hand-me-downs and eating scraps. Despite ten years of evidence to the contrary, I still somehow can't shake the belief that the "best" books are the ones that kill trees.

But this thing was a wonderfully rendered, thoroughly engaging novel. The kind of thing I've not been seeing in print but wish I were. The kind of thing my frustrated novelist friends would like to read, would like to write--are reading and writing. It was not High Modernism or even Après-Garde Postmodernism, but it was, as they say, in the parlance of our times, tight.

So what does this mean for fiction? What do the novelists among you think? Are any of you at the point where you don't care about the medium? Or is the medium, as my own prejudices keep telling me, still the message?

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Thanks, but No Thanks

2010-08-09T13:22:00.006-04:00

Today I returned a thoroughly awful manuscript to a production editor with the following postscript on my cover memo:

p.s. If for some far-remote reason the author wishes to thank me in the acknowledgments, I'd prefer to remain unmentioned.

What?! You might say. I thought you were mad for glory, Ray!

Sometimes the projects I work on are just so bad that even my seemingly endless desire for attention has to take a backseat. Sometimes the book is so whiny, so pointless, and so full of tragic missteps that I tried to fix but I know will end up getting stetted by an author with the noxious combination of an obviously fragile ego and enflated sense of her writing abilities that I really need to disassociate myself with it.

I remember my mom telling me she thought I was running with a bad crowd in middle school and that if I continued to hang out with them, I'd get "a reputation." It's kind of like that. God forbid any of my other clients (or anyone, really) found out I had anything whatsoever to do with this bad influence of a book. They might assume I was tainted. This book drove me to drink.

Hudson Four Grain Bourbon Whiskey. Which, unlike WhinyIndulgentBoringMemoir, I can actually recommend.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Lost in Space; or, Damn You, Neil deGrasse Tyson!

2010-08-06T07:04:00.005-04:00

I pulled my eyes open and, as if I were coming back to earth from what used to be Pluto, adjusted them to the gray-lit room.

AU: As far as I'm aware, it's still Pluto; it's just not a planet. Revise?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Quoth the Raven: Not Again!

2010-08-03T06:50:00.005-04:00

Lately I've been running across the same problem in many different manuscripts, and I think I'm ready to diagnose it as an epidemic. I'm going to call it epigraphitis until or unless I can come up with something better.

Epigraphitis is when an author is desperate for the gravitas that a well-placed quote from someone else could lend his or her own work (either in epigraphs or elsewhere). And in the rabid, bleary-eyed search for just such a quote, the author does the lazy thing and searches by subject on one of those hundreds of Internet quote clearinghouse sites instead of looking through his or her library or memory of something he or she's actually read.

The problem with those quote sites (ThinkExist, BrainyQuote, etc.) is twofold: Many quotes are attributed to the wrong people, and none of them cite the original work from which the quote is drawn.

As a copyeditor, I know I'm in trouble when an author quotes someone and the first Google hits I get for it are from these sites.

Then there's the problem of authors misremembering what the quote even is.

Such as today's example:

Rudyard Kipling once described Triumph and Disaster as ~~"Impostors, Both."~~ "two impostors."

AU: Research shows this is from Kipling's poem "If," and the exact quote is "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same." Add reference to the work?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

But Sometimes My Arms Bend Back

2010-07-19T16:53:00.003-04:00

I followed blindly after C____ down the stairs, making my way down by chance and luck and the occasional hand on my
elbow.

AU: Hard to picture the physics of this. He is in front of her, so how does he reach back to lead her by the elbow?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Busman's Holiday

2010-07-13T08:21:00.011-04:00

You may have noticed that Your Copyeditor hasn't blogged in a while. I've been on hiatus but am about to get started again; I took on not one but two new manuscripts this week. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, have you ever wondered how typos and other mistakes make it into things with very little copy? Like, how do so many ad agencies allow print ads to run that don't know the difference between "everyday" and "every day"? Don't they have copyeditors?

I had insomnia last night and turned on the TV to watch some soporific infomercials, and I saw a new breed of mistake. I'd like to share it with you. The ad was for this product:

Can you see what I'm talking about? It's not a typo, per se. It's a design problem. If they'd run this by a copyeditor, he or she might have told them that their product logo is...um...NSFW? Rude? Inappropriate?

Anyway, it's true that the naughty word created by the merging of the letter "C" and the word "then" is relatively new to the lexicon, but seriously. Nobody at the company noticed?

So what should we call this kind of problem? I need a clever word for it. Anyone want to make a suggestion?

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Those Who Are About to Copyedit...

2010-07-02T12:03:00.007-04:00

I salute you!

Yesterday I had the most incredible experience of standing in front of about a hundred students and giving an hour-long copyediting workshop in conjunction with NYU's Summer Publishing Institute.

It turned out to be less workshoppy and more lecturey than I had planned due to technical difficulties, but I felt good about it as a whole and it was a fabulous way for me to see what teaching copyediting is going to be like come spring semester.

But after my talk, the most startling thing happened: A line of people formed at the podium--folks who were totally jazzed about copyediting and who wanted to find out how to get started in the business. I was flabbergasted...and elated.

There is a common misperception about copyeditors--that they are all frumpy, curmudgeonly fiftysomethings with phalanxes of cats and no sense of humor. Schoolmarms and sourpusses. And while it's certainly true that there are copyeditors out there who fit this description, there are many of us who don't--including me (two cats doesn't make a phalanx, right?). And to come face-to-face with the "next generation" of cool copyeditors was a huge thrill for me. Not in least part because I have such a low opinion of the existing educational system to produce decent grammarians. . . .

So this post is a shout-out to any of the students from yesterday's workshop who came and learned a couple of things from me and who are now reading this blog. You made it a great day for me, and I look forward to working with you and learning from you, too.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Et (Peter) Cetera

2010-06-29T12:32:00.012-04:00

Any of you who are in the publishing industry know that one of the bibles of our trade is the manual put out by the University of Chicago Press, aka The Chicago Manual of Style. It's currently in its fifteenth edition. We all lovingly call it Chicago 15.

Despite a short list of disagreements that I have with it personally, I like it well enough as both a style guide and a cultural icon to use it as my avatar in my "About Me" section. Also, I love the color orange.

Anyway, apparently a new edition is forthcoming (or so I've heard because I'm a fan of Chicago Manual of Style on Facebook), and unsurprisingly it will be the sixteenth edition. And we'll probably all call it Chicago 16.

Except some of us won't be able to do so without snickering.

Chicago 16, as I hope at least some of you remember, was a huge album in the early 1980s. The band Chicago had been around for a long time before then, but this was my generation's first exposure to them, and this record, along with the one that followed, was of massive cultural significance--not to mention responsible for many an earworm.

Chicago 15 (the book; there was no album with this title) was a kind of mystery and point of contention for many of us, and there are in fact some publishers and copyeditors who refuse to acknowledge it, choosing to stick with the fourteenth edition. One of the central problems was the near impossibility of figuring out what had changed from one edition to the next, other than the font. Gotta say, I'm still not a fan of the sans-serif in Chicago 15.

The Facebook fan page has been featuring a weekly preview of what's different in the upcoming edition, which has been a great start. For example, Xerxes will no longer be an exception to the apostrophe-s rule. Yay!

I hope they manage to somehow make it obvious in print what's new. But while we wait, here's my track listing for what else I hope has changed:

1. "What You're Missing" - Please discuss the correct (stress-dependent) use of the comma with the words "too," "either," and "anyway."
2. "Waiting for You to Decide" - I'd love to see a full endorsement for punctuation-free Washington DC.
3. "Bad Advice" - Please acknowledge that "snuck" is an equal variant of "sneaked." Avoid references to dialect.
4. "Chains" - Or in this case, links: give a realistic style ruling on how to handle unwieldy URLs in bibliographic references.
5. "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away" - Please do not require the comma following ellipses or em dashes before speech attributions. Can't you see how crappy this looks?
6. "Follow Me" - Please give a style ruling for the treatment of websites and blogs as titles. Should they be in italics? Many think so.
7. "Sonny Think Twice" - Please give an example of how to properly render stuttered speech, especially if the stuttered word begins the sentence.
8. "What Can I Say" - Please endorse the use of the interrobang in informal contexts.

Anyone care to suggest clever ideas that go along with the last tracks?

9. "Rescue You"
10. "Love Me Tomorrow"
11. "Daddy's Favorite Fool"

Love,
Your Copyeditor

It Kind of Snuck up On Me

2010-06-21T12:58:00.005-04:00

Have any of you been following the "war" between The Awl and The Paris Review over the use of the word "snuck"?

It's fascinating! It brings to mind the minimally fleshed-out but ever-intriguing discussion of the "MIT language riots" in Infinite Jest and is a marvelous encapsulation of the ongoing debate between prescriptivism and descriptivism.

Except for how it's not. It's a land grab, not a war.

One of the stranger aspects of the battle is The Awl's position on the one hand of how "snuck" isn't a word because it's not in the Oxford English Dictionary and The Paris Review's counterposition about how, indeed, it is.

My position, which I left as a comment at The Awl and which sadly got only one Amen, is how it doesn't matter in the slightest what the OED has to say on the matter. The last time I checked, we lived in America, and in America, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary is our dictionary of record. And "snuck" is in Webster's.

But then again, so is "coatrack," which to me looks ludicrous and always will. . . .

Anyway, it's true that "snuck" is listed after "sneaked" as the past tense for "sneak," but it's listed with an "or" not an "also." For any of you who are lost at this point, let me break it down for you:

When the dictionary lists a word variant next to the target word, pay attention to how the variant is named, not just the order in which it's named. If the dictionary says "or," it's to be considered an equal variant. If the dictionary says "also," it's to be considered a secondary (aka substandard or otherwise less desirable) variant. Secondary variants are often regional, and part of the snuck wars is the perception that the use of "snuck" is indicative of a low Southern dialect and therefore substandard. But Webster's doesn't make this distinction.

So prescriptivists, if they live by the Code, should embrace "snuck" merely because it's in the dictionary as an equal variant of "sneaked." If you are a prescriptivist who shuns "snuck," I'd have to give you a big snuck-you.

But let's do a descriptivist exercise just for the hell of it: How many of you say "sneaked"? Who among you says "snuck"? Does it depend on context? If so, why?

For me personally, it's entirely contextual. I say "sneaked" when someone is sneaking something into something else and "snuck" when someone is sneaking himself into something.

Examples:

1. She sneaked a bit of brandy into his punch.

2. He snuck into her room at night and watched her sleep.

And you? Sneak a comment into the box and tell me what you think!

Love,
Your Copyeditor

My High Horse Is a Shetland Pony, Not a Unicorn

2010-06-16T11:11:00.007-04:00

I read an interesting blog post yesterday by a fellow copyeditor, someone I respect a good deal. Hers is a blog I'd recommend in a heartbeat to anyone who is interested in copyediting or language or the lives of those who work deep in the knowledge mines:

The Subversive Copy Editor

Her post yesterday was about smug copyeditors, which sparked my curiosity but not my suspicion. ~~and~~ But while I was scrolling through the comments section, I was rather surprised to find someone (not the blogger herself) mention my ~~own~~ blog as an example of copyeditors on high horses. [edits per commenter Matt's suggestion]

This is going to sound overly defensive, but . . .

Wait, seriously?

I don't think I'm infallible. Heck, I fuck up all the time. I've occasionally fucked up in this very forum and taken a ribbing from a commenter or two. Often the reality of my fallibility keeps me up at night, and I suffer from the same insecurities that all copyeditors do: Have I done enough? Will my client be happy? Will the author be receptive? Have I helped make this a better book for the reader? Did I really miss "dessert" when it should have been "desert"? What the hell is wrong with me?

But in case there are folks out there who didn't get the memo, LYC is about humor above all (well, except for Hate Week, but that's behind us now). Snarky humor, to be sure, but humor nonetheless. I can laugh at my own foibles just as well as I can laugh everyone else's, but that's not the point of this blog. It doesn't logically follow that because I can spot your mistakes I must not make any of my own. I believe what I do is important and that it deserves more attention, but I don't truly believe I'm a superhero. Or if I do, one who's more like the Tick than like Wonder Woman.

To review: the material I share with you is (a) anonymous, never calling out anyone by name or by forthcoming book title; (b) from the manuscripts I work on, shining a light on my work process and not just errors I've helped avert; and (c) meant as much to entertain as it is to inform. I'm not shy about knowing a lot about a lot, but I try to make this a fun place where we can all laugh a bit and wonder about the weirdness of written English and the odd machine that is the book-making business.

A number of authors whose books I've worked on have read this blog and have told me that they find it amusing and not in the least malcontent. To them I say, "Thanks, guys!" If I can't convince everyone else that this is true, I'm sorry, but I can't let that get in the way of the fun. I hope the majority of you get the joke.

Given the cultural ascendancy of FailBlog and reality TV, I don't think it's too far off the mark to say that we are captivated by shortcomings and that shortcomings are funny. It's true that we learn from our own mistakes, but we also learn from those of others. If one of my clients decided to blog about the various things that I screwed up at one time or another (and I do think there might very well be a blog's worth of material to draw from), as long as it was kept anonymous and lighthearted the way I try to keep things here, I'd laugh and take it with a grain of NaCl.

Salt, after all, gives everything more flavor.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

p.s. Happy Bloomsday!

Time(line) Is Money

2010-06-14T15:30:00.005-04:00

I work on fewer and fewer novels every year. Not because I'd have it be so, but because fewer novels are being written and fewer still are being acquired.

Most of the time, I see copyediting fiction as a guilty pleasure...something that doesn't tax my resources as much as serious nonfiction would (and rightly should).

But my two most recent projects have been very difficult novels. One because it was a historical piece (all of the fact-checking, none of the cred), and the other because the timeline was irreparably FUBAR.

Until recently, I believed that authors who wanted to write novels that had complex, interweaving story arcs and specific time markers for plot points should have this shiznit all mapped out somewhere while they worked. That the only person responsible for whether the timeline makes logical sense is the author herself.

Once upon a time, this might have been true.

But it's part of my job now. I just turned in something this morning (a fluffy chick-lit thing that ought to have been easy) with a six-page timeline document, detailing some seventy timeline inconsistencies, many of which are irreconcilable.

Where is the editor in all of this, you might wonder? Out to lunch with an agent, acquiring mostly nonfiction would be my guess.

My one consolation is that my invoice for this job will buy me months' worth of liquid lunches of my own, if I should so desire. Or a Raymond Weil watch. But I'm not the one who has a problem with time. Jury's still out whether I have a problem with drinking.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Your Better Half

2010-06-11T13:07:00.004-04:00

Screwups with idioms, aphorisms, proverbs, and other well-known sayings are a special breed of mistake, one that I'm incredibly fond of. For example:

Discretion might not be the better part of valor,
but it saves you a lot of apologizing later on.

AU: The aphorism is that discretion is the better part of valor. Revise?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

I am coining a word for this kind of gaffe: "idioverbism," and giving it its own special tag. Watch for more if you're a collector like me.

I Am the Law, and the Law Is Not Mocked

2010-06-07T13:33:00.006-04:00

When J_____ spoke, his voice was hard and flat,
the sort of voice that took no prisoners.

AU: J is an inspector with the ministry of police and arrests people for a living. Revise to avoid unfortunate pun/contradiction?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Why, You Cheeky Monkey!

2010-05-26T13:19:00.002-04:00

His cheeks, speckled with a reddish growth of beard,
seemed to have sunken into themselves, throwing into prominence the strong lines of nose and cheek.

AU: "his bone structure" here to avoid describing cheeks in terms of...well...cheeks?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Hot for Teacher

2010-05-25T06:12:00.005-04:00

Here's the good news I promised you last week!

Your Copyeditor is going to be teaching a course on copyediting at the NYU Center for Publishing next spring.

The Fundamentals of Copyediting Books
(link is to Summer 2010, but the course is the same)

I consider it an honor to be teaching this course, as nearly everyone I know in the industry has taken it at some point if they were based in NYC. I myself took it nine years ago.

I'm very excited and admittedly also nervous. Despite being married to a university professor and having teachers for friends, I don't naturally assume I've picked up the skills to be as kick-ass at teaching as I am at copyediting. It's got to be easier than teaching my mom how to use her Mac, is what I keep telling myself. It's not like I can shove my students out of their seats and say, "Ugh. Let me do it. Watch." Still, I plan to take course preparation very seriously.

The kind folks at the Center for Publishing wisely tacked on a bonus for me (not an added bonus, people; that's just redundant) in that they also asked me to teach an hour-long workshop for their Summer Publishing Institute this July. This crash course in both teaching (for me) and copyediting (for the grads) should help get me over the nervousness.

So what are you doing from February to May 2011? Wanna learn how to be a copyeditor? I hear the teacher is hot.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

You're Running Through a Forest, You're Running Through a Forest...

2010-05-21T16:29:00.004-04:00

...and--boom!--you smack into a tree.

Or in my case, you're strolling casually up a sidewalk and--boom!--you smack into a brick building.

No, really. I've tried giving cleverer explanations for why I'm sporting gauze and an Aurora Borealis of a black eye, but despite my theatre background, I can't pull them off.

So if anyone was wondering where I've been this week, mystery solved. Since Sunday I've been tending to my hellacious head wound (stitches came out today; hooray!) and slowly getting back into the pace of everyday life.

Anyway, I'll have some good news to share with y'all next week in addition to the usual scene, but today it's all about sympathy-seeking/excuse-making.

Be safe, cats and kittens. Buildings lurk around every corner, just waiting to attack, for now they have a taste for blood.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Walking Three Abreast

2010-05-12T14:30:00.004-04:00

Like most men with spare time, a computer, and Internet
access, I probably see 24 to 25 bare breasts every day.

AU: So, twelve and a half women, eleven normal women and one three-breaster, some combination including mastectomies, or did you mean twenty-four to twenty-five pairs of breasts?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Sour Notes

2010-05-10T23:58:00.001-04:00

People expected their governess to look like a prune who had just been sucking on a lemon.

AU: Both fruits together seem to undercut the point, as well as to conjure a very bizarre image. Choose one or the other idiomatic expression?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

What's Another Word for Mistake?

2010-05-07T07:44:00.004-04:00

“You know. As in ‘Sit, BooBoo, sit.’” I decided to leave off the “good dog” bit. Even the most laid-back person might take that the wrong way. “It was a commercial.”

AU: In point of fact, the dog’s name is Ubu, not BooBoo, and “Sit, Ubu, sit!…Good dog.” was the closing tag for Ubu Productions that followed any TV show they produced. Not technically a commercial. Reconcile?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Outtakes

2010-05-05T14:37:00.004-04:00

As copyediting moves ever inexorably toward its digital future, the art of the Post-it query will be replaced by the comment balloon. At which point I may have to consider redesigning my blog around a more recognizale trope.

In the meantime I still take about 50 percent of my work as paper-and-pencil jobs, and I often still attach cute little colored Post-its with queries written on them, although I hear editorial assistants hate this, since they are often asked to make a Xerox of the manuscript before giving it to the author to review.

Sometimes I write notes to myself on Post-its as reminders to go back and write a more thorough query in the margins later on.

Sometimes these reminder queries turn up around my office or around my apartment or stuck to my shoe and I can't think for the life of me what they were for, but removed from context they take on character. I think of them kind of like Zen koans.

Here are some I found this week:

Bobby's story is confusing!

A hoarse whisperer?!

The second one has no eyebrows.

Earlier than what?

And my favorite:

Blog this.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Blame Canada

2010-05-03T16:11:00.005-04:00

Not to toot my own horn here, people, but I wanted to restore your faith in my charity, now that Hate Week is over. Granted, the author in question is deserving of such goodwill, having written a lovely book, but that's beside the point.

I ordinarily don't consider myself much of a diplomat, but consider this case:

"'Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,'" said J___, quoting Shakespeare.

AU: Is it your intention to have J misquote Hamlet? It should be the apostrophic "O" at the beginning and "too, too solid flesh at the end. Not sure he has enough dialogue to support a joke at his expense.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

In other words, I think the mistake is the author's alone, but blaming the character is usually a great diversionary tactic. Outrageous fortune I hope she'll appreciate.

Hate Week #3: Lost in Yonkers

2010-04-30T12:44:00.012-04:00

You know what I hate more than fictional foreign countries in realistic novels? Fictionalized well-known geography. At least with the foreign countries, it makes a tiny bit of sense if you intend to say awful things about the national character of a place. That way, you won’t come off looking like such a jerk.

But with well-known places and things, why would you fictionalize any further than a street address or phone number, and these only for legal reasons?

Here's the setup: Brother and Sister Protagonist are on a mission to get a long-lost relative’s help in rescuing their parents who were kidnapped while abroad in Fictional Country. Brother and Sister P are from Washington DC (look, Ma, no punctuation!). Long Lost Relative lives in Vermont, in a mountainous region just below the Canadian border.

BP and SP stow away on a big delivery truck at a gas station in DC, after swiping a map from the mini mart. They overhear the driver say he’s going north...

To Yonkers.

Red Flag #1: Not sure if any of you have made the trip from DC to New England, but if you have, I can pretty much guarantee you did not go through Yonkers, but hey, it's true that Yonkers is north of DC.

But it gets worse after that. Sister P is, and I quote, “good with maps.” She tells Brother P after looking at their pilfered map that what they’ll need to do is find another truck in Yonkers and get to I-87, which will take them within “walking distance” of their relative’s house in Vermont.

I’ll give you a moment to Google this shit.

No? Well, let me lay it out for you.

Red Flag #2: While eastern Yonkers is kinda near I-87, there isn’t a rest area big enough such that more than one big delivery truck could be there at the same time. The story details just such a place, and not only does it accommodate many big rigs, it also has a visitor’s center/food plaza, and police station. The real Yonkers doesn’t.

Red Flag #3: Interstate 87 doesn’t go to Vermont. It stays entirely in New York State till it reaches Canada. It doesn’t even go anywhere near Vermont, if you want to get technical about it, let alone get within walking distance. There’s, like, a body of water and shit between NY and VT up that far north.

All native New Englanders, possibly even those as young as BP and SP, know that the only real way to get from DC to VT on wheels is I-95 to I-91. And there are lots of large rest stops along I-95.

Amazingly BP and SP make it to Vermont, where all of the town names and local streets are fictionalized. They still get where they're going, though, and back again.

But this brings me to Red Flag #4: The Washington DC parts of the story are pretty faithfully rendered. Names of streets are correct, landmarks are where they should be, traffic flows (or doesn’t) in recognizable patterns. I'll give you three guesses as to where HA might hail from.

So why does Hateworthy Author curse her own protagonist with a love of maps if she had no desire to chart a believable journey? What does Hateworthy Author hate? Research, I guess.

And her readers. It’s likely that at least one young person will be “good with maps” and get fed up very quickly with the entire thing. I've never had to attach printouts of maps to my queries before, but when I turned this monstrosity in yesterday, there they were. Thank you, Google.

Moral: Authors, please do your homework when you write about the world, even when you are writing fiction. Otherwise I will have to hate you.

Coda: Although Hateworthy Author (HA) and Timid Editor (TE) gave me so much more to hate and rant about than what I've shared with you, thus endeth Hate Week. For my sanity and for the continued mission of goodwill toward authors, it's back to your regularly scheduled love in May.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Hate Week #2.5: Once More, with Feline

2010-04-29T14:04:00.006-04:00

Three days just isn't enough for Hate Week, don't you agree? So today you get bonus hate.

In Hateworthy Author's novel, a cat is being roughly thrown out of the house. HA tells us the following:

Catlike, he righted himself in midair.

Why in the world would you go out of your way to describe a cat as being catlike?

I guess it’s better than “catly.”

Ha!

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Hate Week #2: Once More, with Feeling

2010-04-28T12:45:00.007-04:00

You know what I hate?

Authors who won't allow their characters to simply say or do things. They all have to say or do things adverbially. And I know I've ranted before about the seeming disappearance of adverbs from our collective discourse, but I'm beginning to think twice about that.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a very limited set of adverbs Hateworthy Author knows. In parentheses is the number of times each is used. (It’s fun when the production editor sends me the Word doc to do searches like this.)

hotly (10)
tightly (19)
abruptly (19)
casually (14)
miserably (9)

If we had stopped after the first four, we’d have a porno, not a novel.

But my favorite adverb is one that’s used twice. And that’s twice too many times. Get ready! Here it comes:

Feelingly

Yes, that's right. Twice people are said to have made an utterance "feelingly." And while it's technically a word, it's never the right word or the best word. Think of the range of possible human emotion and you'll agree I'm right. Even "emotionally" sounds better with "said" than "feelingly." On one occasion I suggested "passionately" and on another "earnestly," as those seemed to better fit their respective contexts.

Authors, please stop trying to be theater/film directors for your characters and focus more on what they're saying and doing instead of how they're saying or doing it.

Otherwise I might have to hate you.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Hate Week #1: The Not-So-Cunning Linguist

2010-04-26T12:38:00.010-04:00

You know what's awesome about foreign travel? Foreigners! And all their funny foreign accents! Some of them are so cute, others menacing, others musically sharp or flat. And to an author of fiction, apparently so often irresistible.

What could be more fun than to write dialogue as if it were being spoken by some wacky foreigner! Your reader will be so perplexed in trying to figure out the phonemes that he or she will overlook the complete ham-handedness of the plot development! Unless you're Irvine Welsh, in which case your ear for dialects and your ability to render them in an accurate way is a veritable gift from God.

But I digress. This is about hate, not praise.

Hateworthy Author (she of indistinct POV) has a couple of foreign characters from a fictional Eastern European/Balkan country. Don't get me started on how much I hate fictional countries in a novel that's otherwise very invested in realism. But the manner in which she's written them makes them sound like Jar-Jar Binks instead of Borat.

See for yourself:

1) “’Dis mornin’. We ‘dere ‘dis mornin’, at ‘dat ol’ house.”
2) “’Dey gone, ‘dat’s what!”
3) “’Dey get away,” he whispered. “’Dey get away, ‘dose kids. Bot’ of ‘dem. T’roo a leetle hole. So we goin’ nort’ to da uncle, to look.”

Sounds really believable, right? Now imagine being in fifth grade, because that's probably the target audience for this particular YA novel, seeing as the protagonists are twelve years old.

Since whatever's left of my watered-down Eastern European blood just boils at the thought of leaving this abomination as-is, I asked what I could do. Naturally the editor was horrified (um, why didn't he notice this problem before?) and has asked that I suggest revisions for all of the horrendous offenses of speech. If you're tone deaf, don't join the choir, is my advice. Would it be so much worse if it were written in plain English, saying and not showing that it's broken English? But since I'm not tone deaf, I've been coming up with alternatives.

For example:

1) "In morning. Was there this morning, at old house."
2) "Gone, that is what!"
3) "The kids, they get away. Both of them. Through leetle hole. So we go north to uncle house to look."

Granted, my revisions are still kind of caricatureish, possibly even vaguely offensive, but at least they're only offensive to one group of speakers (Eastern Europeans) and not two (Eastern Europeans and African Americans).

Hate.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

In Which Your Copyeditor Makes a Confession

2010-04-23T14:07:00.008-04:00

I have a confession to make. It's a difficult thing to admit, and I figured maybe putting it in writing would help me come to terms with it more easily.

I don't really love all authors. I kind of hate some of them.

There. I said it.

I mean, how can I love them when some of them write so poorly that it makes me want to hurl their useless manuscripts across the room or feed them to the shredder (the manuscripts, not the authors--although...)? How can I love them when close friends and passing acquaintances have worked on novels for years and can't get them sold to a publisher? Novels that are amazing and that I'd pay money to read instead of getting paid to read.

Maybe it's unfair of me to blame the crappy "authors." They shouldn't have been acknowledged as authors in the first place. The blame should really fall on the editors who buy the crap, giving people with zero talent and so-so ideas a false sense of worth, glutting the market with mediocrity and making real literary talent look like a "risk."

What's hard is that when I have one of these terrible manuscripts in front of me, figuring out how not to let my spleen spill out onto the page in my corrections, comments, and queries. I worry that everything I write comes off as "No, stupid" instead of "How about?..."

And then there are the occasions where it's obvious the acquiring editor knows it's subpar but throws up his or her hands and tells the production editor to ask me to suggest revisions.

The manuscript I have now has a moronic plot, stilted characters, groan-worthy dialogue, a blitzkreig of clichés, a limited and ceaselessly repetitious vocabulary, and the faint whiff of an author who thinks she's actually clever.

Suggest revisions, Mr. Editor? How about starting over from the beginning or paying the author a kill fee? No? OK, then how about I just fix the commas and send it back to you. Isn't it your job to make it somewhat readable? Isn't that why you make twice as much money as I do? This is the final draft? How did you even decide it was publishable when you first saw it? Editor fail.

Next week I will feature some of the awfulness that plagues me, that has turned me to the dark side. Get ready for Hate Week. Let's hope I get it out of my system and that my pain can be your mirth.

"Love,"
Your Copyeditor

Don't Go Home with Your Hadron; or, Not Now, John

2010-04-16T13:29:00.005-04:00

It's Friday and I have senioritis. Even though I'm more than a decade out of college, something about this time of year always makes me punchy. Does it happen to you, too?

Anyway, instead of working on the myriad projects (note: it's never "myriad of") I'm committed to while on my lunch break, I thought I'd share with you something totally goofy and puerile.

Looking at an index I came across the following:

Hardon, J., 219n

I read it a few times to make sure it wasn't really "Hadron." But no. It's Hardon. And the note itself reads:

For an excellent summary see John A. Hardon, S.J., “The Concept of Miracle from St. Augustine to Modern Apologetics.”

Could you imagine (a) going through life with a name like John A. Hardon and then (b) complicating the matter by becoming a priest/theologian?

Meanwhile, this ties in perfectly with a project on my desk at the day job, which is the forthcoming book from science writer Amir Aczel, entitled Present at the Creation. It's about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I sent a note to the copyeditor to make sure she did a global search to be sure it's never referred to as the Large Hardon Collider. Because, well...you know. Mixing science and religion isn't a good idea most of the time. Could create a black hole.

So. Really good sense of humor or totally berserk? You decide: http://www.amirdaczel.com/

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Your Copyeditor Recommends

2010-04-13T15:27:00.005-04:00

So. I don't do this very often--or, hell, ever--but since it's been nearly a year since Infinite Summer (thereby making the connection wholly legitmate and not in any way shill-y or suspicious), and I can swear to its awesomeness, I would like to recommend a book to you:

It just went on sale today, so carve out a place in your life for it. If you're not glad you did, I'll eat red pencil shavings.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Team America!

2010-04-12T22:11:00.005-04:00

[He] had consulted with some of the best and brightest specialists to help improve his odds of beating one of the most fatal cancers ~~in America~~.

AU: I haven't consulted the literature, so I may be going out on a limb here, but isn't it one of the most fatal cancers generally? The incidence of fatality in America probably not higher than elsewhere.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

My Brother's Mother Is My Mother Too

2010-04-09T17:02:00.008-04:00

Here's a disturbing trend in fiction, especially YA fiction: indistinct POV. Today I had to e-mail a production editor with the following query on a project I've just started to work on. I'd like to say it's the first time I've had to grapple with this problem, but it isn't.

Who is the narrator? The book's POV seems to be third-person limited [?] or omniscient [?], but the pronouns are confusing. For example, in a scene featuring Katie and David [our twelve-year-old protagonists] and their parents, the parents will sometimes be referred to as Mom and Dad in attribution as if the POV were first-person from either Katie or David's perspective.

If it's truly meant to be a third-person narrator, then everything the characters do or say should be attributed in the following manner:

"I told you so," Katie said. (This is how it always appears.)
"I told you so," her mother said. NOT "I told you so," Mom said. (It's not the narrator's mom who is speaking.)
"I told you so," their father said. NOT "I told you so," Dad said. (It's not the narrator's dad who is speaking.)
"I told you so," David said. (This is how it always appears)

How the parents are referred to in descriptive, narrative text alternates between first and third person POV also, while Katie and David remain static as third person referents.

Can I get a ruling on this? Standardizing involves a lot of monkeying with the text and I'd hate to do it without asking.
Love,
Your Copyeditor

Is this something any of you have encountered in print? If there are books out there that go all the way to publication with indistinct POV, I'm curious to know about them.

p.s. If the title of this post sounds familiar to you, you were probably born in the '70s.

You Lookin' at Me, Bernard?

2010-04-06T16:23:00.003-04:00

I realize I've been remiss in my blogging obligations, but I made the crazy mistake of taking on projects with overlapping schedules and I'm a bit overwhelmed right now. The upside is, I'll have some funny things to share when it's over.

In the meantime, my random observation du jour:

"Monkey" is one of my favorite verbs. As in "to monkey with," to fiddle about with something.

But the past tense of it is "monkeyed," which, if you want to get down to it, looks a lot like you're saying that maybe a monk is looking at you funny. Probably "monk-eyed" would be how that would need to be spelled, if ever someone wanted to refer to the peculiar way in which monks stare at stuff. It can't come up very often.

Probably I just should have kept a vow of silence till I had something better, but there ya go.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

I Pity the Fools Day

2010-04-01T16:34:00.007-04:00

So did everyone notice this?

The weird thing is, I kind of liked it. It reminded me of the first time I saw the album cover for Primal Scream's Xtrmntr. It was my first exposure to disenvowelling. It gave me a funny feeling in my bathing-suit area. I made a loud "eep" noise but then was immediately concerned that some graphic designer got fired. I mean, who would name an album Extra Mintier? That's just redundant.

Lv,

Yr Cpydtr

World Without End. Amen.

2010-03-29T19:46:00.004-04:00

This balancing act of acknowledging the ~~strong possibility~~ inevitability of your life's end and yet still staying engaged and very much alive is a daunting task.

AU: OK? More than a possibility. As of yet, still no cure for mortality.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Kind of related: I really like Caprica, and I hope it doesn't get cancelled.

Self-Help Guru, Help Thyself!

2010-03-25T14:49:00.010-04:00

O gentle reader, lend me your compassion, for I am surely copyediting the world's most unhelpful self-help book.

I loathe the category in general and usually refuse to work on these things as my own minor act of civil disobedience against the publishing industry that keeps churning them out, but I was suckered in by a knee-jerk fascination with the author's reputation as therapist to some quasi-celebrities and the production editor's promise of a relatively clean manuscript. OK, and also I want a new sofa, and those things don't just pay for themselves, y'know.

Well, sure the manuscript is relatively clean. It has no content! Somehow this quasi-celebrity therapist has managed to extend a ten-point listicle (being generous, here) into a 250-page ms. But you should see the awkward contortions of language required to perform this miracle.

What a bargain: Every sentence, now with 25 percent more words or 25 percent longer words!

"Thesaurusitis" doesn't even begin to cover it. She regularly uses the word "empathic" to mean "empathetic," for example, which is just plain amusing. Paging Deanna Troi. . . .

But here are some other howlers, with my translation or reaction in parentheses:

"Our responses will be factored by our respective personalities." (Our personalities influence our responses?)
"She was tired-appearing." (She looked tired?)
"During the second year of unwanted widowhood..." (Even alluding to wanted widowhood is disturbing.)
"[It] can be an elusive question to ask." (Answers are elusive, not questions. Enigmatic?)
"She is playing aunt to a growing plethora of familial youngsters." (?!)

What's most apparent, aside from this person's naked desire to make bank on her fleeting associations with fame, isn't that she's a font of wisdom but that she struggles with deep self-doubt that stems from a suspicion that she doesn't have anything truly worthwhile to contribute to the world, as evidenced by her failed attempt to hide behind jargon and double-speak.

Who's the therapist now, bitch?

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Pet Peeve Cemetery

2010-03-22T16:36:00.008-04:00

As is my style, I bring you a newsy item that's almost a month out of date, although I'd like to point out that language news should be given a kind of amnesty with respect to timeliness. Since there is a cultural-lag factor involved in all things language-related--the time it takes for changes in language to become evident and acceptable (I call it mutation)--it stands to reason that ideas about language should also take time to take hold.

What do you think of this story from NPR on linguistic pet peeves?

Do you agree that something can't be a pet peeve unless it's really uncommonly held?

If it's true, I have far fewer pets to feed than I had originally thought and am now at a near loss to name the ones that qualify under these criteria.

I guess the pet that gets the most excercise still qualifies, which is what I've come to refer to as "myself abuse"--when people use the word "myself" as a direct object when they should use the word "me." It turns out that myself abuse has been going on for quite a long time in English and lots of folks are entirely unbothered by it, but it's still incredibly irksome to me; I'm unwilling to let it stand.

Take a look for example on how I instruct my freelancers to handle it and how I handle it myself:

Always correct improper use of reflexive pronouns unless it is dialogue spoken by an un- or undereducated character in a work of fiction. This occurs most often as an I/me/myself distinction. Note: The word “myself” can never be the subject of a sentence and can only be the object of a sentence that begins with “I.”

EXAMPLES:

James and myself went to the same university.
(incorrect)

James and I went to the same university.
(correct)

Did you go to the same university as James and myself?
(incorrect)

Did you go to the same university as James and me?
(correct)

I surprise myself when I misuse reflexive pronouns.
(correct)

There are many people who understand this stuff, including myself.
(incorrect)

Dear readers, do you have any honest-to-goodness linguistic pet peeves or are your pets all dead now? Do tell!

Love,
Your Copyeditor

...And Boy Are My Arms Tired!

2010-03-17T15:36:00.004-04:00

[He] lived alone but had three grown children; two sons who lived nearby and a daughter who resided a ~~day's~~ short plane trip away.

AU: As meant? Although it might feel otherwise, with the exception of maybe parts of the Far East, Australia, and Antarctica, everywhere is a day's plane trip away.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Give That to Me Again?

2010-03-15T16:56:00.004-04:00

"...sometimes people are listening to what you say, even when they don't seem to be. This is true particularly when the person on the ~~receiving end~~ listening side of the conversation is both defensive and vulnerable at the same time."

AU: OK? It's somewhat awkward and perhaps damaging to your argument to suggest that conversation is received as if it were an object.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Let's Be Frank

2010-03-11T14:08:00.003-05:00

J____ used tongs to place a hot dog in its bun on A____'s plate.
"Cool! I haven’t had a wiener since I’ve been in Boston," A____ said.

AU: Perhaps revise to "I haven't had a hot dog" to avoid unfortunate double entendre. One presumes A____ has all his parts and did not lose a major one in Boston.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Is There a Copyeditor in the House?

2010-03-09T13:54:00.007-05:00

Last night I annoyed my husband by wigging out over a plot hole in our favorite TV show, House. The kind of thing I'd dutifully correct or query in a manuscript. The kind of thing that makes a writer look dumb.

Here's a summary (and with no spoilers for the DVR crowd):

House has been seen reading The Golden Bowl by Henry James for weeks.... Or has he? Wilson observes that the book House is reading seems to be about half the known page length of The Golden Bowl. And so he steals into House's office and takes the dust jacket off the book and discovers that it's actually a totally different book under there!

Well, here's the problem with that. Assuming both books are the same trim size (standard trim for a hardcover book is 6 1/8 x 9 1/4), if one book has twice as many pages, its dust jacket would look stupidly huge on the shorter impostor book. A ten-year-old can't pass himself off as a grown man just by putting on Daddy's sportcoat. Someone would have noticed this much, much sooner and would have wanted to know what the heck was up with that.

So I'm sitting there on the couch going, "Fail!" and my husband is saying how it's not that big of a fail, so I run to our library room and grab a couple of books to do a live demo. As I'm flopping the impostor book around in its immense jacket, I'm getting only a wan smile and a shrug from him, not a victory medal.

And I have no clear idea what happened in the rest of the show. But I know it was about blogging.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

p.s. Kudos to my husband for living with a lunatic.

Gerund Butler; or, Hopping Mad Libs

2010-03-05T15:53:00.004-05:00

Everyone has his or her own "Holy crap, I'm old!" moments. Even those of us who do our best to keep current with pop culture, who see ourselves as perpetually twenty-three. But inevitably one of these moments will blindside us. It may come while visiting a clothing store and discovering that everything is too trendy, or it may come while opening a wedding or graduation invite for someone you can remember teething.

Today I was reviewing a manuscript for a Mad Libs-inspired game that has the following category:

Verb ending in "-ing"

And so my question to the editor was "Um, gerund?"

And the editor was all like, "What's a gerund?"

And so I go, "A verb ending in '-ing'."

And she says, "Well, nobody will know that."

Really?

Really?!

Holy crap, I'm old.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

March Forth!

2010-03-04T14:36:00.003-05:00

Do you know what day today is, cats and kittens?

Why, it's National Grammar Day!

How will you celebrate this year? Maybe by having a That/Which trial? Or addressing your woes about apostrophes to the very gods?

One thing I'd definitely recommend is checking out Grammar Girl's fun collection of Grammar Day tidbits.

Me, I think I'll be writing to the powers that be at Webster's and asking them to please make closed compounds official for the following words:

soundtrack
soundbite
keychain
website
goodbye
goodnight

Any you'd like me to tack on?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

You Always Herd the Ones You Love

2010-03-01T16:42:00.002-05:00

Muttering under his breath, he herded his girlfriend outside.

AU: “shepherded” better here? "Herded" usually for a crowd.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Wrong, You Boob!

2010-02-26T16:52:00.003-05:00

Thin, leggy, and large-breasted supermodels dominate the runway scene.

AU: It is factually incorrect to label any runway model as "large-breasted." Please revise.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Too Faced

2010-02-25T16:54:00.000-05:00

...and then the news, delivered by the grim-faced doctor
whose face I could not picture.

AU: Delete “grim-faced”? Seems contradictory to say that he’s grim-faced but that you also could not picture him.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

(Jump the) Shark Week!

2010-02-19T12:35:00.006-05:00

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the descriptive paragraph! . . .

Today I bring you not one but two weird constructions involving jaws, both from the same manuscript. Be careful: they not only bite, but they also suck.

1.

E____had clamped down hard on the inside of his jaw.

His eyes were lowered, avoiding hers—and his body was tense, muscles clenched tightly in both jaws.

AU: Do you mean he was gritting his teeth? Or was he gnawing the inside of his cheek? As written, physiologically inscrutable.

AU: Do you mean "on both sides of his jaw"? Or is there some necessary distinction for upper and lower mandibles?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Interrobang?!

2010-02-18T14:33:00.004-05:00

Last week I was doing a cold read for someone—a perfectly horrendous book, to be frank. The copyeditor clearly had phoned it in and the previous proofreader didn’t do much to try to mitigate the damage. Enter Your Copyeditor. I’m glad I was called, despite the fact that the book wasn’t worth my effort to fix or anyone else’s effort to buy or read. So am I a masochist?

Well, yes, but that’s not my point.

I came across the oddest thing while reading this book. At least four instances of this: ???

That’s right. Three question marks in a row. The kind of thing you might assume could only be seen in the furtive notes passed between girls in high-school classrooms. As in “Did you see what Morgan was wearing in homeroom???”

But this book was a work of (ostensibly) serious nonfiction. So what on earth were those three question marks doing there? Of all the things the original copyeditor failed to fix and the proofreader before me sought fit to leave alone, this was the most shocking.

Haven’t they ever heard of the interrobang?!

No, it’s not an industrial band (er...not yet, anyway). It’s a typographical/grammatical tool to help a writer convey shock/disbelief/outrage while asking a question. See photo in the right-hand column of this blog (or the previous paragraph) for a good example of it in action.

While The Chicago Manual of Style is ambivalent about its proper use (or whether there is a proper use), preferring instead to treat exclamatory questions with exclamation points alone, I think the interrobang is awesome. Far better, you must agree, than three question marks in a row.

Since the real single-stroke interrobang (‽) is not a character included in most font sets, the “ersatz interrobang” (?!) is most often substituted.

What do you think of interrobangs? Let's pretend we are in high school and you can choose from the following:

I like them
I like them like them
I like them, but only as a friend
I don't like them
I maybe like them

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Moving in Stereo

2010-02-17T13:44:00.004-05:00

So I know it's been a while since I've blogged, and I feel bad about that. I meant to start catching up yesterday, but I had jury duty. They had free WiFi, which was awesome, but apparently blogging is not allowed at 111 Centre Street in New York, because I couldn't log on to do anything here at LYC. Nor could I view any websites with the word "blog" in the URL. Strange, right?

Anyway, I'll post something for the next three days to try to make up for my absence. Below is conciliatory gift #1.

And if you're wondering why I can suddenly blog today if I couldn't yesterday, it's because no one in his or her right mind would want someone as opinionated as yours truly on a jury. They turned me loose after they discovered this.

G____ and M____ shrugged ~~in unison~~ at the same
time.

AU: OK? Or similar? "In unison" only really applies to speech or music.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Witch Disease Do You Have?

2010-02-03T17:29:00.003-05:00

Many others had or currently have cancer, lupus, ~~Crone's~~ Crohn's disease, and countless other physical challenges and disabilities.

Also, and just as a silly aside to you guys, am I the only one to think of this when someone says the words "physical challenge"?

Paging David Copperfield. No, the Other One.

2010-02-01T08:25:00.006-05:00

A____ looked at him and thought of all the flowery
things one would say if this were a romance in a book. She had read such speeches--long, elegant monologues rich with classical ~~illusions~~ allusions and clever turns of phrase.

O-R-E-L-S-E-C-K-S

2010-01-27T12:58:00.010-05:00

So I don’t know whether any of you were following this story about a public school in California that tried to ban Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (my industry’s dictionary of record, by the way) after some fourth- and fifth-graders were caught looking up salacious words and phrases, but it has me in a fuming rage.

What kind of bullshit is that?! Where is the logic? I know how to spell "murder," but that doesn't mean I'm going to go shoot someone. Because my parents taught me that murder is wrong. Do these moronic parents really think that their kids won’t be curious about sexuality if they don’t know how to spell it? Isn't it their responsibility to teach them that sex at age nine or ten is wrong? Did they themselves never do this very same thing with dictionaries when they were kids (and read the "sex part" of Catcher in the Rye first when they were in high school)? Are they all terribly scarred from having learned that “vagina” isn’t spelled with a “j”? What my generation is doing to its kids is utterly terrifying.

Yesterday’s news update was that the dirty dictionary was reinstated in the school library but that students would be given permission slips to take home that would either expressly forbid or allow them access to it. Some mention is made of an “alternative dictionary” that students could use instead of M-W, which I find intriguing. Are there really dictionaries out there that don’t contain definitions for sex organs/sex acts? Well, what about ones that don’t contain definitions for racial slurs for those who find the mere existence of the “N” word problematic? Ones that don’t contain a definition of the Holocaust for those who want their kids to believe it never happened? Where does it end?

In my opinion what they really need is a dictionary that doesn’t contain a definition for the words “unconstitutional,” “overprotective,” “Puritanical,” “Orwellian,” and “theocracy,” lest their kids figure out what despicable people their parents are. Or the parents need to look up the definition of only one word: “homeschool.”

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Judging Books by Their Covers

2010-01-22T13:01:00.007-05:00

This week has been rough at the day job. Precious little in the way of adorable gaffes to share.

I've found myself having forged a friendship with an author whose book I'm working on, which is a rare and wonderful thing. There's a reason why copyeditors and production editors are not, in the main, forward-facing, though. Our job is to lay the smack down, enforce the rules, point out the foibles of others, and say no on an alarmingly regular basis. Authors tend not to like this very much. Or will grudgingly accept their imperfections and give a perfunctory "thanks." I don't blame them for this reaction; their egos tend to be delicate, what with all the coddling they usually get from their editors and agents.

Nevertheless, Author Friend proved a special case, and we've been e-mailing and chatting over the phone for weeks about the tiniest of issues pertaining to his book and every other thing under the sun, which I've found immensely gratifying. The astute reader of this blog will know which book I am referring to, but I will not reveal the actual title or author's name here.

The dark side of this story is that Author Friend's acquiring editor seems to be perpetually out to lunch. Not just physically, although I've only seen him in his office once. Apparently there is some big hullabaloo about the cover art for Author Friend's book, and the editor isn't running interference in the way I'd expect.

Did you know that sales reps for large booksellers like Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon have an insane amount of input with respect to book jacket art? Well, they do. This is why nearly every jacket seems to look the same as nearly every other (and why it's really hard to find a book by a woman author that isn't pink or featuring a disembodied pair of feet). Sales reps have a damnably difficult time intuiting outside the cube, which is insulting to the book-buying public. In-house reps come to jacket meetings and if they don't like something, they can threaten the publisher with an order of a low quantity. Sales reps can even force an editor to change a book's title because they don't like it.

This is the drama happening now with Author Friend's book. The sales rep from one of the big three rejected a perfectly good cover mockup and insists on having a particular cover image or they won't order any books at all. The problem is that the cover they are insisting on verges on offensive to the author, the subject of his book, and to the book's actual core audience (it's clear the sales rep either hasn't read the book or doesn't understand this particular market).

And despite my general feeling of unassailability and Supreme Last-Worditude, for once I'm totally powerless. I can be a sympathetic ear to Author Friend, but I have no relationship whatsoever with the sales rep and only minimal influence on the editor.

The moral of this story is actually an exhortation: if you like a book's jacket because it's atypical and you buy it in a large chain bookstore, please go out of your way to tell someone who works there and/or e-mail the publisher. And if you think a cover is stupid and boring or even vaguely offensive, but you know it will be worth reading, please buy it anyway and tell someone about that, too.

There may not be any way for us to save Author Friend's cover from a fate it doesn't deserve, but maybe we can slowly force the industry to stop shooting itself in the disembodied foot.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Weird Edibles

2010-01-18T12:08:00.004-05:00

There were apples and oranges, but also many ~~strange~~ bizarre fruits S____ had never seen.

AU: OK? Need to avoid reference to "strange fruit," because it is culturally tied to the song of the same name. Strange fruit = hanged slaves.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Spirit Fingers

2010-01-15T15:35:00.006-05:00

With burgeoning recognition in the art world, [his]
work was acquired by major museums. But secure in his Catskills home, he continued to refine his sculpture ~~from afar~~ far removed from New York’s art scene.

AU: OK? Or similar? He had to be in the same physical space as the art to refine it.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

A, E, I, O, U, and Sometimes H?

2010-01-13T14:14:00.009-05:00

/Rant/

For the love of the Almighty, you Cockney slags, please stop saying/writing "an historic event." I'm 'opping mad at you 'omunculi. It doesn't give the phrase more gravitas, it just makes you look like a dolt.

The word "historic" begins with an "h," which is a consonant in the English language, although if you were to write it out, it would be spelled "aitch," which I admit is a tad confusing. But who the hell knows how to spell out the alphabet anymore anyway? Besides me.

The point is, the article "an" should only be used before words that begin with a vowel or a vowel sound as in "an NYC thing" or "an honor" (thank you, Trent and Terriblywrite). "Historic," my friends, contains an aspirated "h" and does not.

So cut it out, OK?

/End Rant/

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Too Many People Read Jonathan Safran Foer

2010-01-12T17:24:00.005-05:00

I just had to share this with y'all. I used to be a vegetarian. But when I went back to eating meat, I never felt guilty. I wonder why FreshDirect is trying to change that. Seems counterproductive, no?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Don't Loose You're Mind!

2010-01-08T16:03:00.006-05:00

I love coming across grammar lessons on the Internet!

Case in point, this sparkly little gem from The Oatmeal. It makes me so glad to know there are folks out there who give a rat's ass about this stuff still besides me. Sometimes I feel so alone.

But I have a problem with their example for "than." Anyone want to play WWYCD (What Would Your Copyeditor Do) today?

I'm much better at holding my liquor than a panda bear.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

I Can See Russian Folklore from My House

2010-01-06T15:45:00.004-05:00

Baba Yaga is the witch in traditional Russian tales, the wicked one who lives in a ~~mortar~~ hut that has chicken legs and erases her footsteps with a broom.
She embodies the horrible ~~stepmother~~ hag, cruelty, and greed, against which only innocence can triumph.

AU: She flies around in a mortar, but she lives in a hut. Also, there isn't really reference to stepmothers in the Baba Yaga stories that I'm aware of, and she herself is always personified as a granny.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Big Fat New Year

2010-01-04T14:00:00.004-05:00

Aaaaaand we're back!

I know I was supposed to have blogged recently, but I was too busy stuffing my pie hole with pies.

Everybody bitches about how much they consumed over the holidays. It's so boring. Just once I want to hear a nice, refreshing pro-ana holiday story (not really).

But anyway, today's post is about food. Since I can no longer allow myself to eat so much of it, I might as well blog more about it.

Shrimp fritter

Make a fritter batter by mixing 2 eggs, 1 cup
milk, sugar, salt, and pepper, baking powder, 3 ½ ounces flour, and 1 ¾ ounces cornstarch. Dip the shrimp in batter and immerse them in hot oil. Drain and serve with soy sauce.

AU: How much sugar, salt, pepper, and baking powder? 1 cup each? 1 cup was the last measurement given, but for milk. Pls. clarify. My guess is that a cup of each of these things is far too much.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Fear and Loathing

2009-12-21T15:52:00.003-05:00

Last week I visited fabulous Las Vegas!

It's so fabulous, in fact, they can't be bothered to spell simple words correctly.

To wit:

Anyway, if I've been missed, please know that the feeling is mutual and we will return to our regularly scheduled snarkfest shortly. Later this week, even. I'm sure my hangover is almost gone. Like my money.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Weld War II

2009-12-09T23:58:00.000-05:00

Typo of the Day:

Wavell, Earl. Soldiers and Soldering. Jonathan Cape, 1953.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

Miss, Crossed

2009-12-07T12:58:00.007-05:00

Today's query comes from a YA novel that owes pretty much its entire existence to Rushmore but fails to openly acknowledge it, and in which certain teachers in a fictional school all share a peculiar trait:

AU: It occurs to me now, about 80 percent of the way through the novel, that all of the women teachers are referred to as “Mrs.” So-and-So. It strains credulity that every woman teacher is married. Change some to Ms. or Miss?

Love,

Your Copyeditor

I also wanted to ask why the math and science teachers were all dudes, but I needed to pick my battles.

Eight Days a Week

2009-12-04T15:09:00.004-05:00

Ever notice how when you're stressed-out or tired, the world's ills get magnified, making you more stressed-out and tired? There has to be some special kind of infinity that's described by this relation. Today's example tries to give us a cure, but inadvertently does a better job at describing the disease:

Go to bed an hour later than you used to every day for a while or wake up an hour earlier; you’ll have extra time to arrange your daily affairs.

AU: OK? Because otherwise in twenty-four days, you'll run out of hours.

Love,

Your Copyeditor

Infinite Dave

2009-11-30T13:05:00.000-05:00

On Friday, November 20, I attended a conference at the CUNY Grad Center on the work of David Foster Wallace, which was the most exciting thing I've done recently (taking a bit of a hiatus from serious copyediting because things at work are hectic and it's the bloomin' holidays for cryin' out loud).

I had the great fortune of meeting one of my favorite Infinite Summer participants, Daryl Houston of infinite zombies. Daryl, in addition to being a fine blogger, also seems to be a fine human being. And not a zombie at all. Also present was the venerable webmaster of The Howling Fantods, Nick Maniatis. I didn't really talk to Nick, so I can't comment on whether he is or is not a zombie. Seemed like a nice guy, though.

There were a number of compelling papers presented over the course of the day, one of which happened to bolster my interest in the use of single quotation marks as a significant plot point. In chatting over wine and cheese after the conference with the fellow who presented this argument, I learned something even more interesting: Canadians use American punctuation conventions, not British conventions. I took his word for it, given that he was affiliated with York University in Canada. But I felt terribly ignorant to only be learning this fact now. What made me so sure that Canadians followed thier British cousins in the first place? It's little moments like these that keep my ego from running amok.

While I wish I had submitted a paper for consideration, it was massively gratifying to attend as an audience member, especially since I recently came into possession of that new DFW-related manuscript and could pepper my conversation with little teasers of the forthcoming material. But far more than the pleasure of being an insider, my main cause for celebration lies the very fact that this conference took place. In my opinion, it goes a long way in cementing DFW's position in the literary pantheon and, as such, I hope it is one of many to come.

Love,
Your Copyeditor

All of These Things Are Not Like the Other

2009-11-18T13:04:00.001-05:00

"Are you kidding? . . . this is something the whole world knows."

I explained to [him] . . . the truth was that the whole world did not know these things.

AU: While colloquially it's clear what you mean, by strict logic you are saying no one knows these things ("all not" versus "not all"). Change to "it was not true that the whole world knew these things"?

Love,

Your Copyeditor