You’ve Got the Power: For Good or Evil
Time and again, copyeditors ask me questions that leave me scratching my head. The question always amounts to something like this: “If I follow the rule, nonsense and chaos will result. What should I do?”
Writer, Editor, Helper
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Writer, Editor, Helper
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Carol Saller
Clumsy Quoting: Spot the Problem
I am often distracted by the awkward way in which a writer integrates quotations into the text. But when I started to write here about the specific problems, I didn’t know where to start. Take a look at the following quotations. Why don’t the following quotations read smoothly? See if you feel as icky as I do reading them, and whether you can say why:
Super Shortcuts to ©-§—¶…®! (Typing Popular Symbols)
Soon after I wrote about recording a macro to type an en dash, my friend and colleague Russell Harper wrote to me, as he often does after I venture into giving technical advice, to point out how I might have done it better.
“Dear Carol: I Committed the Sin of Overediting”
I received an email from an author over the weekend. He was very unhappy with the job I did editing his book manuscript and writes that I did “too thorough” a job, changing sentences that did not need to be changed, and in the process, introduced some typographical errors and some content errors. I will not say that this is untrue. My question is how do you come back from that?
Dear Author: Your Dangler Is Showing . . .
Dear Copy Editor, Having looked over your editing, the amount of it strikes me as excessive. Being what I consider a fairly accomplished writer, your intervention at that level seems unwarranted. Frankly, looking at all the redlining, your competence comes…
Let’s Make a Macro!
MS Word has a feature that lets nontechie types record macros without knowing a Ø from a 1. Here’s how to make an en dash every time you type Control-hyphen: . . .
Writers and Editors: Are You Shortsighted?
I fell the other day. I was late and rushing and tripped on some broken sidewalk and went down sprawling and skidding. I still can’t stop thinking about broken bones and lost teeth.
The August Q&A is up . . .
Q. If a person has two last names, but they are not hyphenated, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, how do you alphabetize them—by Beecher or Stowe?
[More questions (and answers!) at the Chicago Manual of Style Online.]
Dear Carol: How Do I Know When to Meddle?
Dear Carol, In general, would you agree that a copy editor should avoid making changes to the text unless a documentable style change and/or grammatical error has occured? What are your thoughts on using queries (in the comments) to attract the author’s attention to my suggestions?
Too Many Eyes: When Editing Is Second-Guessed
Goodness knows my projects always benefit from another pass with a competent pair of eyes. They often get one during proofreading, and it’s humbling to see the things I missed or flubbed. In the end I’m glad for the sake of the book that the errors were caught before they made it into print. But when readers are misguided . . .