(The Subversive Copy Editor)
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
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:
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.
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: . . .
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 . . .
My guest today is Amy Einsohn, author of The Copyeditor’s Handbook, a book long beloved by writers and editors and just recently appearing in its third edition.
Chase bank is bullying me. The other day they I received a threatening letter informing me that unless I notify them by December 15, they will
I just finished reviewing my copyedited manuscript and I learned a valuable lesson: I am a hack writer.
Do you ever start to show someone how to do something, and then realize that you aren’t exactly sure how you do it, that you do it differently every time, and that ultimately it’s as much a matter of intuition and experience as it is of following instructions? Like making pie crust? Or juggling? Or explaining to a writer everything you’d like to change in her manuscript?
Do you have any deficiencies that you find dispiriting? Me too.
Long ago and far away, I worked for a copy chief who introduced me to the editorial concept of gratuitous meddling. I would like to be able to say that she was a wise and patient master imparting wisdom to the neophyte. But in fact she was a gratuitous meddler herself and was loathed by the copyediting pool.