(The Subversive Copy Editor)
(The Subversive Copy Editor)
Everyone makes mistakes, but if you goof online at your author website or in social media, the potential for ruin these days is downright scary. That doesn’t mean you should hide in fear or shame. Handling a correction or retraction…
For the purposes of this post, let’s presume that viral posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms do have influence, and that the world would be better if people considered more carefully and more often the opposing point…
Peter Sokolowski is editor at large at Merriam-Webster, where he works on the Word of the Day podcast, Ask the Editor videos, and short articles about word trends and etymologies (which he also presents on Twitter). In addition to attending professional and academic conferences to talk about dictionaries,…
[Today Lucy Ferriss and I continue a conversation we started last week about why copy editors do the things they do.]
Lucy: What is with the love of italics?
[In conversation with author Lucy Ferriss, on what she calls “the productive but sometimes perplexing relationship between writers and their copy editors.”]
Lucy: Hyphens and two-word nouns seem to be going the way of the dodo bird. In a 20-page stretch, my copy editor rendered back yard into backyard, bird cage into birdcage, picnic ware into picnicware, mud room into mudroom . . . Mostly I don’t care, but if I’ve been consistent, why should my usage be overruled?
Even after a well-written and well-prepared book has made it past an acquiring editor and through peer review, there is plenty for a manuscript editor to do.
Recently my brother let me ride with him for a week of long-haul trucking in his 18-wheeler. (Read more.)
It struck me the other day that I have access to a vast audience of handwriting experts. So I’m going to take advantage of your skills while you still have them to solve a puzzle I’ve been working on.
In a recent post about the timing of cover design in the publication process, I mentioned a colleague’s comment that typographic covers have the potential to wow just as much as those that feature a photograph or other illustrative art. To learn more, I put some questions to some design and marketing professionals.
When an academic book manuscript is under contract and comes to my department for copyediting, it undergoes an initial review by the assistant managing editor (yours truly) before assignment. If I find any major problems, I send the manuscript back…