Writer, Editor, Helper

An Unexpected Truth about Copy Editors and Consistency

Don’t ever tell a copyeditor that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. To begin with, anyone who knows the context of that chestnut knows that Emerson wasn’t thinking about whether website has a hyphen when he wrote it, and second, it’s rarely a good idea to make your copyeditor think you’re an ignorant jerk. Third, whatever the stereotype, copyeditors do draw a line when it comes to consistency, even to the point of having to explain to a writer sometimes why consistency is not a goal in a given instance.

Let’s say I add a comma after “In 1945” because it’s followed by a parenthetical clause: In 1945, as the story goes, Grandma ate eggshells to keep her bones strong. So the writer helpfully adds a comma after every “In 19xx” in the manuscript to take care of my “inconsistency.” No harm done, other than the writer’s waste of time and my annoyance at being thought incompetent. (And yes, I confess to trotting out the “consistency is not a goal” defense now and then when a writer’s query sounds more like “you missed a spot.”)

Food Shoving in Fiction: Art or Life?

I’ve noticed something in my reading lately: in print, people are disgusting eaters.

I can’t help wondering whether editors are not bothered by such passages, or whether they make suggestions and the writers resist. I recently read two manuscripts for friends and pointed out half a dozen such instances. Both told me I was the only one who had objected. Some examples from published books I’ve read:

Feeling Peculiar:Awaiting Rescue

Yesterday I learned that my new blog home at Lingua Franca* does not use Chicago style. My first response was nonchalance; I know that not everyone uses CMOS. But overnight it hit me the way a sniffle on Wednesday is a cold by Thursday, and now I’m in full-bore whining mode.

I have never in my life used any style guide but Chicago. And it hasn’t been a casual brand-loyalty kind of thing, the way I’ve always used, say, Alka-Seltzer. For decades, CMOS has been within arm’s reach, like reading glasses or a pencil. I’m what they call a “power user.” For pete’s sake—I’m one of its editors.

I won’t cheapen my feelings by comparing them to cheating—on a diet, a lover. What I feel is not guilt or treason. It’s more like unreasoned homesickness and fear. I know Chicago style so intimately, so automatically. Typing the serial comma by now is as much in my fingers as in my brain.

And on to the serious whining: I have to learn a new style! Go ahead and throw in my face my own cheerful pep talk about learning CMOS 16. I don’t know how to learn a new style! I can’t even find online a serious list of the main points of New York Times style—although a copy of the manual is even now winging its way to my desk.

Until my copy arrives, I would love to learn some of the most common differences between New York Times and Chicago styles. I know about using Mr. and Ms. I know NYT eschews the serial comma.

Please tell me what you know! Maybe that will bring relief.

______

*At the Chronicle of Higher Education, beginning the week of August 29; I will post the link here each week.

 

Humbled by Copyediting: Guest Post by Elizabeth Fama

 

  Photo: Elizabeth Fama

I just finished reviewing my copyedited manuscript and I learned a valuable lesson: I am a hack writer.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the copyeditor herself; she was professional and unobtrusive on the page. And before we go any further I want to say that based on her handwriting you, too, would have leaped to the conclusion that she was a woman, so don’t scold me.

Anyway, she marked the manuscript—a hard copy, which slightly horrified my friend, the Subversive Copy Editor—with clean red pencil marks, and any comments that were direct communications were business-like and friendly: things like “OK?” and “To avoid repetition.”

No, what made me feel like a hack were the corrections themselves. I’m supposed to be a writer, after all. I’m supposed to know grammar, and how to punctuate, and how to (for crying out loud) spell.

So why the heck do I use so many em-dashes? Wait, is that actually spelled m-dash? Or perhaps it’s em dash.

And why do I abuse commas so violently?

There are spaces between the periods of ellipses? Now you’re just making stuff up.

But really, how can a supposed writer not know the appropriate context for “into” versus “in,” and “onto” versus “on”? And while we’re at it, why do you hold onto a rock, but you search for something to hold on to? Why do you pull a car in to the lot, but you settle your child into bed? How the heck do foreigners learn this language?

Oh, yeah, I also abuse italics.

Another problem for me is compounding. Here are some words I would have sworn on my grandmother’s grave were made up of two words with a space between them:

swimsuit
streetlight
redbrick
ribcage
crisscross

Here are some words that I was so sure were one word, I might have staked one of my children’s lives on it:

gill net
seat belt
left overs
word play

I mean, left overs? That’s seriously two words? GET. OUT. Overs isn’t even a thing!

But there are more substantive issues, too—language I would have screwed up even if I had bothered to open Webster’s Eleventh while I was working. I once wrote a haughty blog post about tic words in young-adult books—they annoy me as a reader and keep me from feeling transported by the prose. And then I noticed little check marks on my manuscript, like snowflakes dancing down the page. It turns out those check marks appear over repeated words. Gah! I hate myself!

At the end of the whole process it was impossible for me not to wonder: did the copyeditor like the book? Did she think I was below or above average in how pathetic my mistakes were? Does she wonder whether I respect her expertise and effort?

I may never know the answer to the first two questions, but if the answer to the third is yes, I have a message for my copyeditor: hoo, boy am I ever grateful for your edits. I feel honored to have someone out there watching my back so carefully, with no recognition other than a small paycheck. Thank you for your thorough work. Thank you for cleaning up my messes. And thank you for saving my face those three times I referred to multiple anglers as “fisherman.”

P.S. Carol Saller did not copyedit this post.

~ ~ ~

Elizabeth Fama is my good friend and writing partner. Her young adult novel Monstrous Beauty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Spring 2012) has every promise to be a blockbuster, featuring an ancient mermaid, an eighteenth-century hunk, a modern-day teenager wrestling with a family curse, and . . . well, I don’t want to give anything away before you have a chance to read the book. Meanwhile, I invited her to write about how things are going. —Carol

Change Is Coming

For over a year, I’ve been turning up here weekly to rant and fume and share, and on my part, it’s been pure pleasure. I hear from enough of you to know not only that someone is out there listening, but that almost anything I’m experiencing in my life as a copyeditor has been similarly experienced by at least some of you. It can keep a body going! I’m very grateful.

But now there’s something new. Starting the week of August 29, I’ll be moving to a new daily blog called Lingua Franca at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Lucy Ferriss, Allan Metcalf, Geoffrey  Pullum, Ben Yagoda, and I will focus on language and writing in academe. I’m excited by the challenge and by the company.

In other news, my children’s novel, Eddie’s War, was published this week! Set in rural Illinois during World War II, the book is a coming-of-age story about a boy too young to enlist. I hope you’ll take a look—if you read it and like it, please feel free to say so at Goodreads or Amazon. Meanwhile, Clara Gillow Clark invited me to guest blog about it this week; if you’d like to hear more, hop on over there.

So . . . today is my last regular Wednesday post at this site. I expect future posts to be somewhat sparse and random, but I hope you’ll keep me in your feeds. And I hope we can continue our conversation at Lingua Franca. Thank you for being here. I hope I see you there.

All the best,

Carol

How Not to Write a Book

I’m guest blogging today at Clara Gillow Clark's children's book blog, launching Eddie’s War and telling about how I got into trouble writing it.

Come on over!