Writer, Editor, Helper

"Dear Carol: I Committed the Sin of Overediting"

 

Photo courtesy Taz.

Hi Carol—

I’m sure you won’t get this before I gather my strength tomorrow and face the difficult task of answering one of my authors’ emails. But because I’m sure you’ve plenty of advice to give, better late than never.

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. I know I spent a lot of time on his edit, and I’m sure I did, indeed, commit the sin of overediting. My question is how do you come back from that? I know I need to submit an apology, but I’m not sure what else to say other than “I’m sorry you’re unhappy and for the inconvenience.” I’ve only been a copyeditor for a few months and I’m still trying to get the hang of this gig.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Lee

Dear Lee,

My heart goes out to you! I’m sure you know that most of us have had an experience like yours at one time or another.

I agree that you should apologize and express your regret for being overeager. Ask the writer if he would trust you to make another pass in order to put things right.

If you do another pass, ask the author to explain the kinds of things he didn’t like. If you aren’t confident that you can fix the manuscript, it might be better to say so. In that case, offer to adjust the fee; perhaps ask the writer to pay you what he feels is fair. If the writer agrees that you did more good work than bad, he should pay you something. But whatever you lose in time and money will just have to be chalked up to your education!

If your second pass turns out well, let that comfort you. And in any case, be very careful about the kind of assignment you accept next. It could be that this particular one was too tricky for a beginner.

Finally, you seem to be self-aware, but know that there are writers who exaggerate and even err in their assessments. You might have done better than you think.

Good luck! I hope you’ll let me know how it goes.

Yours,
Carol

 

Dear Author: Your Dangler Is Showing . . .

 

                                                                        Photo by Justin Garland

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 into question.

Even acknowledging my slight preference for starting sentences with participial phrases, the question remains of why this should be a problem. Having won awards for my previous books, you are the first reader to find it lacking. In making so many changes to my prose, I wonder whether you actually understood the subtlety of my constructions! Having written and published more books than you have probably edited, my expertise should have been obvious.

In responding to your editing, it will become apparent that I have restored much of my original. Studying it closely, I trust you will acknowledge your insensitivity.

Sincerely,

Your Author

 

Let’s Make a Macro!

                                                                                                Photo courtesy Kirby Urner

In an effort to pretend that new versions of MS Word are improvements, Microsoft continues to foist meaningless, annoying changes on their users. In the version of Word for Windows 2010 installed on my new laptop, for instance, Control-F no longer brings up the Find box. Instead, it opens a “Navigation” pane. To a writer or copyeditor who has used Control-F hundreds of times a day for decades, it doesn’t really matter whether this is a genuine improvement or not: we hate it. (Fortunately, it’s not difficult to reassign Control-F to the Find function, once you figure out that the mischief-loving folks at Word have also renamed the Find function EditFind.)

A drawback of my new laptop that I can’t blame on Microsoft is that it lacks a numeric keypad, so it’s impossible to type an en dash or em dash in Word in the way I’m used to. I know there are other ways. I know that typing two hyphens will automate the creation of an em dash, for instance. But I work on a full-size keyboard at the office, and I want my home keyboard to behave the same way. I want to type Control-hyphen for an en dash and Control-Alt-hyphen for an em dash. Anything else will slow me down.

Enter the macro! In just a few easy steps, I can teach Word to do these things using a fun but powerful feature that lets nontechies combine a series of steps into a single command without knowing a Ø from a 1. It’s simply a matter of pressing Record and letting Word capture whatever steps you perform in your document before pressing Stop.

If you’ve never used the macro-recording tool in Word, this simple exercise will introduce you to your new favorite plaything.*

Here’s how to make an en dash appear every time you type Control-hyphen:

• In a Word document click on Record Macro on the Developer ribbon [Update for Word 2016 or Office 365: get there via View > Macros].**
• Type a name for your macro (without spaces: EnDash).
• Since we’re going to create a keyboard command for our dash, click on Keyboard.***
• In the new box, put your cursor under Press New Shortcut Key and hit Control-hyphen.****
• Assign and Close.
• In the Insert menu, choose Symbol, then More Symbols.
• Under the Symbols tab (normal text) choose the General Punctuation subset.
• Click on the en dash, then Insert and Close.
• Stop Recording.

Done! Now whenever you type Control-hyphen, an en dash will appear.

If you mess up in the middle of making a macro, simply stop recording. Delete the name of the macro you messed up by clicking on the Macros icon in the Developer tab [Update: in Word 2016 and Office 365, go to View > Macros], which will take you to your list.

Now that you’ve made one macro, I just know you’re going to turn into a macro-making maniac. Macros are great for automating cleanup routines. You can put as many search-and-replacements as you like into a single recording, such as clearing out double spaces and extra hard returns or adding html tags around searchable formats. Just keep recording until you’re done. From then on, you can accomplish the same series of moves by clicking Run on your macro.

A word of caution: any kind of automated editing has the potential to seriously ruin your day. After you run a macro, you can use Word’s Undo command to undo it step by step in reverse order, but it’s a good idea to test your macro before using it on anything important.

______

*A simpler way to achieve this single-task move is to use the Customize Keyboard feature. But that wouldn’t introduce you to making macros.

**If you don’t see the Developer tab, in Word 2007 go to Options > Popular > Top Options > Show Developer Tab; In Word 2010 go to Options > Customize Ribbon > Customize the Ribbon (again) > Developer checkbox. [Update: In Word 2016 or Office 365, go to View > Macros > Record Macro. Or type “macro” into the “Tell me what you want to do” box at the top of the ribbon and choose “Record macro.”]

***Creating a keyboard command to launch a macro is optional. If you prefer, every time you need the macro you can go to the Macros list and click on it and then click Run. Or you can choose the Button option, which will create an icon for that macro in the Quick Access Toolbar. Those choices may be fine for a task you perform only occasionally or for macros that perform multiple steps, but not for typing en dashes.

****You might prefer to choose the hyphen on your keypad, since Control-Hyphen on the main keyboard is already assigned to creating an optional space. If you never need to type an optional space, it doesn't matter which you choose.

 

 

Writers and Editors: Are You Shortsighted?

                               Photo courtesy of Mark Anderson

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. This time, there was only a bloody knee and punctured palm. I picked myself up and hailed a cab (which I should have done to begin with), and a couple of blocks later realized I was without my eyeglasses, which must have flown off when I fell.

Imagine that: I hailed a cab without my glasses! I don’t think I could normally do that. Was it that in my shock I momentarily acquired some kind of superpower vision? The cab wasn’t even an eye-catching yellow—it was just a dusty little beige. And I rode two whole blocks before I missed my glasses—but then, I suppose even the nearsighted can check for body parts.

In the cab my panic over possible injury gave way to panic over losing expensive prescription glasses; we went back to the scene and the cabbie waited while I found mine. Miraculously, they weren’t even scratched. Putting them on, seeing everything clearly, I felt halfway restored. Ironic, considering that if I’d been watching where I was walking in the first place, I wouldn’t have fallen.

For writers and editors, good vision is a handy tool. If you don’t often think about yours, take a minute now.

Computer Glasses

Not long ago I developed persistent neck and shoulder pain and mentioned it to my optometrist. She asked if I spent a lot of time at the computer and explained that as a bifocal wearer, I was probably tilting my head at awkward angles for hours at a time. She prescribed single-vision lenses specifically for reading at computer distance. They’re a great success, not just for computer work, but for every kind of reading. (Once I accidently wore them rollerblading; not recommended.)

Vision Testing

If you’re young and well sighted, or older with stable vision, you might believe you don’t need eye exams. But without them, you have no way to know whether you are developing glaucoma. This condition is the second leading cause of blindness in the United States (cataracts are the first), and here’s the kicker: often by the time you have symptoms, it has progressed to a dangerous extent, and there’s no cure. Caught early, however, it can often be slowed by means of treatment as simple as eye drops.

Not everyone has insurance to cover regular vision testing, but if you are over forty, consider making it a priority. Just one visit can tell you whether you have signs of glaucoma, and if you don’t, you can feel better about coasting a while between checkups.

______

Read about glaucoma:

PubMed Health

Mayo Clinic

 

The August Q&A is up . . .

 

 

. . . at Chicago Manual of Style Online:

 Q.  “The telltale sign of a right-winger: they can’t write in English to save their lives.” Is “they/their” used incorrectly?

Q. Based on CMOS 10.4, Los Angeles should appear as LA, but this can create confusion between the city and the state of Louisiana. How then do you treat Los Angeles when you need to abbreviate it?

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. It's free!

 

 

Dear Carol:How Do I Know When to Meddle?

                                                                                    Photo courtesy Peter Werkman

Hello, Carol,

I have been enjoying your blog on editing for quite some time. In particular, I appreciated your tips for newbie copy editors. I have been working freelance as a copy editor for a couple years with scientific and technical documents. I have recently expanded to copy editing and proofreading novels, which is a bit of a change. 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 occurred? What are your thoughts on using queries (in the comments) to attract the author’s attention to my suggestions?