Writer, Editor, Helper

Dear Carol: Editing in Batches, Publisher’s Names, Is Secure Secured?

                                                                                                                    Photo courtesy of Kecko

Hi Carol,

I’m in the processing of copy editing a 1,000-page textbook that is due in two batches. I’ve already sent in the first batch of chapters, and as I’m editing the second batch of chapters, I’m coming across errors I missed in the first batch. I’ve already sent a list of close to twenty errors (although some were related, such as the same word misspelled twice) that I missed to my project manager, but I’m still coming across more. Another person is doing the proofreading for this project so I won’t have the opportunity to fix these mistakes myself.

Is there a certain number of errors, perhaps based on the number of pages, that copy editors miss and that is expected? This is my first project with this company and my first time editing a text of this length. I don’t want my project manager to think I’m careless. How should I proceed? Any advice you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.

Sincerely,
Jenna

Dear Jenna,

So far you’ve been doing the right thing, and quite honestly I don’t see any alternative to continuing to send lists of errors. To withhold the errors wouldn’t be right—and in any case, the proofreader will probably notice them later. Your only decision is to weigh the nuisance of sending several lists against the cumulative embarrassment of sending one long one. You might ask your project manager which she prefers.

But don’t be defensive or apologetic when you send a list of errors. When I edit a long work, I’m constantly making new corrections in the early chapters, so I know that a certain amount of this is to be expected. And at least you’re catching the errors! The supervising editor might be impressed that you are so meticulous, honest, and thorough. This might be routine for her.

As it happens, I rarely edit in batches, and I don’t send batches to my freelancers, so it’s not something I would normally encounter. I’d love to hear about the experience other readers have had with this issue.

Yours,
Carol

Dear Ms. Saller,

I just read your Chronicle column on citation forms—acceptable or otherwise. One of your early examples called to mind a minor irritant of mine. That is, the occasional practice of including the place of publication but not the publisher. I know of no useful knowledge that comes from learning that a book was published in New York rather than Boston. Knowing the city (unless it is, say, Chapel Hill) provides little clue as to who published the book. Academic publisher? Trade book? Self-published? So why bother with city only?

Ben

Dear Ben,

I am told by scholars that in some disciplines, it is indeed helpful to know what city (or country) a piece of scholarship originated in, since sometimes research develops in different directions among, say, German scholars and American scholars. They contend that the place of publication can be more meaningful than the name of the publisher, and in their work they often omit the publisher’s name.

Yours,
Carol

Dear Ms. Saller,

On my home computer, the antivirus software frequently displays a message, “Your system is secured.” To me, that’s like saying on a shopfront sign, “Everyone is welcomed.” I am positive that the correct message should be “Your system is secure.” “Your system is secured” sounds ungrammatical because “secured” here is and should be an adjective, and the adjective form of “secure” is “secure.” I’ve posed this question on other forums, and some people have defended it by citing the use of a “past indefinite passive voice.” The term “secured” would then be a passive form of verb, but used loosely as an adjective?

The verb “secure” is unique in that it cuts both ways. It can refer to the act of taking over a target; or it can mean preventing external acts of acquisition. In the case of computer antivirus software, the term “secured” can apply in two opposite scenarios: (1) The system has been secured by XXXX virus. (2) YYY antivirus software has secured your system against viruses. Of course, argumentative people will just say use your common sense. But to me, the fact that a possible alternative meaning exists means that this is bad communication. My question is: Is the original message “Your system is secured” grammatically sound and totally acceptable in terms of communicative effectiveness, when compared to “Your system is secure”?

Hope you can find time to entertain my frivolous questions.

Thanks,
Lok

Dear Lok,

I do have time for a frivolous question! Both constructions are perfectly grammatical and commonly used and nearly identical in meaning. The past participle “is secured” serves as an adjective, so it meets your own requirement in that regard. As a copyeditor, I would indeed use my common sense and not spend time worrying about hidden or subtle or unlikely meanings. It’s the sort of thing a grammarian—an argumentative one—might consider in depth, but luckily, I’m not one.

All the best,
Carol

You’ve Got the Power: For Good or Evil

 Photo courtesy Frédéric Bisson

Time and again, copyeditors ask me questions that leave me scratching my head. The question always amounts to something like this: “If I follow all the rules, nonsense and chaos will result. What should I do?”

What is it about American culture, or education, or religion, that prevents an otherwise normal, intelligent person from concluding without my help that in cases like this you should break one of the rules?

A researcher writing endnotes wonders about including the name of the state where a book was published in addition to the city. He wants everything to be consistent (rule 1), and his style guide says not to add the state if it’s obvious already (University of Virginia Press) (rule 2). But if he leaves out all state names for consistency, readers will assume that a book published in London, Ohio, was published in the UK. What to do?

An editor working on a bibliography encounters a source who signs all work with an initial instead of a full first name. The rest of the bibliography includes full names. The style manual says to use all full names. What should she do? Well, I want to say, what are our choices here? Make up a name? Delete that source? Change all 437 author names to initials only?

Why do they even have to ask?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because for many writers and editors, our work is all about the rules. It’s what we do: we take a chunk of writing and we grind it through the style-guide mill, and we never once stop to ask whether logic and reason and the reader are served. The first question is always “What’s the rule?” instead of “What is helpful?” or “What makes sense?” or—the unthinkable—“Can I break this rule?”

We have the power to break the rule.

Of course it’s fine for “What’s the rule?” to be the first question—as long as it’s not the only question. After all, an understanding of the rules is our best tool for getting writers out of tight spots. And note that I said an “understanding” of the rules, which is not the same as an ability to cite them. Understanding the thinking behind a style choice gives you the power both to discard it when better thinking should prevail and to argue for it more convincingly when the reasoning applies.

I recently spoke to a classroom of new copyeditors, and I took this “knowledge is power” idea one step further. Copyeditors have a choice as to what kind of power they wield. They can wave about the rule book and try to assume the power of saying “No, you can’t” to writers, or they can acquire the power of knowing when to break a rule in order to help writers achieve great writing.

My regular readers know that I like to call that second choice “subversive,” but they also know that it truly isn’t. Choose the second kind of power: it’s a better way of life.

 

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:

1. At the time he “exhibited the plans of the mortuary” he vowed he would not “build it unless you would agree that the fee be paid up front.”

2. The cost of the food was to “be borne by the diners, who will presumably fatten both themselves and their wallets by means of the event.”

3. Stanton and his wife Marie were unhappily “maligned by marriage with some of Houston’s first families.”

4. They lived in “one of the oldest of Hyde Park’s apartment houses and one as nearly aristocratic as a Chicago South Side apartment house can be. . . . When Belle married she had protested an apartment. . . .  No privacy. Everything huddled together on one floor and everybody underfoot.”

Sometimes when I can’t articulate a problem, I rewrite the passage first and then try to discover what I did and why. Here are my edited versions (tracking is hidden):

1. When he presented his plans for the mortuary he told the client he would not start building without payment in advance.

2. The cost of the food would be paid “by the diners, who will presumably fatten both themselves and their wallets by means of the event.”

3. Vasquez writes that Stanton and his wife Marie were unhappy, “maligned by marriage” with some of the most prominent families of Houston.

4. They lived in one of the oldest apartment buildings in Hyde Park, which, according to Furber, was “as nearly aristocratic as a Chicago South Side apartment house can be.” The newlywed Belle had not wanted an apartment, fearing a lack of privacy, with “everything huddled together on one floor and everybody underfoot.”

Looking over my changes, I’m able to see exactly what bothered me in the originals, and from there I can formulate some concrete advice for avoiding problems:

—Don’t introduce a quotation in such a way as to land in the middle of a verb (“[would not] build it unless you can agree,” “[was to] be borne by the diners”) or in a way that awkwardly breaks up a modifying phrase (“[unhappily] maligned by marriage”).

—Passages that aren’t striking or unique or charged in any way (“one of the oldest of Hyde Park’s apartment houses”) are better used without quotation marks. Reword a bit. The original writer doesn’t have a copyright on pedestrian prose.*

—Isolate the part of the quotation that’s special, and then don’t do anything to wreck it. “Maligned by marriage” instead of “aligned by marriage” is fun, but in the original quote, it’s blunted by the word “long” tacked in front of it and the lackluster words that follow.

—A quotation that is clever or opinionated or shows personality that’s obviously not the writer’s requires attribution right there in the sentence: Vasquez writes; according to Furber. Relegating the source to an endnote isn’t enough.

Can you add to my list?

______

*But remember: extended paraphrasing is against the rules. Taking someone else’s sentences and swapping out every other word for a synonym is just another form of plagiarizing.

More on quoting:

“Quoting Well, Part 1: “It’s More Than Just Accuracy”

“Quoting Well, Part 2: “When It’s OK, and Not OK, to Meddle”

“Quoting Well, Part 3: “Dot Dot Dot” [on ellipsis]

 

 

Many times recently I’ve been distracted by the awkward way in which a writer integrated quotations into the text. But when I try to articulate the problem in order to write about it here, I’m stymied. Allow me to think out loud: what exactly is wrong with the following passages—or is it just me?

 

At the time he “exhibited the plans of the mortuary” he vowed he would not “build it unless you would agree that the fee be paid up front.”

 

The cost of the food was to “be borne by the diners, who will presumably fatten both themselves and their wallets by means of the event.”

 

Stanton and his wife Marie were long “maligned by marriage with some of Houston’s first families.”

 

They lived in “one of the oldest of Hyde Park’s apartment houses and one as nearly aristocratic as a Chicago South Side apartment house can be. . . . When Belle married she had protested an apartment. . . .  No privacy. Everything huddled together on one floor and everybody underfoot. People upstairs; people downstairs.”

 

Sometimes when I can’t articulate a problem, I first edit the passage to my satisfaction, and then I try to discover what I did and why. Here are my edited versions (tracking is hidden):

 

At the time he presented his plans for the mortuary he told the client he would not start building without payment in advance.

 

The cost of the food would be paid “by the diners, who will presumably fatten both themselves and their wallets by means of the event.”

 

Vasquez writes that Stanton and his wife Marie were long “maligned by marriage” with some of the most prominent families of Houston.

 

They lived in one of the oldest apartment buildings in Hyde Park, which, according to Furber, was “nearly aristocratic as a Chicago South Side apartment house can be.” The newlywed Belle had not wanted an apartment, fearing a lack of privacy: “Everything huddled together on one floor and everybody underfoot. People upstairs; people downstairs.”

 

Looking over my changes, I’m able to identify what bothered me. My conclusions:

 

—Passages that aren’t striking or unique or charged in any way (“one of the oldest of Hyde Park’s apartment houses”) are better paraphrased—or even borrowed wholesale—without quotation marks. The original writer doesn’t have a copyright on pedestrian prose.

 

—Don’t start a quotation in the middle of a verb (“[would not] build it unless you can agree,” “[was to] be borne by the diners”) or other modifying phrase (“[long] maligned by marriage”).

 

—Isolate the part of the quotation that’s special, and then don’t do anything to wreck it. “Maligned by marriage” is a great phrase, but in the original quote, it’s blunted by the word “long” tacked tin front of it and the lackluster words that follow.

 

—The sources of all the quotations above were named in endnotes, but that isn’t adequate when a quotation is clever or opinionated or shows personality obviously not the writer’s. Those quotes require attribution right there in the sentence.

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. Don’t get me wrong—Russell is the most humble smart person I know. He never intends to make me feel bad, and he never does. It’s one of his many gifts, knowing how to make a person feel just fine about not knowing as much as she could.

Russell is familiar to readers of this blog as my go-to tech guy. I’m always, always, tempted to run a tech post by him ahead of time, but I don’t always, because the thing about having a tech-savvy friend who has a different, actual job—and a family, and a life—is that you have to save him for when you’re desperate so as not to become a nuisance. I save Russell for questions that I know he won’t be able to resist (I hope he’s not reading this), either because I know he will really want me to know the answer or because (and this is rare) he doesn’t know the answer himself. Yet.

So back to the macros. Russell thought I did fine in explaining how to use Microsoft Word’s macro-recording feature, but he wanted to point out that the example I used—that of making a shortcut key for an en dash—could actually have been accomplished in a much faster way without the use of a macro.

My goal of making a shortcut key for an en dash came about because my new laptop lacks a numeric keypad, so the usual Control-hyphen for typing an en dash isn’t an option. Assigning the keyboard command Control-hyphen to a macro that grabbed an en dash from the Symbols menu was a good solution.

What Russell pointed out, however, is that Word has a quicker, easier way to assign keyboard commands to special symbols, including the en dash. And since many of you probably use these common symbols regularly, I feel I must share. Here’s how:

• In a Word document click on the Insert menu.
• Choose Symbol > More symbols.
• Click on the Special Characters tab.
• Click on En Dash
• Click on Shortcut Key . . .
• In the new box, put your cursor under Press New Shortcut Key and hit Control-hyphen.
• Assign and Close.

As you can see from the graphic, shortcut keys are already available for a number of symbols. You can also see that the default shortcut for an en dash requires the numeric keyboard; however, by using the Shortcut Key button, you are free to assign whatever key combination you prefer. (This is also handy for restoring your long-used shortcuts when a default combination changes in a new version of Word.)

If you already knew this but, unlike Russell, haven’t written to point it out, it might be because you assumed that it was beside the point, and that I chose the en dash because it was ideal for making a basic macro, not because I didn’t know about this easier way. Unfortunately, you would have been wrong.

I hope you used my macro lesson to record a simple shortcut for a time-consuming mechanical task you do often. I also hope that you will always, like Russell, feel free to comment or email me about anything useful. It’s how I learn things.

 

 (More tech tips here)