Writer, Editor, Helper

When Friends Find Grammar “Errors” in Your Novel

Creative writers sometimes mangle grammar on purpose or get creative with punctuation. At the drafting stage, we keep a dictionary and style manual at hand. When slips are unintended, we count on our copyeditors to catch them.

But at some point, most of us get advice on punctuation or grammar from a friend, relative, or strangers on social media. Sometimes friends or beta readers read our draft and point out what they believe to be errors.

The problem is, they’re often wrong.

When to Delete “That”

A piece of bossy advice often given to creative writers is to sweep through your manuscripts before you submit them and delete certain words. “Just,” “so,” “very,” and “really” vie for the top target, but the most popular prohibition of all might be of the word “that.”

What’s wrong with “that”?

Nothing is wrong with the word “that.” It’s frequently essential to the grammar or clarity of a sentence (see below). Yet we’re often told [that] it’s “unneeded.” I sense the ghosts of Strunk and White here. “Omit needless words,” they tell us, declaring (for instance) that the sentence “His story is strange” is “more vigorous” than “His story is a strange one” and therefore better.

But is vigorous always better? Do readers demand vigor at all times, from every sentence? Creative writers especially must ask, Is this character or narration meant to be vigorous?

“Whoever/​Whomever” in Fiction: Which Should Your Character Use?

Recently, a question that went something like this appeared in a Facebook group for writers seeking help from book editors:

Help with this sentence please! “Some advice, for whoever/whomever is interested.” A friend said it should be “whoever” and my editor said “whomever.” How do you vote?

In the rollicking spirit of Facebook, grammar is routinely decided by ballot. The votes were all over the place. Some were based on the “feeling” of the voter. Some repeated what others had already said. There was at least one claim that the choice depends on whether you’re American or British or Australian. (It doesn’t.) And there was the requisite insult, causing an admin to throw down a caution.

Mainly, there was confusion. Not even the professional copyeditors knew for sure, although it didn’t stop them from holding forth. Two or three cited a source, evidently unaware of social-media etiquette.

Very Long Sentences in Fiction

Recently, I was listening to the audiobook of James McBride’s Deacon King Kong, and at some point it struck me that we’d been in the middle of a sentence for quite a while. But it wasn’t just long—it was lyrical and purposeful. Pretty early on in the sentence, I began to realize it wasn’t primarily about an annual infestation of ants.

Gender-Neutral Pronouns in Creative Writing

People sometimes worry about honoring the personal pronouns of those who don’t identify with the gender binary. They’re concerned that using (for instance) “they/them” in place of “he/him” or “she/her” will be complicated or confusing. Some aren’t sure about the grammar (“They are” or “They is”?).

Overcoming entrenched speech habits to use the right pronoun consistently takes practice. But in writing, it’s easier. Plenty of creative writers use “they/them” pronouns (among others) for nonbinary characters.

The Chicago Way

How Grammar “Goofs” Work in Creative Writing

I’ve written before to caution copyeditors against scrubbing voice and character out of fiction manuscripts by adhering too closely to a style manual.

Each novel or story is unique, of course. Some feature dialect and colloquialisms, and others pretty much stick to formal English as laid out in The Chicago Manual of Style. Many, many novels and stories mix it up, using formal English for the narrative while their characters speak in a more casual idiom. Keeping all those voices straight is one of the primary tasks of a writer; monitoring and protecting those distinctions is a primary task of an editor.

To make good writing and editing choices, it’s helpful to know what’s considered standard or formal in the first place, not in order to apply that knowledge indiscriminately, but to use it to create or edit narration and dialogue that’s consistently natural, real, and believable. That’s where a good dictionary and style guide come in. They help us determine what’s “grammatical” so we can choose when to reject it for the best effect.

To see how these intentional grammar “goofs” work in creative writing, let’s look at a few issues commonly faced by writers.

Do You Overstep When Editing Fiction? Three Easy Cures

The other day, I ran across this line in a recent novel by a best-selling American writer (key words are disguised):

His disposition warmed faster than did the gradually dawning day.

I couldn’t help wondering: Did the writer write it that way? And the copyeditor thought it was fine? Or did the editor bully the writer into “correcting” the sentence by adding “did”?

Why would an editor insist on such awkwardness? No doubt from a doubly wrongheaded conviction that fiction isn’t exempt from formal English and that certain familiar wordings are somehow incorrect. But there’s nothing ungrammatical about “His disposition warmed faster than the gradually dawning day.”

I can think of three obvious ways overeager copyeditors get writers into trouble. Let’s take a look.

Sure, You Got A’s in English—But Do You Know Where Commas Go?

A few months ago in a conference session, a group of novelists digressed into good-natured complaints about being copyedited. One writer drew a lot of laughs saying, “I mean, I got A’s in English! I know where the freaking commas go!”* Others nodded in recognition and comradery.

I bit my tongue. I really wanted to say—as gently as possible—I’m sorry dear, but you freaking don’t.

“Hazel and I’s puppy”? When Fiction Meets Bad Grammar

 

 

“Hazel and I’s Puppy. The. Cutest. Ever.”

In editing formal prose, we fix nonstandard English without hesitation. But in editing creative works, we often need to throw out the stylebook so a narrator or character in a novel or play can abuse grammar to good effect. The guideline is “believability”: would a character naturally use such a phrase, or would they speak more formally?

Fiction+ for Creative Writers and Their Editors

Although I officially retired from my work at the Chicago Manual in December, I couldn’t say no to an opportunity to continue hanging around the CMOS Online Shop Talk blog when Russell Harper—the new editor—invited me to share a new corner of the blog with him called Fiction+. There we’ll focus on how to cope when Chicago style rules don’t quite seem to fit the creative context of a novel, story, poem, or play.

Russell kicked things off last week with a post on comma splices; today I interview Janet Burroway, author of the classic textbook Writing Fiction, a staple in creative writing classes that has just been issued in a new 10th edition.

If you’re interested in creative writing or editing, be sure to check out Fiction+. You can sign up for alerts if you want to be sure to catch new posts, and I’ll continue to give you a heads-up here.

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Photo: Woman Writing, by August Macke (1887–1914), courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

But Is It Wrong?

I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog:

One of the primal joys in life is to do good work. When the suit fits, the accounts balance, or the pie crust is flakey, someone takes pride in it.

In editing, it feels good to make corrections, tidy things up, and serve the reader. It feels good to put knowledge into practice. And—admit it—it feels good to spot an error! . . . Problems arise when

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Photo: Deliberate Mistake, courtesy of Neil Turner.

3 Rookie Goofs You Can Stop Making Right Now

I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog!

Some lessons are harder to learn than others. Unfortunately for new copyeditors, sometimes the only way to recognize bad habits is to get slammed a few times by writers pushing back or by supervisors writing stet all over the copy.

So let me save you some grief and humiliation! Here are three bad habits I identified the hard way as a young editor . . .

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Photo: Ooops!, courtesy of Sten Dueland.

Are You a Grammar Troll?

For years, it seems, it’s been impossible to find a language-related post or article online without a stickler making trouble in the comments section. Even on political, social, and retail sites, outraged commenters love to point out a misplaced apostrophe as a way to challenge the writer’s intelligence, education, or morality.

I’ve never believed that typos are that revealing. Anyone can be distracted or in a hurry. No one catches every single error. One study on human error rates concludes that “the best performance possible in well managed workplaces using normal quality management methods [has] failure rates of 5 to 10 in every hundred opportunities.”¹ (Read that again: “the best performance possible”!)

And are we not human? Why shouldn’t we err?

At the University of Chicago Press a whole staff of editors makes a living finding typos and grammar goofs in academic book and journal article manuscripts, and no one thinks those writers are ignorant or corrupt.

It’s simply wrong to assume that anyone who types your when they mean you’re doesn’t know the difference. And in any case, is it right to point it out in a rude, public manner?

I’ll confess to taking a little evil pleasure when a grammar shamer commits a typo, falling victim to Muphrey’s Law [sic]: “If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.”

What’s your take?

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1. David J. Smith, Reliability, Maintainability and Risk, 7th ed. (Elsevier, 2005), app. 6. DOI: 10.1016/B978-075066694-7/50031-4.

Photo: Esther Lee, Freemont Troll, Seattle

This post originally appeared at The Chicago Manual of Style Online Shop Talk blog on July 19, 2016, © University of Chicago.

 

Wannabe Editors: Can You Pass a Proofreading Test?

 

                                                                           Photo: Seth Sawyers

When my office hires at the entry level, there’s a proofreading and copyediting test. My preference has been to give the test in person, on paper. That levels the playing field by eliminating access to e-mail and online sources. It shows how a person will mark up copy on the job (a frequent chore for the new kid). It isolates proofing and editing skills from word-processing skills.

Results vary.

So in the interests of helping young editors in search of employment, I’d like to talk about the second-most common* fatal error that candidates make on the test: that is, their failure to understand the concept of proofreading. Every time we hire, I rewrite the test instructions in the hopes of making them flunk-proof, but there is inevitably at least one smart, promising candidate who in spite of alleged experience proofreading and copyediting still manages to miss the point of the exercise.

In the proofreading test, the candidate is given two versions of a document: The first is a typed page, double-spaced and covered with corrections handwritten by a copyeditor. This is typically called the manuscript. The second is a typeset page—it looks like a photocopy of a page of a published book. The second was typeset from the first, and if all has gone well, the hand-marked corrections will have been incorporated into the typeset (final) version.

The test instructions say to proofread the typeset version, not to mark on the manuscript, and to query anything that isn’t clear. Experienced proofreaders know to read the typeset version against the manuscript very closely, comparing the two, looking at every letter and space and punctuation mark to make sure that the two versions are identical and that no text has been added or deleted by accident. In the olden days, two people would share the task: one would read the original aloud, including punctuation and corrections, while the other followed along in the typeset version.

Naturally, the typeset version has errors in it—after all, it’s a test. The errors are of three main types: (1) the typesetters failed to make a requested correction, (2) the typesetters introduced a new error in a place where no correction was marked, and (3) the typesetters followed the editor’s marking accurately, but the editor’s marking was incorrect. The third type should be rare.

IMPORTANT: The idea is to correct the first two kinds of errors without querying, and query only the third kind.**

Here is a table demonstrating the idea behind proofreading. The first column shows what is on the original manuscript; the second column shows how the manuscript was typeset; the third column shows what the proofreader should do.

Simple enough? Evidently not quite, for job candidates go wrong in two ways. First, they fail to compare closely enough, so in passages where all seems well in the typeset version, they miss the second type of error.

Worse, they query all three types of errors, instead of only the third. This is profoundly unhelpful in real life. It virtually defeats the purpose of proofreading, which is to flag unresolved issues—and only unresolved issues. Flagging nearly everything the editor marked for correction is tantamount to asking “Did you really mean to correct this?” when it is obvious that she did. It makes extra work, since she will have to check in each case. She might as well have proofread the thing herself.

Perhaps the concept of proofreading is trickier for a generation brought up in the digital age of typesetting, but fortunately, once it is understood, proofreading is the easiest of all editing tasks. And fortunately for proofreaders seeking work, there are still plenty of ways typesetting can go wrong.

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*The most common error is sloppy handwriting. I feel hypocritical mentioning this, because I know I would never hire myself for a job that required neat writing. But even so, when I write something that I know must be read by colleagues, I take care over it. I make a habit of writing in pencil, and I often erase and rewrite. Bottom line: if a potential employer can’t read your test, and part of the job involves marking up copy for typesetters, you’re toast. So if you are going to be tested, and if you know your usual markings look like the paper in your gerbil’s cage after a week, take a couple of sharpened pencils and an eraser with you. If you forget, ask for them. (Yes, you’ll look like a loser in the moment, but it’s better than making a mess in ink. And depending on the competition, you might still have a chance.)

**In real life, proofreaders are not always charged with querying anomalies, and excessive querying that amounts to second-guessing the copyeditor is not the goal.

 

How Sticklers Give Copyediting a Bad Name

 

Public sticklers have annoyed me forever, and I’ve been meaning to write about that, but recently in a post titled “Editors, Would You Do Me This Tiny Favour?” Katy McDevitt at PublishEd Adelaide did a great job of it herself.

McDevitt gets to the meat of it in point 3: “It gives people the wrong idea about what editors do and what we think about”:

Let’s kick that greengrocer’s apostrophe myth to one side and focus on the huge, constructive contributions that editors make, whether that’s helping authors to achieve clear, polished English, restructuring awkward passages of text, or any of the dozens of other ways we fix, polish, hone, and otherwise make a book ready for its star turn.

Exactly. When copyeditors brag that they haven’t overlooked a typo since they were twelve, they reinforce the image of a superficial reader with her elementary-school list of rules chopping away at the weeds without noticing the forest or where the path is headed. They relegate our profession to the status of other stereotypes that ignore the challenging, creative, intellectual aspects of a job: the librarian who is there to shush, the accountant to count beans; the novelist to crank out what everyone would if they* only had the time.

We’ve all seen how a post that derides sticklers attracts a raft of commenters who insist that without attention to punctuation and grammar, communication and trust are compromised. I get it. We all get it. But can’t we take it for granted that scrupulous attention to grammar and punctuation is a part of copyediting, instead of elevating it to the definition of what we do?

Scolding about typos and pouncing on errant apostrophes are cheap grabs for low-hanging fruit. And much of it is misinformed and counterproductive. Public sticklers waste our time on outdated rules or rules that never existed in the first place. And they waste our time by drawing focus from the point of an article or post. How many times does a fussy commenter ignore the subject entirely in pointing out a typo? Other commenters then pile on to chastise or encourage, and all hope of intelligent conversation is lost. Is that the kind of reading you would want for your own book or article?

Finally, there’s a basic discourtesy in the “You missed a spot!” way of life. Confirmed sticklers could redeem themselves by pointing out typos kindly and discreetly. Even better, they could comment on the actual content and add their corrections as a postscript. Writers are trying to communicate something–and writers are not the best proofreaders and copyeditors of their own work. It would be helpful if all those cheerleaders for communication could focus a little more on the message and put the occasional grammar or punctuation gaffe into proportion.

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*Readers who wish to comment on this use of they are requested to support their comments with two current, authoritative sources.

 

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Going Up? Plan Ahead

                                     Photo: Alyson Hurt

A few months ago I encountered a bank of hotel elevators that made a big impression on me. This might be old hat to you,* but to me it was a wondrous invention: there were no buttons inside the elevators for choosing your floor.

Instead, you chose your floor from a panel outside the elevators. You pressed 14, and a display told you which elevator to wait for. Meanwhile someone else pressed 5 and was given a different elevator. If a conference session ended and twenty people rushed the elevators, they would each pick a floor and obediently sort themselves into little groups outside their assigned elevators.

Once inside, everyone was a little creeped out that there were no buttons for choosing a floor. “What if I picked the wrong floor?” someone asked. I had to admit I’d already done that. I’d had no choice but to get out on the wrong floor and ring for another elevator.

Over the next few days, everyone was talking about the elevators, and nearly everyone I talked to hated them. In spite of my initial detour, I loved them. If you have six elevators and thirty people going to fourteen floors, you can either let the crowd randomly and inefficiently choose the number of elevators, floors, and stops—or you can let a nifty computer algorithm minimize the number of stops each elevator makes by assigning the elevator based on floor choice. What’s not to love? Waits are short; trips are fast.

So . . . I know you can’t wait to see what cockamamie* metaphor for copyediting this inspires. It’s this: copyeditors can improve their efficiency by devising strategies before editing begins.

I’ve reviewed plenty of manuscripts where a copyeditor has gotten into deep trouble by conforming a document to house style when it doesn’t suit. A thoughtful review before barging in would have prompted doubts: is it really wise to change all book and article titles to headline casing? Will the section numbers you’re deleting be needed later?

To preview a document, look closely at any material that isn’t a straight text paragraph. Look especially at the styling of subheads, lists, bullets, tables, and captions. With regard to each element make a strategy:

—If no particular style dominates, plan on editing to house style.

—If an element is not written to house style but is clear and consistent, ask whether it can stay as is. If you have to get permission for this, your best argument (after the most obvious one of saving time) is that in changing it, you are likely to introduce errors and typos.

—If an element is in a foreign style and is sloppy and inconsistent, look over all the instances of that element and devise the most efficient remedy. Don’t assume it will be your house style.

There’s nothing more disheartening to a copyeditor than having to start over midway through a job in order to cut losses. There’s no quick button to press once you’ve committed to a bad choice. Better to make the right choices before you get on board.

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*I’m older than you, so I get to say things like that.

 

 

Random Advice for Copyeditor Newbies

If you’re new to copyediting, consider these snippets of advice. (Be sure to check with your supervisor if any of them contradict your usual instructions.)

• Don’t query a word or spelling or locution without looking it up. If a writer uses an unfamiliar word or spelling more than once, it’s very possibly intended. It’s easy to paste “eat one’s cake and have it, too” into a search engine and learn that the writer doesn’t have it backward.
• Don’t waste a writer’s time by continually asking for approval. (“Okay? If you don’t like this, I can put it back.”) Rather, indicate your flexibility in the cover letter. On the manuscript, use queries for giving or asking for information.
• Save grief later by e-mailing the author before you make editing decisions that are hard to undo. (“Re romantic/Romantic: do you have a system for capping? Should I meddle?”)
• Don’t track changes that will be invisible or confusing on a black-and-white printout, such as deletions of hyphens.* If the editing is difficult to read, the writer won’t easily see that the results read well.
• Be conservative in editing until you have more experience. You should be ready to explain every mark you put on the page.
• Remember the copyeditor’s creed: First, do no harm.

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*My workaround is to explain in the cover letter that I have edited common compounds silently in accordance with CMOS and Webster’s 11th Collegiate, and that otherwise I track the opening or closing of compounds respectively like this: right_wing or home-townhometown.

Photo by Jamey Boelhower from Pixabay

Meticulous, Compulsive . . . and Liberated?

Copyeditors have a reputation. We’re conscientious and task-oriented. We like our little routines. We like things tidy. That’s what’s good about us—it’s why we’re useful. We are valued for our tolerance for tedium and our willingness to plug away till the last crumb of typographical trash is off the floor and into the bin. It’s a cliché to say that we’re compulsive perfectionists; that we’re the quiet and unsung heroes of publishing.

Oh, come on.

Doesn’t it get up your nose even a little when a fellow copyeditor gets on a high horse about authorial ignorance? Or trumpets a typo in a published work with shock and indignation? Who’s she kidding? Let’s see everything she’s edited: I’ll bet you a million bucks you and I could find a few crumbs she missed.

Copyeditors have to rate among the most self-satisfied and superior folks I know, and it’s not hard to understand why. A body has to work up some kind of defense under the pressure of that reputation.

But let’s liberate ourselves from the stereotype. I’ll go first: I admit it. I mess up all the time. It’s how I know things.

Hey—that felt great.

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Image: Prettysleepy from Pixabay 

Bad Editing and the Word Processor

Two popular types of bad copyediting are (1) editing that didn’t need doing in the first place, and (2) needed editing that didn’t get done. Both types can be accomplished with or without the aid of a computer, but there are reasons why a copyeditor deploying a word processor is likely to end up committing both.

Put simply, the reason for type 1 is “Because she can,” and the reason for type 2 is “Because she can’t.”

Perfectionists are helpless to resist the tweaking and refining that comes at the peck of a few keys, even if it’s ultimately unhelpful to the publishing process, even if the original was good enough, even if errors are introduced in the meddling. It’s just so darned easy, and it takes only a few seconds. Well, maybe just a few more—oops—that wasn’t what I meant to happen, but that’s okay, because I can fix it . . . oops—wait, I’ve got it now! Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes: talking about editing that didn’t need doing.

More laid-back types are no better off if they haven’t mastered the word processor. Freelancers regularly send me work that isn’t properly cleaned and coded. Are they simply blind to all the little e-boogers? Or does it not occur to them that there’s an efficient way to fix them? Either way, we get the type 2 problem of editing that goes undone.

The solution doesn’t lie in editing on paper any more than the problem lies in the machine. If all the copyeditors in the world throw themselves in front of that train to Technology, it’s still going to roll on by.

Might as well get on.

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Photo: Jonathan Cardy, Bullet Train in York, licensed under CC BY-SA

English Teacher Bullies?

Recently John McIntyre blogged at the Baltimore Sun about “pedagogical malpractice,” inviting readers to submit stories of English teachers run amuck. I read them with mixed feelings of horror and glee. After all, English teachers, not unlike copyeditors, are an easy target. Their job is to teach the rules, and if they sometimes get carried away to the point of inventing a few, why are we surprised?

Sure, as experienced writers, we’ve learned that the rules of English are often just cardboard bullies that blow over in the wind of good prose. But how is a teacher supposed to impart an ease with bending and breaking rules before they’ve pounded the darned things in to begin with?

An elementary school teacher who wrote to the CMOS online Q&A shamed me into understanding this struggle. She had written for help with commas, asking, “Is it necessary to use a comma after words like next, then, after that, last, and finally when they are the beginning of a sentence? I am a lower-school teacher and need to clarify this.” I had replied, “Punctuation is not so simple that you can make a rule that a comma ‘always’ follows a given word or phrase. Commas depend on syntax as well as pacing, tone, and personal preference. . . . Please don’t teach your students punctuation until you understand this.”

Her response was both discouraged and scathing, taking me to task for my smart-assed unhelpfulness. Who, I understood, would teach her kids if she didn’t? Was I volunteering for the job?

From my seat in the ivory tower, it’s easy to forget that teachers have an entirely different slant on things. Rules are the floats young learners cling to while learning to swim. Mind, I won’t excuse a high-school or college teacher-bully who demands that paragraphs consist of exactly five sentences or who ban the use of the word “thing.” The best teachers will figure out how to model flexibility as opposed to laying down the law. But if reducing English grammar and writing to a teachable science results in some overstated rules now and then, maybe we can consider it a valid—and temporary—stage of learning.

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Image courtesy of FreeSVG