Q.Would you add a comma before the quotation marks in the following sentences?
Ellie finally admitted, “They look different from before.”
Kat set the painting on the windowsill, muttering “One more to go.”
It would be more accurate to say “I made it up” than “I exaggerated.”
Mimicking Hector’s level of sass to perfection, Bel said, “Try to keep up.”
Continue reading "Is a Comma Needed to Introduce Dialogue?" »
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In the writers’ groups where I hang out online, these queries are evergreen:
The replies and comments are typically so head-spinning in their range and variety that no one could blame writers for being confused. And who can blame a writer for resisting an expense they aren’t convinced is necessary?
Continue reading "Does Your Novel Need a Copyeditor before Submission?" »
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Exclamation points are controversial. Writers can’t be blamed if they’re confused!
Exclamation has always announced straightforward shouting, alarm, surprise, excitement, amazement, disbelief, exasperation, or even just helpless flustering. In the eighteenth century, readers could expect melodrama:
And those were some of her last words! O how my eyes overflow! Don’t wonder to see the paper so blotted! (Samuel Richardson, Pamela, 43)
Exclamation points still serve in all those ways. But somewhere in the last century, the shouty little mark fell out of fashion in literary prose. Editors today frown on excessive exclaiming even in mainstream fiction, outside of books for young children and comic books. Plenty of passages worthy of alarm make do with commas, periods, or nothing:
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A great many common abbreviations* behave perfectly well in any fiction or nonfiction context, including dialogue, when the general guidelines in CMOS are observed: Mr., Ms., CEO, p.m., PhD, UFO. Editors should have no quarrel with them, as long as they’re styled consistently. If it’s 11:00 a.m. in chapter 1, it shouldn’t be 2 PM in chapter 3. That’s what style sheets are for.
On the other hand, some of Chicago’s advice for wrangling abbreviations (see CMOS 10.3) can be safely ignored by fiction writers and editors. In a novel or short story,
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When we think about writing numbers, we tend to think of research papers, financial reports, sports columns, and other quantity-laden nonfiction settings. But novelists and playwrights and poets also puzzle over how to style numbers. Some happily leave such matters to their copyeditors, while others spend valuable writing time out of a compulsion to get it “right.” If you’re the latter type (or their copyeditor), read on for comfort and advice.
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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.
Continue reading "Sure, You Got A’s in English—But Do You Know Where Commas Go?" »
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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
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I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog:
As a reader of the email that comes to The Chicago Manual of Style, I regularly find myself explaining the purpose of the illustrations (figures and tables) to puzzled users. Two recent queries:
Q1. I was trying to determine if it was acceptable . . .
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons
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I’m blogging today at The Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk blog:
CMOS 17 is almost here—and at the University of Chicago Press, that’s a really big deal. Every seven to ten years the team here revs up for an overhaul of The Chicago Manual of Style, and two to three years after that, the new edition appears.
We don’t start from scratch. Russell David Harper, the principal reviser of 17th editions of the Manual, started making notes for the 17th the minute . . .
Photo: Columbia Space Shuttle, courtesy of NASA.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.)
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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
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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
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