A Couple of Words on Editing

[gnomi]

1. *No* editor is perfect. Everyone misses things. The human brain corrects for what one expects to see, which isn't always what one *does* see.

For example: Many people misread the following, even when they're asked to read it aloud

He sat on the
the table.

The general rule I was taught is that every editorial pass catches 50% of the remaining errors. It's an asymptotic relationship between the number of editorial passes and the number of remaining errors. So, yes. The more editorial passes that a manuscript goes through, the fewer errors remain. However, that also means that, regardless of how good an editor you are or how good an editor you have, no manuscript will result in a flawless final publication. This applies to both fiction and nonfiction.

2. Related to the above: When you receive the final copy of the published text, invariably you (whether you are the editor or the writer) will open to the page that has the most glaring error that was not caught.

3. A good number of editorial decisions on grammar come down to house style. There are a number of grammatical "rules" that are, simply, style choices. Use of the Oxford comma (I'm for), allowing conjunctions at the beginning of sentences (I'm wishy-washy, depending on context), and hyphenation of prefixes or suffixes (I'm usually against, unless it disambiguates or clarifies) (that said, I stand firm on the hyphen in "e-mail") are *all* style issues. Different houses do it differently, and we freelancers strive to remember which house does things which way (house style guides are your friend).

4. The editor and the writer are, in the best-case scenario, partners in any given project. If there are things we don't know about, we can't watch out for them, so we depend on the writer to clue us in. By the same token, we owe it to the writer to clarify and confirm if we're confused.

Comments

[eal.livejournal.com]

My diss director used to give the first research assistant to find an error in his latest published piece $10.

Healthy attitude to have, I think. :)

[jamietr.livejournal.com]

every editorial pass catches 50% of the remaining errors

Ah, a kind of Zeno's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes) of editing. I like it.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but that last editor must be awesome. :)

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Of course, the better job we do bringing you something decent to work with in the first place, the better the end result will be. There must be a law that says that, somewhere. Even the best editor can't transform crap into gold, though God knows they try.

(So sayeth the woman looking at a three inch pile of crap that is supposed to magically transform into a best seller)

[eal.livejournal.com]

This is true. You can't concentrate on the plot holes (or argument weaknesses) if you're distracted by the grammar/spelling/mechanics, etc.

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

Definitely. If you're focused on whether each sentence actually makes sense on its own, it's almost impossible to step back, look at paragraphs as whole units and see the flow of a paper or a story. I've told certain people (gently) that if they want me to focus on macro issues like plot, character, etc. in a critique, they need to run their stories through a basic computer spelling/grammar check, because I just can't see the big picture if I'm struggling to understand every individual word and sentence.

On a side note, some of the pieces we get require even more passes than usual because there's only so much red ink you can pour on a manuscript in one go and still keep it legible for the typesetter.

[eal.livejournal.com]

Or keep from completely crushing the author's spirit be that a student spirit or a professional writer spirit.

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

No, totally, I was talking about in-house edits.

When editing something that's going to go back to the author, I follow my mom's four basic rules:

1. Praise whatever's positive.

2. Never use red ink. It's demoralizing. (When edits are both in-house and back-to-author, I photocopy the manuscript so the author sees black ink, but corrections pop out easily to my tired eyes.)

3. Use the subjective -- "I think, I feel, it seems," etc. so the author is dealing with your opinion rather than some truth of the universe.

4. Minimize the number of corrections per pass, which means raising no more than three macro issues per pass, and addressing any consistent spelling or grammatical errors in a single note rather than correcting them every time they appear.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

Transforming crap into gold requires Midas, alchemy, or good marketing (for cases when gold = sales.)

You can sell crap. People do it all the time, it just requires finding the right buyers (see Marketing, above.)

One part of editing is about refining the product. We want our crap pure, don'cha know. You might not be able to remove the stink, but it's marketing's job to convince the buyer that stink is an essential feature! (ref. Microsoft)

Of course, editors play many parts, one of which often says, "That's some fine quality manure you've got for sale there, but we sell steel bridge supports."

[sydmcginley.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I learn something new every time I write or edit -- usually a revelation about some stunning piece of misinformation I've carried around in my head for decades. For example, last year, I learned that discrete and discreet are not the UK / US spellings of the same word as I had cheerfully thought. And I'd still used what I thought was the UK spelling in a US manuscript. Sigh. And yesterday, I discovered I've being saying diaspora wrong my whole life. Yow. The depths of my own ignorance stun me sometimes, but I do try remain open to 1. the possibility of improvement, and 2. the awareness that I don't know everything. So humble, moi.

[half-double.livejournal.com]

Please go work for Alyson Books, Nomi. They need you.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

#4's a big one for me. The way I see it is that the author and the editor are both after the same thing - the best possible version of the MS - so teamwork 's got to be better than a cat-fight for getting there. Of course, definitions of 'best' can be tricky ...

[ianrandalstrock.livejournal.com]

For your example in 1., it's remarkable how many people don't realize there are two possible corrections, and sometimes need to query. It can be corrected to either

He sat at the the table.

or

He sat on the the chair.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

What about "He danced on the the table, wearing the the lampshade as a a hat?"

I love lamp.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Pbthbthbthbth!

;-)

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

There's also the issue that if the same person is looking over the manuscript on each pass, at a certain point their eyes simply glaze over. Whereas, when you pick up a story or article as a consumer, you're reading it fresh for the first time, so any remaining errors pop right out at you.

[eal.livejournal.com]

Excellent point! Heck, I don't even like to think about the number of times that I think I've read to a certain point and then see an error on my way to that point. Sigh.

[madfilkentist]

There was one time I was in Germany and the program booklet for a con was about to go to print. I offered to proofread the English-language version but was told that the editor had done a very good job. There were still some errors left that got into print. The editor knows English very well but isn't a native speaker.

In their defense, I think the con committee was just too tired at that point to deal with another revision.