SOLSC 11: More Notes from the Copy Editor

My freelance work involves copy editing book reviews for a trade magazine, and the next day, cleaning up the digital files after the editors have dealt with my queries, and the queries of their boss. Most of the time, editors accept my changes or rephrase in response to questions. I feel particularly happy when an editor notes: “good catch.”

            Today I had one “good catch.” The reviewer of a science fiction story referred twice to “the Dream City”; I queried whether that was exactly how it was called in the book, or was it simply “Dream City.” Indeed, no “the” was needed, and the editor thanked me. In another science fiction review involving the revival of ancient humans, a character was called “Homo ergaster”; I queried the spelling since I’d never seen “ergaster” before. The editor deleted the weird word and replaced it with “erectus,” and Homo erectus is definitely the term for early hominids.

            I also untangled a couple of murky sentences, after which I queried: “this what’s meant?” It

seemed to be yes.

            Then there’s spell-check. A character in a romance novel was described as a “hotty.” I’d read right over that on my first pass, but when the spell-check stopped, I looked it up, and M-W says the correct spelling is “hottie.” (Who knew?) Spell-check stopped at “peppiness” but went right past “benzodiazepine” (in a memoir review); “benzodiazepine” is in Adobe’s dictionary? We're not a medical magazine.

            The managing editor thinks there are too many hyphens, so I’ve started a hyphen check. I sometimes think I spend half my time determining whether a term is one word, hyphenated, or two words: “lakefront”? one word; “bedrest”? two words; “dayslong”? needs a hyphen. Then there’s the accidental catch. Spell-check went right past “page-tuner” — “tuner” is a word, after all. But my hyphen-check stopped, and my brain noticed the missing “r” in “page-turner.”

            I love these questions and solving the word problems.  It’s not a job for everyone, but it’s certainly worked for me.

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I’m participating in the 15th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 11 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!