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!

 

 

SOL March 18: Substitute Copy Editor

I freelance copy edit for the magazine I retired from as managing editor. Copy editing is the part of the job I really love, so when I decided to stop working full-time, we arranged for me to continue to the (for me) fun part of the job, at first on an occasional project basis, then for the past couple of years about eight hours a week. Occasionally, I agree to sub for the staff copy editor or the current managing editor, when they take days off or go on vacation.

            Last week I agreed to sub today for the other copy editor. I had my usual three hours of work, but there were news articles that needed reading, and they ended up occupying way more time than I expected.

            One story was written by the news editor, who really has no one who edits him, so I was essentially his editor as well as copy editor. This meant I had to pay attention to the overall purpose of the piece along with the details. Even though 75% of the piece consisted of quotes, there was still a lot of thinking involved. That’s what took so much time. I did have one good editorial suggestion, an anecdote near the end of the story that really needed to be near the top; it was funny and leavened the seriousness of most of the piece.

            Because I had to work so many more hours than I’d thought, I wasn’t able to go out for a walk or get in my stretches and exercise. Well, it was raining all day, so I wouldn’t have gone out anyway. Maybe I’ll think more carefully next time I’m asked to substitute.

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I’m participating in the 14th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 18 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!

 

 

SOL11: My Free-lance Working Day

            Twice a week, Monday being one of them, I do free-lance copy editing for the magazine I last worked for full-time. The day goes like this:

            Get up, shower, dress, breakfast.

            Do stretches to avoid pain in my leg from spinal stenosis.

            Between 10:30 and 11:30, I vpn to the server at the magazine where I find my work.

Today there are 10 files, and eight are already ready for me. Because there are so many, I download them to my laptop and close out of the server. It’s quicker to work offline.

            The files I’m reading are collections of short book reviews in a variety of genres. I read for sense, grammar, language use, punctuation, publication style (e.g., a book about kabbalah may capitalize Kabbalah in the book, but our dictionary lower-cases it, so the review must lower-case it). I don’t find any egregious errors (once, in a review of a book about impeachment, the reviewer wrote that Lyndon Johnson was impeached, meaning of course Andrew Johnson; I caught that) today, but it still takes me three hours to get through all 29 reviews.

            Once my work is done, I eat a salad with leftover salmon I’d sauteed last night.

            Then I realize I have time to see Green Book. A feel-good movie, mostly for white people. I want to learn more about Dr. Donald Shirley, and there just happens to be an article about him in the New York Times Arts section today.

            Back home, I eat a Trader Joe’s frozen vegetable biryani and do the laundry. Then I write this. 

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 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!

Blogging A-Z: E Is for Editing

            I’ve been a copy editor for decades. When Jack was laid off from his reporter’s job after Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post, one of his drinking buddies was a production editor at McGraw-Hill. She offered him copy editing work on textbooks, so I taught him how to be a copy editor.

            I taught him the way I learned, through the Chicago Manual of Style. Jack was an excellent writer and knew how to turn poor writing into good, but he needed guidance in explaining why he made grammar changes, and he needed to learn to pay attention to formatting (marking

heads, subheads, or sub-subheads, for example), as well as keeping track of proper names and their spellings, among many other details.

            He became good enough at this work that after a few years he was able to get a job on the copy desk at Business Week magazine. And he ended up working there much longer than he worked as a reporter. Not only that, we had frequent discussions verging on arguments on copy editing issues at the dinner table, which our school-age daughter found weird—but she was listening. As a grownup librarian today, she often e-mails me to ask whether a sentence she’s read in a book or a newspaper is grammatically correct.

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April’s writing challenge is to blog every day, with each post beginning with a letter of the alphabet from beginning to end. We skip Sundays, except for April 1, so as to have 26 days in the month.