dragonfly editorial

Archive for 2006

Billionaire Novelist Seeking Editor (she just doesn’t know it)

Posted by: Samantha Enslen, president and senior editor, July 20th, 2006

Matthew Baldwin at Defective Yeti has apparently been reading my mind. He recently wrote about his dismay that J.K. Rowling’s fourth and fifth books in the Harry Potter series, The Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix, appeared to have received little to no editing. As Baldwin puts it, the two books:

were released at the height of [Rowling's] popularity, and it was clear that no one dared edit The Sacred Word of Potter; as the result, the books were long, rambling, unfocused, and boring.

I’d stop short of saying the books were boring; however, I found it painful to find bloated narrative diluting what had previously been clean, lively writing — a sure sign that Ms. Rowling had succumbed to the same famous-author-no-longer-needs-an-editor syndrome that had taken down Anne Rice.

I found myself wishing that when Ms. Rowling had turned in her manuscript, a tough but kindly gentleman editor had sat down with her and said (in a British accent, of course): “See here, J.K., this is a lovely first draft, but you’ve got to cut it by at least a third. Go back to the basics, darling! Ask yourself sentence by sentence, can this be tighter? Can this be cut? Can this go away completely?”

At least that’s what I wish had happened. What about you?

Posted in Clear writing, Publishing | no comments »

Mouse potato? In the dictionary?

Posted by: Samantha Enslen, president and senior editor, July 18th, 2006

Merriam-Webster has recently unveiled a set of new words that will be included in the 2006 update of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. Among them are technocreations such as mouse potato and ringtone; terms that originated in advertising, such as supersize; and already-dated slang terms such as drama queen.

Do I really need this junk in my dictionary? Isn’t it easy enough to absorb the meaning of these terms just by watching Cingular commercials and old episodes of Will & Grace?

Personally, I only use the dictionary to look up words like chaulmoogra, muntin, or weltanschauung. I can figure out unibrow for myself.

What do you think?

Posted in Resources for editors | no comments »

Has Chicago gotten better?

Posted by: Samantha Enslen, president and senior editor, June 15th, 2006

I recently took on a project that involved editing a museum exhibit in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style. As part of my work, I developed an extensive style sheet based on Chicago, complete with references to various sections of the manual (e.g., “Per Chicago 6.19, please use a serial comma”).

I’ve spent years lambasting Chicago and complaining about how difficult it is to find anything in its index — and largely focusing on projects that involved GPO, AP, or internal house styles. After returning to Chicago for the first time in a few years — and using the 15th edition for the first time — I found the index surprisingly easy to navigate, and I had no trouble locating the multiple points of guidance I needed in the manual itself. Moreover, I found the instructions in the manual to be sensible and straightforward.

So — is this 15th edition of Chicago indeed much better than the last? Or have I just become a more sophisticated editor — such that I’m no longer confused by the way Chicago organizes its information?

What do you think?

Posted in Editorial style, Publishing, Resources for editors | no comments »

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