The transition successfully brought nine desperate business entities under common management for the first time.
Writes Amy, “It took me a second to realize that the author meant disparate.”
Which brings us to one of the underlying reasons for why editors exist: to keep you and your company from accidentally sounding ridiculous.
Thank goodness for Amy’s sharp eye.
Posted in Land of Typos, Why editors exist | no comments »
Yes, this is an old story that hit the news about two years ago. I thought about it after Wednesday’s scheduled shuttle launch was postponed yet again.
Just your basic typo . . . printed in about 500-point type. The shuttle’s name is not “Endeavor,” but “Endeavour”; its British spelling reflects the fact that the ship is named after the HM Bark Endeavour, a 10-gun Royal Navy bark commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand in 1769-71
USA Today had the best headline for this story: “Houston, we have a typo.”
Posted in Land of Typos, Why editors exist | no comments »
In most cases, the first pass consists of slowly, carefully scrubbing the text to enhance readability and to ensure correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style.
The second pass is usually done at a “reader’s pace” rather than an “editor’s pace,” and it consists of catching any snafus, typos, or awkwardnesses that were missed — or introduced — during the first pass.
Copyeditors skip the second pass at their own peril. Recently, for example, I discovered all the following typos during my second pass through a document.
Had I not performed the copyeditor’s customary second pass and caught these typos, my client would have been justified in gently (or not-so-gently) declining to use my services in the future.
Posted in Editorial process, Land of Typos, Why editors exist | 1 comment »
“The report further suggests that the reliance on debt financing further exasperates the issue and that capital needs of the antiquated system are growing faster than revenues.”
I believe the author meant that debt financing would exacerbate (i.e., increase) the issue, not exasperate (i.e., frustrate) the issue.
I always get a little flutter in my stomach when I catch these kind of “gotchas” as I’m copyediting. They’re so easy to miss.
Posted in Land of Typos, Why editors exist | no comments »
Princeton University Press is recalling all copies of one of its spring titles after discovering more than 90 spelling and grammar errors in the 245-page work. The book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, by Peter Moskos, was published May 1 in an initial press run of 4,000 copies.
Believe it or not, the press is pulling all copies of the book, correcting and reprinting it, and redistributing it to stores. Any ideas on what that’s going to cost?
According the Peter Dougherty, the press’s director, the manuscript “had been given to an inexperienced copy editor who failed to do the job properly.” He claims to be “flabbergasted and embarrassed.”
Hmm.
For years, the world’s most prestigious publishers have been getting away with paying peanuts to their freelance copyeditors and proofreaders, with pay rates languishing in the teens or low twenties at best. Is it any surprise, then, that the “inexperienced copy editor” who took this job missed a host of errors? Most senior editors — who have the experience needed to do this type of work — just won’t work anymore for what the publishers are paying.
Furthermore, this *scandal* suggests another, equally serious gap in Princeton U’s editorial process.
Most manuscripts go through at least three passes before going to press — a developmental edit, a copyedit, and a proofread. It’s not unreasonable for a few errors to be missed during copyediting, especially on a complex or error-ridden manuscript. But those mistakes are customarily found and fixed during proofreading.
Is Princeton U also trying to save money buy cutting proofreading out of the process? If so, the results of the cost-cutting speak for themselves.
Posted in Editorial process, Proofreading, Why editors exist | Comments Off
Correspondent T.E.L. kindly writes to tell me that there’s a typo on my website. How can this be? A typo on the website of a copyeditor?
It was too true. In a blog post, I had mentioned that computer systems should be backed up “several times as day” — instead of “several times a day.”
It wasn’t the most egregious typo in the world, but it was a typo, nonetheless. And it serves as a reminder that even editors need editors — when they’re working as writers. Because even if you’re an editorial perfectionist, when you’re writing, it’s very hard to see mistakes in your own copy. You know what each word is supposed to be, and that’s what your eyes see: what the word should be, not necessarily what it is.
It is for this reason that I’ve also written of individuals using the Internet to “exchange extremely large flies.” The response from another great editor reading my copy? (1) That’s gross; and (2) I think you mean files.
Thanks, T.E.L, and E.F., for keeping me on my toes.
Posted in Why editors exist | no comments »
RepMan writes about the lastest absurd result of a public figure/head honcho neglecting to run copy past a proofreader or editor before releasing it to the masses.
It seems a company called TextTrust–which hawks “the Internet’s highest quality web site spell checker”–sent out a press release full of–you guessed it–typos. The misspelled words included independent, accommodation, and definitely, which were spelled independant, accomodation, and definately. Ouch.
TexTrust’s PR manager immediately accepted responsibility for the incident, but as RepMan writes, “the damage had [already] been done. TextTrust became something of a water cooler joke.” He goes on to articulate one of my main points as to why copyediting your work is essential to maintaining your company’s reputation: “If he/she can’t get the spelling correct in what was probably a critically important press release, can he/she be trusted with other assignments?”
Posted in Land of Typos, Spelling, Why editors exist | no comments »
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, Why editors exist | no comments »
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