and another editorial rant...

[lagilman]

piqued. Not peaked, or peeked. piqued.

'k?

Comments

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's one of my pet peeves, too.

[dreamntreality.livejournal.com]

I work at Borders Books, I am always amazed at some of the mistakes my customers find in their books and then mention to me.

On a random note, do you do your own editing?

[lagilman]

On a random note, do you do your own editing?


For my own books? Lord, no! I self-edit as well as I can, but every book needs an impartial judge/advocate to be the voice of reality and occasionally necessary cruelty, as well as handling the in-house details. My editor for the Retrievers series is the ever-magnificent and deeply overworked Mary-Theresa Hussey.

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

Good Lord, yes! Especially aggravating when a copyeditor "corrects" it to "ee" or "ea".

It's one of those "make me wanna weep" moments.

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

That one makes me INSANE.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

I used to know a cute ditty about the pique of a couple who were peaking in Peking unaware of someone peeking, but now that it's Bejing what's the point?

[debg.livejournal.com]

Do I really want to know - yes, I do, so I can avoid the book.

What on earth are you editing?

[blazedglory.livejournal.com]

My hands do this slow-clench-into-fist thing when I read stuff like that, about copyeditors making changes of that nature. Makes me want to scream. I write queries instead. "Um, did the author really mean to use this word?" 'Cause the proofs are the last chance you get to fix things.

Actually, I also scream. It's just that no one else can hear me.

[lagilman]

actually, I'm writing copy on this one, and it's YA, so don't worry, odds are you won't pick it up by accident.

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

Well, I had the experience to end all experiences-- there's a fair bit of colloquial Spanish in my book and I discovered, when I received my author copies, (so after I'd signed off on the galley proofs) that the final proofreader had taken it upon him/herself to change about 75% of the idiomatic Spanish phrases to phrases that were more formal, i.e., in their mind, "correct" without asking me. Thing is, mine were already correct. There was no reason to change any of it and in fact, a couple of this proofreader's changes, altered the general meaning of what I was trying to get across and in one case, was actually wrong.

Yeah, I did that screaming, clench-into-a-fist thing too.

[blazedglory.livejournal.com]

Query. Query, query, query. Query. I've been known to write pages and pages of queries for authors and editors. As a typesetter, mind you, because I think the proofreader, um, goofed. (Being polite.) (I've also been known to just fix things, true, but adding closing quotes at the end of a piece of dialog seems sort of a no-brainer to me and the sort of thing a copyeditor might have done instead of rewriting the prologue.)

[going-not-gone.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, bigtime. That one drives me nuts.

The other one that elicits profanity from this corner is principal/principle. I swear I see those two words misused far more often than I see them used correctly.

[lagilman]

The other one that elicits profanity from this corner is principal/principle.

"The principal is your pal. If you are lucky, he has principles."

It worked in fifth grade, it works now.

[lagilman]

yeah, but you started at uch a low basepoint.... *grin*

[nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com]

Someone not knowing the difference between capital and capitol also makes me growl.

[(Anonymous)]

The late John Brunner told a story like that. He'd written an SF novel with a recurring phrase he knew a copyeditor would want to "correct". So on the final revision manuscript copy, he went through and carefully circled every usage and wrote "STET!" in the margin.

Sure enough, he got the galleys and all instances had been "corrected" by the copyeditor. One would think a copyeditor would know what STET! means, but apparently not...
______
Dennis

[vincam.livejournal.com]

I had a copyeditor who liked to correct my Spanish by looking words up in a dictionary. I grew up in California. Yes, I do know how to conjugate "habla," thankyouverymuch.

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

I grew up in California. Yes, I do know how to conjugate "habla," thankyouverymuch.

Heh-- well, seeing as I'm first gen Cuban-American and grew up in Miami, you can imagine I was wee bit offended at the "corrections."

[vincam.livejournal.com]

Oy. I bet you were. Oof.

Sometimes I find that New York copyeditors can be as regionally ignorant as anyone from the sticks. I get called on the carpet for southernisms all the time, even when the POV character is a Southerner (as many of mine are) and even when it's in quotes. It's not such a stretch to realize that they can also be ignorant of colloquialisms in other languages. I've learned to shrug it off as being the reason I'm the author and they're not.