Sunday, December 28, 2008

Editors: Up close and personal for the first time

New York City, 1972, 810 Seventh Ave. between 52nd and 53rd, taking the elevator up to my office.

Two guys (whose conversation suggested they were editors) were discussing some esoteric aspect of the use of a particular word.

I thought to myself, "These are the people who make a living dealing with this sort of thing."

Little did I know.

Acquisitions vs. Editorial: An irresistible force meets an immovable object

Within a publishing company, Acquisitions brings the work in, and Editorial makes it worthy of publication. Many acquired works trigger the inherent conflict between the two operations that always lurks in the shadows.

Acquisitions is all about signing an author and locking up his work—on occasion regardless of whether his submitted manuscript adheres to the submission requirements or the terms of the contract. When the company accepts an inferior manuscript, it ends up paying a premium for the work, in terms of the extra—often substantial—Editorial costs.

I am currently working on such a manuscript. The author is a lawyer and has structured almost 700 endnotes according to The Uniform System of Citation (also known as “The Blue Book”), the style guide for legal writers. He did not, as agreed, write the notes according to The Chicago Manual of Style.

As a result, I have to, for example, make the following types of changes throughout: Blue Book: Alfred E. Newman, Snap, Crackle, and Pop, 32 U. Pa. L. Rev. 107 (1994); Chicago: Alfred E. Newman, “Snap, Crackle, and Pop,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1994) 32:107. That, to an order of magnitude.

The immovable object often gets dislodged.

Confession I

The U.S. Air Force has been plagued by a multitude of problems in recent years—a drop in morale, security lapses, and ethics violations at the Academy, to name a few. Some observers claim this is attributable to many in the Air Force no longer believing in “the mission,” or more precisely the absence of a clear-cut mission for the Air Force post Cold War.

“What does this have to with editing?” you might ask. In a word, ennui.

There is a rule, somewhere, on how to treat every single element of a piece of writing. The editor, of course, is expected to ride shotgun to ensure that those rules aren’t broken. But like our flyboys and flygals—and every editor will admit this—sometimes we just couldn’t care less, particularly with regard to items that seem trivial at best.

Here are ten of my (least) favorites:

  • % or percent in text and in tables/charts
  • Bold, italics, or underlining for emphasis
  • Insert comma (or not) following city/state within a sentence (The voters of Denver, Colorado, have spoken.)
  • Em dash (—) or en dash ( – ) surrounded by a space to set off text
  • Hyphen or en dash to bridge numbers (1967-1970 or 1967–1970)
  • One or two spaces between sentences
  • One or two spaces following a colon
  • Possessive or not (GM shareholders or GM’s shareholders)
  • Punctuation of bulleted lists
  • The serial comma (red, white, and blue vs. red, white and blue)

  • As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It certainly feels that way sometimes.

    Saturday, December 27, 2008

    Anchors, Firefighters, and Other Gender Neutrals

    Gender treatment in nonfiction is something writers have struggled with for decades now. On occasion, it has resulted in sentence construction that would do Rube Goldberg proud.

    As writers dance around this particular thorn, two of their many partners are “his or her” and arguably the worst four characters ever put on a page: s/he.

    Further, to avoid the wrath of those who would accuse authors of sexist writing, some writers include in their prefaces disclaimers such as, “All generic male references are intended to refer to females as well, and vice versa.”

    From 2002 to 2007, I worked for an education company that developed a solution to this problem. The company's product is a complete online curriculum (every subject, K–12) for home schooling. The workaround to the “Dick or Jane” problem was to simply alternate male and female forms from lesson to lesson. It worked for both the curriculum developers and the customers, not to mention the editors.

    I had not seen that style used again until this week, when I received a new book manuscript to edit. The author didn’t even bother with a disclaimer; he simply alternates the male and female from chapter to chapter.

    This approach perfectly illustrates the maxim that when considering all possible options, the simplest one usually is best.

    Sunday, December 21, 2008

    Winner: Worst Sentence of 2008

    Their regular season record of 90-72 was in decline from those of the previous three seasons, but their post-season run was the best of any of those teams—with Baltimore and the Dodgers falling like Poland during the Blitzkrieg.

    This one emerged as an early favorite and withstood the challenge of many strong contenders throughout the year. It's not that it's badly written. Rather, it takes the gold because it manages in just a handful of lines to demean, denigrate, and offend two Major League Baseball teams, two cities, one country, as well as everyone victimized by Hitler and Nazism—plus people who empathize with any of the preceding.

    The insensitivity and stupidity of the author, as reflected in this year's winner, goes beyond the pale. (This is the same author cited in "A non sequitur," Dec. 18, below.)

    For good measure, he threw in the following sentence, another viable candidate that deserves recognition: They were rarities in sports; excellent Jewish athletes.

    FYI: I edited the winner as follows: " . . . with Baltimore and the Dodgers falling easily." And I simply deleted the "Jewish athletes" sentence. I did not query the author about either of my edits.

    Code-Breaker

    “Perpetua Titling MT,” Bugman offered with absolute certainty.

    “Right again,” Spook #1 said to Spook #2 incredulously. “OK, Bugman, your run’s gotta end some time. Name this one, plus identify the one character that’s different.” He held up, with feigned confidence, page 78 of his morning briefing paper. “Desdemona and a single Haettenschweiler. Come on guys. Is that the best you can do?”

    Bugman was a man on the top of his game. Well actually, it was the spy guys’ game. Every time they met the printing company’s only driver with a security clearance to sign for the weekly country reports, they challenged him to identify a type font in two seconds.

    None of them could remember how this Friday diversion started. But, as Bugman proudly reminded them, “The streak is now officially 300 weeks. Or to put it another way, gents, Bugman 300, the CIA zero!”

    As Bugman prepared to leave the loading dock area, #2 yelled after him, “If you ever get tired of driving that van, gimme a call. The Crypto crowd could take a guy with your talents and turn you into a real asset. And you’d make a few more bucks!”

    That offer was made 10 years ago, and Bugman made the phone call that would change his life, and the agency, the very next day. Not even his Spooks could imagine the meteoric rise Bugman would achieve as he went on to become the star code-breaker and code-developer, push the encryption envelope beyond anyone’s imagination, and become a living legend at the Company.

    Through all these years, Bugman has stayed in touch with his still-favorite Spooks. “Trebuchet MS, you numbskulls. And the score now stands at Bugman 750, you so-called spies approaching one.”

    Saturday, December 20, 2008

    A Capital Idea

    As you know, the purpose of a competitive proposal submitted to the federal government is to win a contract or grant.

    The final decision by the federal department or agency in question usually rests upon the so-called differentiators, that is, those factors that make company A better qualified than company B, C, or D in the opinion of the proposal reviewers.

    Many proposal writers think that capitalizing certain key words will "differentiate" their company and therefore increase their chance of success.

    I once worked for a managing editor who said that good writing should stand on its own; that the words themselves "tell the story" and should not need to be "emphasized" by using bold or italics. For our purposes here, and putting aside names and proper nouns, over-capitalization is a form of emphasis and will not result in the federal government opening up its coffers.

    I edit proposals for the government services division of an IT company. So the tendency of many of our proposal writers is to uppercase any and all words that relate to (1) our company's technical and management expertise and (2) the language of the request for proposal. As a result, terms such as information technology, information assurance, quality management, subject matter expert, root cause analysis, compliance verification, and hundreds more, are routinely uppercased.

    If I had a nickel for every instance of unnecessary/improper capitalization that I've seen just in 2008, I could be a federal bailout program unto myself!

    Track Changes I

    “The author doesn’t even want a hyphen touched.” “She’s published many books with us and doesn’t like her writing changed at all.” “Don’t make changes. Query everything.”

    These and similar comments from acquisition editors often are included in the Manuscript Transmittal Form—the “marching orders” for the manuscript editor. They are not not to be taken literally; sprinkle the MTF with a grain of salt. Yes, editors must occasionally "switch gears" to accommodate (within reason) certain authors, while at the same time ensuring that the house editorial style is maintained, particularly in terms of formatting. Not all edits, however, are created equal. Take a look at this page:



    Despite what the MTF might say, authors do not need to see format changes splattered all the way down the right side of every page, as above. It’s time consuming and distracting, perhaps resulting in the author missing important items tracked (such as author queries), requested approval for what the author might consider a substantive change, or a suggested rewrite/change.

    In short, pages like the one above draw attention away from what's important and could give the author the impression that the editor has ignored the level of effort dictated by the MTF. They can, quite literally, have the author seeing red!

    Style up the wazoo

    Google maps is an example of “more is better.” Superimpose traffic and satellite images onto a regular map and you've really got something.

    The same cannot be said about the profusion of style manuals at the editor's disposal—disposal being the operative word for many editors.

    When an editor begins his first job, he might be expected to apply AP, GPO, AMA, or the Chicago style manual. Simple. Just learn one set of style rules and edit accordingly.

    Subsequent jobs, however, will have different house styles, based on another style manual or a hybrid style derived from a particular manual (or manuals) plus house/writer/editor preferences.

    Eventually, and with more and more experience, most editors want to simply cobble together their own approach to style, drawing on what they consider the best of what they've previously used, as well as their personal preferences.

    Attempting to keep track of the countless—and often nonsensical—differences among style manuals can reduce even seasoned editors to bumbling novices, trying to remember where at the moment they’re working.

    Friday, December 19, 2008

    Exxon: For he’s a jolly, good fellow.

    Notwithstanding the extensive discussion in legal writing and case law debating the question of corporations as “persons,” for purposes of virtually all writing a company, organization, agency, and so forth, is not “treated” as a person.

    Therefore, you would write, Exxon claims that its [not “their”] profits should not be subject to a windfall profits tax.

    This is one of my pet peeves, that is, it involves an edit that I will never fail to make.

    A trade secret: All editors have their lists of unforgivable transgressions, which are not technically wrong. Without naming names, I know an editor who always changes towards to toward. Imagine that!

    Thursday, December 18, 2008

    A non sequitur

    About halfway through a 200-page book I edited on the 1962 baseball season, the following came straight out of left field like a Roger Clemens fastball:

    I started worshiping The Holy Bible instead [of the Baseball Almanac], directing my admiration not for Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays or Don Drysdale, but for the Lord Jesus Christ.

    "Huh?" I thought. The author, in the midst of putting his baseball opus together, apparently had a religious or spiritual moment. Or perhaps those words represented some sort of confession. I let it pass without a query.

    Forgive him Father, for he has sinned.

    Excuse me, Ivan, but I think you've got it wrong.

    Editing the work of writers from other countries presents interesting challenges.

    Sure, there is the inherent minefield of language errors. But the areas that have prompted the most author queries from me relate to the different culture, politics, history, and even anti-American orientation of the writers.

    I recently edited a book by a Russian author and academic (working in the United States) on the closest presidential elections in U.S. history.

    I more than earned my pay on the book, just in terms of the number of queries I posed to the author. Here are just two, directed at the following passages:

    Conspiracy theories about the origins of September 11 and the Bush administration’s involvement in the terrorist acts are not plausible enough to consider them seriously here. What I wrote: "There are many who would disagree with your opinion. Please consider revision." What I felt like writing: "We here in the U.S. are not afraid to question the actions or authority of our political leaders."

    Historically, the United States has a weak party system. What I wrote: "I believe that many readers of American history might reach a different conclusion." What I felt like writing: "Maybe our political parties don't have the power of the Communist Party, but they've served us well."

    Editors have to exercise many forms of restraint, including the expression of judgments as well as personal politics and values.

    A complete absence of punctuation and capitalization

    I once worked as a copyeditor for a DC law firm that had a partnership arrangement with a London law practice. We would occasionally proof work from the across the Pond.

    Aside from the front and back matter, the body of the documents contained no punctuation or capitalization whatsoever. I don't know if the documents reflected British legal document style at the time, but I do know it was the easiest proofreading I've ever done.

    Even though at times the absence of punctuation made it tough to decipher syntax, the only thing we had to look for was typos. Just imagine the ease with which you could fly through text if P&C were not a consideration.

    every once in a while when im struggling with some fine point of editing such as whether to use em dashes or parentheses or the difference between that and which i think back fondly on my english editing experience those brits came up with a style i could easily live with finally id say that at least one little corner of london at one point in time represented the notion that the sun never sets on the british empire

    Wednesday, December 17, 2008

    Caution: Radar Ahead

    Emailing and text messaging, as you know, gets the word out quickly. Not so when editors hit the keyboard, especially when we get in touch with our peers. Before we hit send, we feel compelled to S—L—O—W . . . D—O—W—N.

    Have we spell-checked? Formatting OK? Grammar up to snuff? Syntax sparkling?

    God forbid any of our written communiques contain an error! How harshly we'll be judged.

    Everybody else speeds along carefree in their Ferraris, while we in our Yugos can only dream of approaching the speed limit.

    Tuesday, December 16, 2008

    "Editorial": A Mnemonic

    The best editors and editorial operations are characterized by the following:

  • Ego: Check it at the door—the writer gets top billing.

  • Diplomacy: Writers and editors—the twain must meet.

  • Implications: What is the context within which the writing exists?

  • Technical: Mastery of hardware, software, and editorial consistency is in place.

  • Ownership: Editing is "anonymous" and in the background.

  • Restraint: No over-editing; quality, not quantity, spells success.

  • Information: New content/information is quickly assimilated.

  • Adaptable: Shift gears regarding author preferences, priorities, contexts, and styles.

  • Lean: Economy and efficiency reign—maximum production with minimum effort.
  • Bulleted lists: Let's agree to disagree.

    In my twenty-five years of working as an editor, no style issue even comes close to being as contentious among editorial staff as how to treat bulleted lists. This is one of those areas where there is no right or wrong answer; it's just a matter of deciding how to do it, and then ensuring that it is done consistently.

    Solo editors don't have to grapple with this; each can unilaterally decide for himself. The problem arises when a group of editors—responsible for style consistency across an entire product line—tries to reach consensus on this question.

    The possibilities are as varied as the opinions of editors on this question: initial cap or not? closing punctuation or not for each item? closing punctuation only if a sentence? And so forth ad nauseum.

    I had a job where this issue was debated at every editorial staff meeting for a year! Honestly. At the risk of being sanctioned, or worse, I finally announced that I would no longer remain in meetings that rehashed this issue. Before I left, I proposed (again) the only viable solution that I had seen in my experience, one that all editors could remember and didn't involve exceptions to the rule or any decision making: every bulleted item starts with a capital letter and has no closing punctuation mark. And I repeated my plea to the editorial manager: Just make an executive decision on this and establish a rule. He never did, and I wouldn't be surprised if that discussion is on this week's meeting agenda.

    What gives life to endless discussions as the above (aside from poor management), are two off-putting traits of many editors: the belief that they are always right, and the love of discussing the esoterica of editing. But that's a story for another day.

    Le mot juste: Spell-checking has its limits.

    Many writers and inexperienced editors put too much faith in Word's spell-checking function. Yes, it can catch typos, but it doesn't replace reading every word carefully. Let's assume that President Lincoln's editor had relied exclusively on spell-checking when he edited the Gettysburg Address.

    Fore scour and heaven years ago hour fathers brought fourth, upon this continent, a gnu nation, conceived inn libertine and desiccated to the position that awl women are created equally.

    Now wee are engaged in a grate civility war, testing weather this nay shun, ore any nay shin sew conceived an sow dedicated, can long in doer. We are mete on a great bottle feel of that whore. We halve come to dead uh gait a pour shun of it, as a final wresting plaice four those who dyed hear, that the nation mite love. This we May, in all property dew. Butt inn a lager cents, we can knot dedicate, wee kin not consecrate, we cannot hail low, this ground. The braver men, living undead, who struggled herein, haven’t hallowed it, far above our pour powers too ad or subtract. The whirls will little note, nor long dismember what we say hear; while it cannot never forge watt they did here.

    It is rather for U.S. the live in, wee here bee dedication to the great tusk remaindering before us—that from this on her dead we takes in creased devolution to that cause for witch they hear grave the last foal measure of devotion—that we heard high lea resolve that these dead shall knot have dyed invade, that this nation shall halve a new berth of free dome, and that governmental of the pea pull, buy the people, fore the pee pull shill knot pear itch from the earth.

    Monday, December 15, 2008

    Keys to the Kingdom

    “Version control” refers to a system designed to control access to edited documents to ensure that only editors can make changes to them as they move toward finalization. This is usually done through limiting access rights to the online file management system. In other words, once files reach a certain point in the production process, version control ensures that writers can’t go back into a file and screw it up by introducing any of a variety of errors.

    An analogy would be to put former Wall Street executives in charge of the current federal financial bailout effort; you know, like the fox guarding the hen house. Such is the case in my office.

    Despite ongoing protestations from my co-workers and me, our manager will not enforce the much-needed version control by restricting access rights for anyone above her in the company hierarchy. This includes several VPs and senior VPs who also function as proposal writers. The result is that my editing is regularly nullified, and proposals go out the door with multiple errors that were introduced post-editing.

    The absence of effective version control is one reason why many editors retain copies of every file they work on. CYA!

    Sunday, December 14, 2008

    Get 'em while they're hot!

    The economy is tanking, and stock can be bought for bargain basement prices. In the swirl of economic news, however, I somehow have missed the fact that there’s a fire sale on hyphens.

    Or so it would seem, based on the last two books I’ve edited. The authors write as if they’re being paid by the hyphen (e.g., inter-national: yikes; the mid-west: oh c’mon).

    I have never seen a punctuation mark so abused.

    Gobbledygook

    To paraphrase William Wordsworth, editing is too much with me.

    I've been freelance editing a book for what seems like 24x7 for several weeks, as I face a Tuesday deadline for submission of the files to the publisher. At the same time, proposal editing on my regular job is intense, with three proposals shipping out before Xmas.

    It's no wonder, then, that editing has crept into my dream world. I woke up this morning recalling a short dream I had last night, the meaning of which is fairly obvious.

    I had wrapped up all but one file (of about twenty). It was a short one, just a couple of pages. Most of it was unintelligible. It was in English, but it was quite literally nonsense. Its meaning—heads, subheads, text—was not decipherable. I couldn't figure out how to do the HTML coding, and any attempt to edit the text was futile.

    Like I said at the top, too much editing.

    Saturday, December 13, 2008

    Lazy

    I'm editing a new book by one of America's top intellectuals.

    He has, among other things, founded a think tank; been a professor at Columbia, George Washington, and Harvard; served as a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a White House advisor; and published more than 20 books.

    The book deals with many of the current geopolitical and sociopolitical issues faced by the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. While some of the material is new and was written for the book, the author to a large extent drew on his past writings.

    As a result, the book is woefully out of date with regard to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the global financial crisis, and the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and election.

    In addition, the rampant inconsistencies in style, and the structure of endnotes and references, suggests that the book was cobbled together by perhaps a grad student.

    The author will not be pleased by the number of queries he will face when he receives the edited manuscript.

    But when an author recycles past work and tries to rest on his laurels, the editor stands between him and the reading public who expect a book that reflects the author's expertise.

    Edit of the Week

    Most proposals include a section entitled something like "Key Personnel" or "Resumes" that summarizes the qualifications of the people who will carry out the contract if it is awarded to the bidder.

    As you know, the present tense is used to describe one's current position; the past tense for previous experience.

    Thus, today I would lead a team; yesterday I led a team.

    This past week's proposal work saw countless examples of people who sort of went back to the future.

    Haiku: Critical

    Editors find fault
    Nonstop forty hours a week.
    It’s tough being right.

    Friday, December 12, 2008

    Acronyms: The Bane of My Existence

    The most time consuming (that is, by time spent on each page) aspect of proposal editing is ensuring that errors related to acronym usage are corrected. This involves spelling out terms on first usage, looking up those I don’t know, and flagging the rest for the writers. And IT proposals have loads of acronyms.

    A while back I summarized, in writing, guidelines for the writers on one particular proposal that explained how to deal with acronyms as they moved ahead with their writing. I gave the guidelines to the proposal coordinator and suggested that she distribute them to every person working on that proposal. Based on their work, either she didn’t provide the guidelines or the writers ignored them.

    I’m working on another proposal that is equally horrendous with regard to acronyms. I didn’t bother to ask her if she provided the guidelines to the current group of writers, but I did suggest to her that from now on, every writer on every proposal should receive my guidelines.

    It’s like talking to the wall, against which I feel like banging my head.

    Thursday, December 11, 2008

    The insecure desktop publishing specialist

    I edit proposals for an IT company. When I finish a document, it’s handed off to desktop publishing for final layout and formatting.

    One of the DTP specialists periodically points out to a supervisor something that I missed, without telling me. Rather than just make the correction (and do me the courtesy of letting me know), she feels compelled to promote herself at my expense. I find out about this through the informed supervisor.

    Editing is the most hapless, thankless profession. We are judged almost exclusively by our mistakes.