Saturday, March 28, 2009

Don’t go to sleep edit angry.

Editors, when they’re working, can be a very angry bunch. With apologies to Alexander Pope, if we had a motto it could be, “To err is human, to forgive is out of the question.”

Whether it’s ignoring style manuals and publishing guidelines, and demonstrating that they’ve forgotten or are rejecting what they learned in English and writing classes, many authors really get our knickers in a twist.

The book I’m currently editing is filled with so much crap (nonsensical writing, seriously incomplete references, free-for-all capitalization and punctuation, end note numbers in text not matching end notes, etc.), I’ve been pissed off almost the entire time I’ve been at this edit—more than a month now, part time.

And, my, how my anger has affected my work. As I close in on the Wednesday deadline (appropriately falling on April Fools’ Day), I find more and more things I’ve missed, from the introduction straight through to the conclusion.

As far as I can recall, when I started my editing career back in the eighties I didn’t experience this anger phenomenon. It began perhaps a couple of years ago.

My inner, angry editor is actually uncharacteristic—I’ve grown more tolerant, of everything, as I’ve matured. To what, then, do I attribute this powerful reaction to author errors that earlier didn’t even cause a ripple? One word: BURNOUT.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Mas o menos?

This is a continuation of "Editors should be seen . . .," 3/9, below.

The context here is the requirement that each employee develop, in conjunction with her manager, business-related and personal development goals for the year. The manager has the option to add goals for the employee.

E-mail to my manager:

The following goal (your addition) contradicts our discussions regarding my author queries.

You added: “The number of proposals that should have identified more items for author review/approval than what was provided during the proposal process, also based on third party post reviews of submitted proposals.”

You have told me that there has been feedback (undocumented) from individuals (not named by you) that I write too many author queries. Again, and as I’ve tried to explain to you, I believe that my level of queries is appropriate.

It seems to me that defining a goal related to author queries can’t be done unless we agree on this critical editing function.

My manager has not yet responded.

4/7 Update: Still no response.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Our Dirty Little Secret

Artists sign their paintings, many animals mark their territories, and people leave their marks in a variety of ways. So, too, do editors.

While we mostly work “anonymously”—that is, our name rarely appears on the work we edit—many editors leave behind a signature of sorts, to be shared with their brothers and sisters in arms in a sort of one-upmanship contest of creativity and stealth.

Here, from some of my partners in crime, are my ten favorites, along with a brief summary of the emotional basis of their mark.

P.I.: I insert an extra space between sentences in the middle of page 50. Breathing room.

O.O.: On page 69, I omit a serial comma as close to the middle of the page as possible. Page 96 is my backup page. Screw Harvard; I’m a Yalie.

L.A.: I use my current age to select the page on which I’ll replace an en dash with an em dash. I’ll subtract one page at a time, if necessary, to find a page on which to do this. I love M&Ms.

E.H.: I’ll insert an extra period in the tenth ellipsis. Who’s counting anyway.

Y.O.: If the work contains the names of congressional representatives, the district number of the ninth name is increased by one. They’re all tools anyway.

M.M.: The final occurrence of the possessive form of a name ending in s doesn’t get the final s after the apostrophe. What’s good enough for Jesus.

L.U.: In a scientific or technical work, I’ll change the treatment of data (singular vs. plural) at its last appearance in the final chapter. You say tomato, I say tomatoes.

J.Z.: The seventeenth quotation mark gets placed inside the closing punctuation. So sue me!

C.K.: In the bibliography, the first publisher with an ampersand in its name gets an “and” in its place. Ridiculous looking symbol.

B.R.: The third appearance of “III,” as in John Jones III, loses a generation, if you get my drift. Pompous asses!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

This kind of thing could end up in my dreamscape.

My author of the moment is a Vietnam vet and first-time author. I'm editing his 400+ page, heavily referenced book on Vietnam.

The structure of references (the sequence of their elements) isn't complicated; even most high school students have this knowledge. And after I read his bio (he has an advanced degree from an Ivy League school), I figured the end notes would be OK. We don't always get what we want, do we.

Here's an example: "I owe the reference to Dean’s compelling Shook Over Hell, 41."

Conspicuous by their absence: author's first name, complete book title, city and name of publisher, publication year.

And the right way: "I owe the reference to Eric T. Dean Jr.’s compelling Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 41."

While the writing itself isn't half bad, the end notes are my current cross to bear.

As the great philosopher Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, "Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it's always something."

Friday, March 20, 2009

Persona non grata III

Here's further proof that editing is, indeed, a thankless profession.

This is an excerpt from an internal, congratulatory, business-is-booming newsletter:

"Among key deals year-to-date, the XX Services Group has won:

"A $119 million extension with XX. We deliver a wide range of infrastructure support to XX's Information Technology Services office in the U.S. and internationally. We have been the incumbent contractor since 2003. Our thanks go to . . . GA, AC, EG, RR, and LM [for their work on the proposal]."

The combined effort of these five co-workers didn't approach mine. But again, I'm the invisible man, chopped liver as it were.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Phone home!

Tuesday is my FT job’s work-at-home day.

My manager told me yesterday that I’d have a “messy, cut and pasted” 10-page document to edit this morning.

I sent her two emails last night—one via Outlook, the other by gmail—requesting that she call me when the document was ready. This, so I don’t have to plant myself in front of the computer—waiting, waiting.

Not having received a phone call, I checked my email at 10:15. She had sent a message with the document attached at 9:30. I responded (at 10:15), “OK. Here goes.”

She called me at 11, telling me that I hadn’t attached the edited document to my 10:15 message, and inquired where it was.

The document turned out to be a particularly messy 15 pages, as expected, and yet she expected that I had it finished in 45 minutes.

Remember Cool Hand Luke? “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep me from my editing.

At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, I’ll just say that the author of the manuscript I’m currently working on appears to be a northern Norwegian blown my way on the wings of a Nor’easter.

He neither has an understanding of the correct use of nor, nor hesitates to throw in nors willy-nilly.

Apparently either his English teachers got it wrong or he missed the class on the use of nor. Somehow he arrived at the understanding that in choosing between or, or nor, the culprit in question here is always selected if it’s preceded by any negative construction.

Here are a couple of examples: (1) He also had no memory of Palmer nor of Andrews. (2) There is no river nor railroad trestle in the story.

I wouldn't be surprised if the author's kids are named "Nora" and "Norman."

I don't do windows weekends.

Proposal submission deadlines are written in stone. If a proposal doesn't arrive at the funding agency on time, it isn't even read.

As a proposal moves through the development and production process, it's quite common for interim milestone deadlines to be blown. That results in a compression of the remaining steps and their completion dates. If there is significant slippage in adherence to the original schedule, editing—which essentially is the final step prior to production—must be done quickly and at the eleventh hour.

Such is the case, again, in my office. Our staff has bitched, among ourselves, about the fact that on many proposal efforts no one that we support has any respect for our processes. Our manager appears to be powerless to resolve this ongoing problem.

So what is one to do in the face of ineffective management? Exercise the power that is available to each of us as individuals.

I sent this email to the appropriate proposal manager yesterday:

From your Proposal Description, it looks like editing will take place over the April 4-5 weekend.

I’m going out of town that weekend (Friday night through Sunday night). So you might need to line up a temp editor.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Disjointedness: An Email Exchange

Bud – Trying to refresh my memory from what was discussed during our Team Development session at the Marriot, weren’t you supposed to update the style guide? Reason I ask is because we have new writers for the EDF proposal and they have asked me today to provide them a copy for reference. Just let me know where it is saved and I will take care of printing it. Thanks.
------------------------
Gloria [one of the two proposal coordinators in the Proposal Center],

I finished my work on it several weeks ago and turned it over to Ellen at that time so she could review the DTP section.

Also, I made some changes to the acronym section; I'll finalize the acronym section when Sue reviews the list I made of acronyms that never need to be spelled out. You might remember that was one of my action items coming out of our team building session with Bryn. I did that list immediately after that session, but as of a couple of weeks ago Sue had not yet looked at it.

Not everyone with whom I work hangs out with both Merriam and Webster.

Here's part of an email from one of my coworkers: "I have to leave early tomorrow. Sorry for the incontinence."

If Seinfeld's "Elaine" were around, she'd ask him, "Do you need a square?"

Monday, March 9, 2009

Editors should be seen and not heard from.

I just had a conversation with my manager, during which I pushed for some specifics related to my recent performance review.

In that review meeting, she said that she had received feedback from unnamed individuals that suggested I “need to step it up.” I have no idea if, in fact, she was being truthful, or if that was her inept way of offering the perfunctory message about improvement.

Regardless, what I got out of her today was a concern—maybe she said “complaint”; can’t remember—that there are too many instances when I query a writer rather than simply making the edit, be it a fix, a rewrite, or whatever.

I provided her an overview of author queries, with specific examples of when a query would be appropriate—for example, author intent unclear, conflicting information, and so forth.

Assuming some writers have complained to her about being “burdened” with what they consider unnecessary querying, this reflects how some writers view editors.

Over the years I have heard, directly and second-hand, writer comments such as: “They’re essentially a pain in the ass.” “They screw around with my writing. I’m the subject matter expert, not them.” “They waste my time with their stupid questions.” “They find fault with everything I write.”

Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to do the right thing. But, damn, it’s difficult to suspend one’s personal and professional standards.

Friday, March 6, 2009

One question leads to another.

The author of the book I'm currently editing uses this misconstruction throughout the manuscript:

"So tell me, is that a package of blue pencils in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me," I asked?

Apparently, he's questioning whether or not he's asking the questions.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Marshal Will Kane

I just watched High Noon (1952).

The parallels between that film and my life at work are striking. For that matter, most of us who work for someone else all are lone gunslingers going up against a gang bent on doing us in.

Here’s a portion of High Noon’s plot summary found at IMDB:

Will decides he must go back and face Miller. However, when he seeks the help of the townspeople he has protected for so long, they turn their backs on him. It seems Kane may have to face Miller alone, as well as the rest of Miller's gang, who are waiting for him at the station.

And now my rewrite:

I decide that I must stay and face up to my abusive, incompetent manager. However, I know that when I seek the support of my cowardly coworkers that I have supported for more than a year, they will turn their backs on me. It seems I may have to face my manager alone, as well as the rest of the managers and supervisors, who always close ranks when one of their own comes under attack.