Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Danger, S-curves ahead

We had a temp editor in yesterday to help me out with proposal work.

At one point she asked me if the abbreviation for "headquarters" should be "HQs" because, as she put it, "headquarters" ends with an "s" and is therefore a plural.

I know, I know, it can be a plural, but in this case it was "Duh Inc.'s headquarters."

Today I checked to see if the review team's final hard-copy edits were made correctly by our desktop publishers. In the process I had a chance to see all the files that the temp worked on. Oy vay!

I've worked for the agency that sent this editor our way. At that time I met many of the temp editors they employed. They do virtually no screening and do not administer an editing test. They assemble their pool of editors simply by reviewing resumes.

It's because of this type of practice (i.e, send anyone who says they're an editor out on assignment) that many writers don't want an editor to go anywhere near their work. I can't believe that agency is still in business.