Wednesday, March 31, 2010

A spammer who is particularly spelling challenged

These five consecutive subject lines represent an embarrassment of typographical riches that arrived this a.m. in my spam folder:

univesitby dipaloma
ubaanivesity diploma
univesitay diploma
univesitby bdiploma
univesiaty daiploma

Monday, March 29, 2010

What surely must be a very exciting job, posted on craigslist

Technical Writer Opening! (Falls Church, VA)

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Approaching Milestone

I wanted to see if I've hit 3,000 articles yet for my freelance online editing gig.

Since starting last May 13, I've edited 2,796 articles. Based on an average of 350 words per article (could be more), I've edited close to one million words.

Prolonged drudgery does not equal accomplishment (but it will pay my income tax bills).

This image allegedly contains one million words:

What's good enough for George Costanza might be good enough for me!

I think going to church might be a better way to spend Sunday morning than editing.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Lazy Author Syndrome

I'm working on a manuscript that has 948 endnotes (68 pages long).

There is not a single note that contains the full reference for a work, that is, first and last name of author, complete title of the work, location and name of publisher, date of publication―all of which are included in the bibliography―and page numbers.

So I have to laboriously go back and forth between the notes and bibliography files to copy and paste the missing information.

This is yet another example of a manuscript that the acquisition editor should have returned to the author, for him to complete the notes in order to provide an acceptable piece of work.

When I ran this information past my managing editor, he referred to this author as one who suffers from Lazy Author Syndrome. I told him that we should refer to these authors as Lassies.

Monday, March 15, 2010

It's raining in my neighborhood . . .

And (from an article I just edited) I have just discovered something that might help me out: "These interest rates can be considered absorbent."

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

New client?

I think the company for which I edit online articles has one.

Titles such as "Why Is Profit Important in a Business?" (not made up) must be for www.theresnosuchthingasadumbquestion.com.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

The Few. The Misunderstood. The Editors.

Here's an excerpt from an email I got from my brother. I didn't even acknowledge it when I answered his email.

"How is work? Any good books in the works? Maybe I can do some editing. I just read a Patterson book in 2 days. That is the fastest that I finished a novel. And I even found some errors in it."

I know how to drive. I think I'll enter the Indy 500.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Bud's Lexicon: An "R" Entry

retirement (n.): the condition of renewed exhaustion resulting from performing six months of full-time freelance editing after leaving full-time employment

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Editing lapse or senior moment?

I opened up an online article to edit today. It was about the goals and objectives of a school board (redundant title; awful title writers at the company).

Recently, I've been doing loads of articles about classroom bulletin boards. I started reading the article: academic standards, budget information, relationships with the community and funding agencies, etc.

So I'm asking myself what in the world does this have to do with a bulletin board?

Uh huh. It happens to the best of us.

Monday, March 1, 2010

The Undeserving

Every time I read a thank-you "to my [Acquisitions] editor" in the Acknowledgments section of a book I'm editing, I want to scream.

The acquisitions editors bring in the work (quantity); we copy editors bring it up to publishing standards (quality).

Publishers should have a policy, written into their contracts with authors, stating that in the layout stage of a manuscript they will insert a standard shout-out for the copy editor and proofreader.

Attitude

I edited an article entitled, "English Bulletin Boards for the Classroom." The writer completely disregarded the rules about how to compose the text descriptions and URLs for the "References" and "Resources" sections which provide links for readers who want additional information.

I sent the article back to the writer to address the aforementioned issues.

The writer resubmitted the article without fixing anything and included this comment: "I taught 7th and 8th grade English for 9 years."

My comment to the writer in my rejection of the article, based on not responding to my request nor following the style guidelines, was: "'I taught 7th and 8th grade English for 9 years' does not respond to my request that you review the guidelines regarding References and Resources. . . . Describing a Reference as 'More ideas' leaves something to be desired in terms of piquing the reader's interest, as does 'Even more ideas' for the Resource."

The shoe's on the other foot now, Teach.