The Elusive Break

I decided to take a break from manually renumbering close to 2,000 endnotes in the manuscript I'm editing. I went online to some article copy editing. This is part of the first article I selected:

"Step 7

"Calculate the body density of your subject, in grams per cubic centimeter, using the following formula for females: 1.096095 – (0.0006952 × sum of skinfolds) + (0.0000011 × sum of skinfolds squared) – (0.0000714 × age). Continuing with the example from above, assuming the subject is 25 years old, her body density is 1.096095 – (0.0006952 × 110) + (0.0000011 × 12100) – (0.0000714 × 25), or 1.031148 g per cc. Use a slightly different formula for male subjects: 1.112 – (0.00043499 × sum of skinfolds) + (0.00000055 × sum of skinfolds) – (0.00028826 × age)."

Can't win for losing.

Today's Fantasy

Dear Stupid, Lazy Sonofabitch Author:

In your nearly 700 notes (which you submitted as footnotes rather than endnotes per our submission guidelines), you failed to enclose within quotation marks a single report title.

There must be close to a hundred of them. In addition, you failed to italicize perhaps twenty or so book titles.

Also, you evidently couldn't make up your addled brain regarding the military vs. civilian treatment of how to structure a specific date.

Finally, your clearly schizoid approach to hyphenation and capitalization would seem to indicate an immediate need for treatment.

In closing, I can only say that all of the above, and so much more, perfectly represents the focus of your book: the fight against terrorism. For this editorial effort, I am the good guy and you are the terrorist.

Forever disrespectfully yours,

One bad turn deserves another.

When I edit a manuscript, I normally turn off Track Changes when I do HTML-coding and formatting, and clean up the author's junk that is not related to content. I do this as a favor of sorts to make the author's review easier.

Those days are over. The manuscript I'm working on never should have been accepted in its current form, which is filled with more violations of submission guidelines than almost any I've seen.

Track Changes has been on from the moment I started this project and will never be turned off.

I'm going to fill this author's (and any of his kind in the future) world with every single change I make. His right margins will runneth over with the evidence of how much I had to do to bring his work to publication.

My Own Private Guantánamo

When an author submits a manuscript to a publisher, he is supposed to adhere to the publisher's submission guidelines.

For example, one area of those guidelines pertains to chapter notes. My publisher requests that all chapter notes be compiled in a separate file (which is placed at the end of the book), and thus the number signals in the text would not link directly to their respective notes. (Linking means that, during the editing process, when you place your cursor over the number, the note text pops up. This enables the editor to see if the note matches the respective text and can only work if there are footnotes.)

The manuscript I'm working on has footnotes and, therefore, linked numbers in the text. I can only guess why the acquisition editor in this case accepted the manuscript as submitted, in blatant violation of the guidelines. Most likely, it is related to the intense pressure that traditional publishers (and acquisition editors) are under as they compete with the emerging digital publishing industry.

What I do know, however, is that the mechanics involved (and the time required) to transform more than 600 footnotes with linked numbers into a new file, and replace linked numbers in the text with unlinked numbers are sheer editorial hell. I will spare you the details.

Today will be devoted to completing that task. What comes to mind is how we used to blast rock music as part of PsyOps torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and military prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Uh oh, here comes the warden, and I think he's about to crank it up.

Multiple choice quiz

Which would you rather do?

___ Have a root canal done?

___ Go through a lengthy manuscript and replace hundreds of linked footnote numbers with unlinked superscript numbers?

Relativity

Ten days is an eternity when, for example, you're counting down to the start of a vacation or the delivery of a new car.

Ten days go by in a flash as you frantically deal with all that remains to complete the editing of a 400-page manuscript.

One look at what remains on your To Do list in relation to the calendar begs the question, "What have I been doing for the past three weeks?"

In the words of Colonel Kurtz, "The horror, the horror."

After close to two months, the worst project (a book on W's defense program) I've had for my nonfiction book editing job is complete.

Now the question is, What would be a fitting end for the hard copy?


I'm thinking of going to a local park that has BBQ grills, getting naked, and then dancing around the flames as they rise to appease the Goddess of Fire.

This cloud has no silver lining.

Editing of the Bush book (see entry below) continues apace toward the deadline a week from today. Nothing further needs to be said about the horrific task of moving and renumbering the nearly 600 notes. This is one of those tasks that befalls all of us from time to time—the necessary-evil aspect of an otherwise tolerable project.

It is the rare occasion when we can figure a way out of or around these kinds of responsibilities.

I did just that when I lived in DC. I got sick and tired of spending hours in line, at the city-run inspection stations, waiting to get my cars and motorcycles inspected every year. So I paid a guy $40 each year to do it for me. (VA is a relative joy: car inspection at most gas stations.)

I wonder if Mr. Inspection does book notes. I'd hire him in a NY minute!

HTML = Hell Toucheth My Life

I have about a week and half to finish editing a book on Bush II's defense program. It's been a tough project.

The manuscript is about 425 pages, by ten writers in addition to the book's editor. Most problematic for me is that, as is too often the case, the manuscript did not conform to submission requirements. For example, all graphics embedded in text need to be moved to separate file, and all footnotes need to converted to endnotes with the accompanying renumbering.

I thought I'd take an editing break today to do some HTML coding. But . . .

Prepping the MS
HTML time
Mind numbing horrific task
The editor's bane