On Proofing (And Not Over-Proofing)

By Cindy Sams

Not long ago — just last month, in fact — I sent a piece to a well-respected Southern lit mag with the line “drunk as fiddler’s bitches” in the story. After acceptance, the editor marked it, wondering if I meant “britches.”

Mortified, I panicked. How had I missed something so obvious? My face burned. Surely every editor in the country had now seen me with my writerly pants around my ankles.

Except this time, the word wasn’t wrong.

I’m a journalist by training with a ...