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Editing! Where is it these days?
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Donitello
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Jan 15, 2009 07:33AM
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Terri wrote: "I think you are right about the FIRST draft. But I think it is the author's responsibility to run through it for spelling, grammar checks and so on before it goes to an editor. I think that like ..."Terri,
Unfortunately, the author can read through the galleys (the last edited draft of the book that she will see) and correct all the new sp/p/g mistakes that the copy editor or typist inserted, but... another professional proof reader is also reading those galleys at the same time as the author, and the author never sees what sp/p/g errors the professional copy editor may introduce, or which of the author's requested corrections will be ignored or overruled until the book is in print, by which time, it is too late.
:-)
Rowena
I meant BEFORE it was even submitted to the publisher. I dont think it should even be considered finished or ready submit until that has been done. Rowena wrote: "Terri wrote: "I think you are right about the FIRST draft. But I think it is the author's responsibility to run through it for spelling, grammar checks and so on before it goes to an editor. I th..."
I don't mind small mistakes. Amongst so many words there are bound to be some. No person is perfect, so how can any book be when it's created by one or more of those imperfect beings? I had a short article published a number of years back, and when it went off it was fine... when it appeared in the journal, some clever person had replaced 'if I were' with 'if I was.' That really niggled me, and it still does.
Terri,We are talking at cross purposes. You are talking about the way things should be before the author sends the manuscript to a publisher. I am talking about what happens after the book leaves the author's control.
Here's the order:
1. Author submits a perfectly spelled and punctuated manuscript to a publishing house. (That's your point, I think.)
2. Editor buys it and edits mostly for content, clarity, length, house style.
3. Author and editor agree that the manuscript is perfect.
4. A copy editor checks for spelling, punctuation and grammar, and "House Style" and the editor and author each check that.
Some problems may be introduced at this point, and caught, or not. (This is my point.)
5. A typist types up the original manuscript ready to be printed. "Galleys" are produced, which look like a photocopy of an open book.
6. The author checks the galleys, and points out any new sp/p/g errors that the typist may have introduced.
At this point, it is expensive to make changes.
7. After the author has signed off, another professional proof reader has final say on any sp/p/g issues. (My point).
I don't mean to say that typists always make mistakes, but they are probably rewarded for speed, and they probably do not read the book as they are copying it.
Best,
Rowena
Close. I was not saying it should be perfect before being submitted but I think they should edit it still before it goes. I think that would stop a lot of mistakes right there. The kind of mistakes I am talking about are the glaring kind. The small typos or punctuation errors that might slip through the cracks are not that distracting. But HUGE run ons, etc.. that should be done beore submission IMO. And the absolute worse thing is the vanity presses that don't even edit at all. If someone is going that route they REALLY have an obligation to have it done before submission.
Terri,I agree absolutely. I didn't realize that we were talking about vanity presses. Some e-publishers also do minimal editing, I've heard.
:-)
Seems to me, Terri is indicating the worst culprit(s) she has encountered for lack of edit but not confining the problem to vanity presses. I have to agree. St. Martin's Minatour is a culprit this past year. The problems with one particular author's last two suspense releases in 2008 are beyond a good edit...huge plot holes and unbelievable resolutions. Some people enjoyed it anyway but I'm more like Terri - I need a solid tale, well told.
I edited a volume of an autobiography of a top politician in the UK once. Once. It was enough. It was terrible working through it and trying to get the guy to see that no one effing cared that he drank a mug of tea in the middle of the night on Monday but that on Tuesday he slept well.... aggggggh
Hee hee, Petra X...there is a need to recount the innocuous with most new authors. Every moment in a tale must amount to something! 
I don't mind a few spelling or grammatical errors but story mistakes grate on me. I've been reading a series recently where one of the main characters gets shot in the first book. Every time it's been mentioned since, he got stabbed instead of shot. It bugs me every time they mention it and kind of pulls me out of the story.
I really can't stand a book that hasn't been edited properly. Ok, I take that back, it will bother me, but I can still enjoy the story. I just think about those errors every time I think of the book. One huge example that sits in the forefront of my mind is (unfortunately) Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series. Ugh. I felt like I needed White-Out and a correction pen while reading some of those books. I loved the books, but they were in dire need of editing.
Some examples (and I'm taking from my review(s) here):
-(Book 1) "Fang-bangers" became "fangbangers". (This isn't a huge issue, but the hyphen was used originally, and therefore should be afterwards.)
- (Books 1-5) Kevin Prior turned into Kevin Pryor, and then back to Prior, and then back again to Pryor. (Poor guy doesn't know WHO he is!)
- (Book 5) Jason's boss is Shirley (Catfish) "Hennessey" in Book 4, but in Book 5, all of a sudden he's Shirley (Catfish) "Hunter".
- (Book 7) Jason's boss is now Shirley (Catfish) "Hennessy". Last name is correct, but misspelled.
This type of thing KILLS me! I mean, this is her world. She created these people, and she can't even get their names right? Terrible.
Becky, your comment shows that it takes something big to catch my attention. I've read all of the books and didn't pick up on any of those lol.
Becky, just curious - was it a question of different editions for different countries? maybe Prior in US and Pryor in UK or something? Not defending, mind you, because that sort of thing drives me nuts.
PS: just finished a mystery that takes place in Italy - all the Italian names were misspelled, Ricardo instead of Riccardo, Tomasso instead of Tomaso, and many other things that irked as well. Makes me think that the orig. author is no longer writing them, as they used to be good, or maybe has gotten old and dotty, which is sad too.
PS: just finished a mystery that takes place in Italy - all the Italian names were misspelled, Ricardo instead of Riccardo, Tomasso instead of Tomaso, and many other things that irked as well. Makes me think that the orig. author is no longer writing them, as they used to be good, or maybe has gotten old and dotty, which is sad too.
No Hayes, it wasn't a different edition. I live in the US, and picked up the same paperbacks that everyone else is reading, I imagine. If it were due to translation issues, I wouldn't mind it so much, but I can't think of anything other than bad or lazy editing for these errors.
Having gone through the whole editing / publication process less than a year ago, I just wanted to second some of Rowena's comments. No matter how many well-meaning people pore over a manuscript, errors will be introduced at every stage (from writing to editing to typing). As the author, you read a text so many times that, after a certain point, you can no longer tell if it's written upside down or backwards. And the various editors, too, read it time and again so that they can sometimes no longer spot mistakes. Since publication, I've found a handful of typos in my book. And although I'm horrified by each and every one of them, I also try to remember that we are all only human.
Very true. In my job, I have to write tons of letters and emails, both to customers and other companies, and I've noticed that if I don't read a letter out loud, or walk away from it for a while and come back to proof-read again, it could have typos galore. I know that with something that I have written and read over several times, I definitely stop seeing what is actually there and start seeing what I "expect" to see. (I even do it with my GR posts!)
Fiona, if you ever publish your GR posts, I'd expect them to be edited, hahaha!
I've never found that many mistakes in my books. Every now and then I'll find a word that is missing, but it's one of those words that whether it's there or not your brain automatically sees it. I probably have a lot of books that have punctuation errors tho, I tend to use way too many!!!! (See!) What bothers me is that I work as a secretary for a local government office, and my boss can't spell or type to save his life. So I have to go back over everything he's done to fix it...and justify the margins so that it looks pretty! I guess technically that is my job tho. Damn...
I know right? I have been seeing a ridiculous amount of spelling and gramatical errors in all kinds of books. I know it is someones job to be the friggin' fact finder too so there is no excuse for such inaccuracies.
How about the decline of fact-checking in newspapers? The New York Times, so-called newspaper of record, has been publishing stories that are outright made up. I swear. The public editor had an article about it a couple of weeks ago. There have been corrections on other stories since then. I think they're fact-checking on Wikipedia.
LOL maybe they have a big dart board with random words and that's how the stories are born. Well whomever is fact checking on the internet alone is a straight out knucklehead.
Jean wrote: "How about the decline of fact-checking in newspapers? The New York Times, so-called newspaper of record, has been publishing stories that are outright made up. I swear. The public editor had an art..."If they fact checked on Wikipedia they'd probably be more accurate. A recent study showed that Wikipedia is only a couple of percent less accurate than the Britannica.
The problem is that they hardly fact check at all especially if there aren't any legal implications.
I can't recall the problems specifically, but I remember a bunch of editing issues in the Twilight series.
Okay...Here is my pet-peeve for today...How about Experienced, award winning, authors with expensive publishing giants behind them, and a team of editors that feel that they can just violate the human language because they are so big!!I'm re-reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. And the way he murders (which I can only assume is on purpose) the English language for effect makes it VERy hard to read. I read a sentence without punctuation and try to figure out what he is trying to say....then all the sentence fragments ... This all keeps me from the story...Stop it PLEASE!!
It seems like he works hard to make the sentences as complicated as possible. For instance:
"By dusk of the day following they were in the city."
Who says "dusk of the day following"??? Wouldn't most people write....
By dusk the following day, they were in the city.
Robin, I know what you mean about The Road. I actually enjoyed it, but there was one part towards the beginning that had me completely baffled. To this day I still don't know what the heck he was trying to say. Something about a monster in a cave. Maybe. (I don't have the book with me, or I'd look it up and quote it.)I haven't read any other books by McCarthy, so I can't compare. I only read this one because of the post-apocalyptic theme.
But I don't really mind those types of techniques when they fit the story, and I think that it did fit The Road. It felt bleak, and sparse, and bare... So it just reinforced the landscape that it was describing. If the language was all flowery and overly descriptive, it wouldn't have given me the same feeling, if that makes sense.
I just hate when authors and/or editors are lazy and let silly errors slip through into the final product.
Have you noticed how many spelling errors are on this thread?No offense meant but we all need a little editorial helP
Mary - Lol - but we are not submitting books to print. Typing on forums is notoriously done quickly and we don't even have a spell checker.Becky...I know what you were talking about - I had to read it 3 - 4 times and only finally figured it out on the second reading - I couldn't determine if there really was a monster, if it was in a dream the whole thing was very unclear.
Here is my least favorite sentence from the road....
"Of a sudden he seemed to wilt even futher." Is this even a sentence? First off he isn't "wilting" to begin with so how can he "wilt further"? Also isn't it "All of a sudden"?
And there are numerous long strings of words that don't make a complete sentence such as....
"Following a stone wall in the dark, wrapped in his blaket, kneeling in the ashes like a penitent."
This is not a sentence!! All he needed to do is change "following" to "He followed" and "kneeling to "and knelt". Then it would make some sense - How is mangling this sentence somehow justified by a "master author?"
Grr I have to stop now before my head explodes
Ah, so I wasn't the only one! I had no idea if that was real or a dream, something else that he thought was monster-like in the darkness, an allusion for something completely different, or maybe the entire situation... I don't know!
Mary wrote: "Have you noticed how many spelling errors are on this thread?No offense meant but we all need a little editorial helP"
Very good point, Mary! Computers allow us to type fast, spell check doesn't do "grammar", and most people do not proof read what they write ...
Robin wrote: "Okay...Here is my pet-peeve for today...How about Experienced, award winning, authors with expensive publishing giants behind them, and a team of editors that feel that they can just violate the hu..."Robin,
"The Road" is what I would describe as a "poetic novel". This frees McCarthy from having to write complete sentences when maybe he's going after an image rather than a thought. Maybe he thinks "day following" is more poetic than "the following day". I do.
The same could be said about "of a sudden" rather than the more mundane "all of a sudden."
I've read most of his books and find that he tries to capture in words what might be better captured in a picture. "Blood Meridian" is full of that kind of writing. Even the "Border Trilogy" has pages of words painting a picture or setting a mood that defy traditional rules of grammar.
Most of the time, I would find such writing disconcerting as in a lot of stream of consciousness stories but somehow with McCarthy, I love it.
I do realize that he is doing it "for effect" but I argue that it "gets in the way" of the story instead of adds to. There were many times when I had to read a sentence 2 - 3 times before I actually was able to dicpher what he was actually trying to say.
Here's another example of the lack of fact-checking. This one made me laugh out loud. It's from today's Times: "Correction. An Op-Ed article on Wednesay, about the Heimlich maneuver, incorrectly described the technique. The person administering the maneuver pushes under the choking victim's diaphragm, not above it. The article also misidenfitied the part of the body food travels through to the stomach. It is the esophagus, not the trachea."
Wow. That's scary. I bet 3rd graders could tell you the right way to do the Heimlich maneuver and adults get wrong!
I've encountered misspelled words and improper grammer before but the best were missing pages. I took the book back to B&N and the few copies they had left were also missing the same page. :o(
Paula wrote: "I've encountered misspelled words and improper grammer before but the best were missing pages. I took the book back to B&N and the few copies they had left were also missing the same page. :o("Wow - that is bad Paula never seen that before. Definietly a printing mistake rather than somethign torn out - wow how costly.
My publisher has one book that is not only boring--a cardinal sin for a suspense novel--but it looks as if she accidentally sent the original file to the printer rather than the edited one. Grammar mistakes on every page! As a bookseller I have a few copies, but after reading it I can't bring myself to try to sell them to anyone.
Marc wrote: "My publisher has one book that is not only boring--a cardinal sin for a suspense novel--but it looks as if she accidentally sent the original file to the printer rather than the edited one. Gramma..."EEP that is terrible - I hope your publisher never does that to one of your books. Man that would be a nightmare
To me there is a big difference here. Misspelled words can be corrected so simply with a good spellcheck that to me they are inexcusable. However, confusing east with west or rites with rights a spell checker won't find as all are correctly spelled, just incorrectly used. For that, the editor needs to catch it or the writer needs to not make the mistake in the first place. Personally, I can see if typing and working quickly rights and rites might come out wrong so the editor should catch that one. But confusing east with west to me is simply down the writer screwing up, big time.
That is one of my biggest pet peeves. Most of the time though I read it the right way and don't even realize there is a grammar mistake.
A really sweet person here on GR's caught a mistake in my husband's book - He used "slight of hand" and I didn't even know there was a "sleight of hand" which is the correct wording - so you learn something new everyday!-- Wife of GR author Michael J. Sullivan: The Crown Conspiracy (10/08) | Avempartha (04/09)
Robin wrote: "EEP that is terrible - I hope your publisher never does that to one of your books. Man that would be a nightmare"Fortunately my grammar isn't so poor as that. Most of the editing done on my books involves leading 'ands' and 'buts', and the removal of passive verbs.
Robin, I've read quite a few books that mention that term, and to my recollection, none of them use the "sleight" version. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it says:
"Sleight, meaning dexterity or deceptiveness, comes from the Old Norse slœgð. Sleight of hand is often mistakenly written as slight of hand. Slight descends from the Old Norse slettr, meaning plain, flat, even, smooth, level."
Definitely DO learn something new every day! Tell Michael not to worry about it though, I'd never have noticed! :)
Thanks Becky...I have a list of corrections for the second printing - I think in general both Michael, myself and the editors did a pretty good job but still in 100,000 words there are going to be mistakes - each one makes me cringe. I'm currently doing the final review on book 2 Avempartha and it is very nerve wracking as you know something will "slip through".
Just read an interesting article about fact-checking in the current issue of The New Yorker. Here's the link to the abstract. Seems you have to subscribe to get the whole thing on line.
So, did anyone see the story in the news today about the Kansas state writing exam using "omission" instead of "emission"? A student caught the error and the tests are having to be re-printed.
That's like the year my mother found the series of spelling errors - on my spelling list!She circled them in red ink and had me return it to the instructor.
Susanna wrote: "That's like the year my mother found the series of spelling errors - on my spelling list!She circled them in red ink and had me return it to the instructor."
Wow - now that is bad!!
Curiously enough, he didn't return to teach the next year at that school. I wonder why???
Susanna wrote: "That's like the year my mother found the series of spelling errors - on my spelling list!She circled them in red ink and had me return it to the instructor."
I teach EFL privately and see this a lot - spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, non-English sentence structure and literal translation of idioms.
None of my children's English teachers have been mother-tongue speakers and I can hear the nervous quake in the voices when they speak English near me!
But I have also corrected mistakes in Maths.
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