What Does an Editor Do?
I’m amazed at the number of first-time writers who think that they can call me up, send me their manuscript (MS), and let me go through it once — then send it off to McGraw-Hill, Penguin, or Scholastic and have the next Harry Potter on their hands.
It just doesn’t work that way. I’m a freelance, front-line editor and proofer. I get your MS into shape so that a full-time, publishing editor will actually put it in his pile of things to look at, rather than his slush pile or, worse, his garbage pile.
When you send me your MS, the first thing I’m going to do is reformat it. Generally, your MS should be in 12-point, monospaced typeface, such as Courier, double-spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides of the page. Yeah, okay, it’s not “pretty” that way, but the editors don’t care about pretty. They care about word-count and page-count. And they can estimate those two numbers a whole lot better if you give them a MS that’s in a standard font with a standard number of lines having a standard line-length.
Then I’m going to take out the old red pen — some editors use blue, but I prefer red. It stands out more and gets your attention. When you get your first-round draft back from me, it’s going to look like I bled on it. What your Freshman Comp teacher did to your first assignment in that class is nothing to what I’m going to do to your “baby.” So be prepared. First round is for focusing on spelling, grammar, diction (word choice), and consistency. If your hero was born in Tokyo on page 10, but says he was born in Osaka on page 96, I’m going to make a note in the margin. If your heroine has blue eyes on page 3, and you say that her “chocolate-coloured eyes slowly filled with tears” on page 27, I’m going to call you on it. If you invariably use “their” instead of “they’re” or “to” instead of “too,” I may note on the cover page that you need to do a universal search for the offending word and correct each instance yourself.
Once I’ve gone over the MS a couple or three times, I will return it to you for correction. If you don’t understand a correction, call or e-mail. A good, professional editor welcomes questions. She wants you to understand why she’s marked a change. At this stage, when you’re dealing strictly with mechanics, trust her. She’s gonna be right nine times out of ten. Indubitably. She doesn’t stay in business by giving you bad grammar advice. Happy customers come back and bring their friends — and she knows this.
After you’ve gone through and made corrections, you send the MS back to me and I proof it again. This time, I’m not looking so much for grammar and spelling, though I will probably catch a few of those. This time, I’m looking critically at the story itself. Does the plot make sense? Do the parts fit together well? This time, I’m looking at the story as a reader, and asking if this story is one that makes me want to keep reading. Have you changed viewpoints too much? Do you suddenly change styles? This time, when I mark notes in the margin, they will be more along the lines of suggestions, and you will want to discuss them at length with me before you accept or reject them.
After we’ve done that review of the second-round edit together and you’ve made the changes you accepted, I’ll go through it once more, just to make sure we haven’t missed anything really egregious. Then you are ready to start submitting to publishers.
This is a long process that requires patience and a thick skin. You are going to get rejections. Don’t get impatient and circumvent the process by self-publishing after a half-dozen rejections. Most of the self-published books in this world really aren’t worth the ink and paper they are printed on. There are a few exceptions, but the general rule is that if an author has to resort to self-publishing, he’s not really ready for the big-time yet. Publishers’ editors do know what will sell. They are keenly aware of the trends that readers are following, and of what is likely to succeed and what isn’t. And they do know talent — and lack of it — when they see it. A lot of new authors come on the scene every day, and many of them really need to spend some more time honing their craft, perfecting the art of writing, before they are ready for publication.
Be patient. Be prepared to take constructive — and even non-constructive — criticism, and learn from it how to better your writing skills. Your editor can help. But she can’t perform miracles. You’re not going to be published six weeks after you first give her your MS. But if you are prepared to work hard, be patient, and learn from doing, you might have a good start within a year or two.
You Can Have Your Dessert in a Desert
Don’t mix the spelling of these two. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth — or your reader’s.
Dessert is the noun we all know and love as the final course of a meal. Sweets to wrap up a culinary experience, or to make a bad day better. It always has two S’s in it. Especially when you are saying that someone is getting his “just desserts.”
Desert may be a noun (pronounced /DEH zurt/) meaning a wasteland (not necessarily a hot, dry one), or it may be a verb (pronounced /duh ZURT/) meaning to abandon, especially in time of need.
Keep them straight by remembering that everyone’s favourite French dessert is chocolate mousse, and both have two S’s in the middle. But the desert is full of sand, which has only one S.
I Can’t Accept Your Exception to the Rule
Like the words affect and effect, accept and except are often confused. Misusing them, however, is an egregious error that can give a very bad impression of your communication skills.
Accept is a verb that means “to take something that is offered.” You can accept the terms of a contract, accept a marriage proposal, accept a bad situation, or accept a gift.
Except is more versatile. It can be a verb, a conjunction, or a preposition. In any usage, it means “to leave out.”
- as a verb: Her singing voice excepted, Amy was as accomplished as any ornamental young lady of the Victorian era.
- as a conjunction: Mike hates the game of Chess, except when he wins.
- as a preposition: Every car in the fleet except John’s is painted green.
To sum up: Others will not accept mistakes made in the usage of these two words, except when you are known to be under the influence of intoxicating beverages.
E or I for That Kind Remark?
When someone says something nice about you, is it a compliment or a complement? These two words are pronounced so similarly that they are frequently misused. Let’s set the record straight.
A compliment is a kind remark about someone. Mike’s comments on Sally’s work were the nicest compliment she has ever received from him.
A complement is a completion or balance of something. My friend’s level-headedness complements me well — since I tend to be too visionary and ambitious in my planning, she can keep my expectations realistic.
This is one of those mistakes that no one will notice in your speech, but in your writing will glare like a halogen bulb in a cave. Be careful with it.
ETAOIN SHRDLU
Do you know what it is?
“Etaoin shrdlu” is a nonsensical phrase used to indicate nonsense or gibberish. It originated with the Linotype compositor, whose keyboard was set up with the letters in order of frequency of use in the language. The twelve most commonly used letters in the English language are (in order) e, t, a, o, i, n, s, h, r, d, l, u — hence, the “phrase.” (Most people don’t know that the “qwerty” keyboard was set up to make typists go more slowly, not to make them faster!)
Back in the day, you would occasionally see this phrase in a newspaper or magazine. Back then, there was no delete key. If a compositor mistyped a line, it could not be backspaced over for correction. It had to be recast — but the line had to be completed to a certain length before the machine would begin the next line. To get to the next line quickly, the compositor would frequently let his fingers type as they fell on the keys (much as a modern touch-typist might type asdfjkl). Usually, the mistyped slugs would be set aside to be melted down for re-use (see, even recycling isn’t new!), but, occasionally, a nonsense slug would be overlooked and would make it into print.
And, as is often the case even today, alert readers would enquire of the editor as to the meaning of the unusual phrase, thus memorializing the mistake in perpetuity. On the whole, I think I like our modern way better. The backspace key and the spellcheck command are my very good friends!
Who Died in That Kilt?
I have recently seen the proliferation of a really egregious error caused by a homophone in a common idiom.
The idiom in question is “dyed-in-the-wool,” which is never spelled “died-in-the-wool” unless someone has actually passed away while encased in sheeps’ fur.
In medieval England, you could dye unspun wool before making it into threads, or you could dye spun wool thread, or you could dye a finished fabric. Fabric made of wool that had been dyed unspun was called dyed-in-the-wool, and was considered the best-quality because the colour was less susceptible to fading.
So double-check your spelling when you use this particular idiom.
Get Your Hands off My Tutu!
Apparently there is some confusion about which form of the word pronounced /tu/ to use in a given situation.
To is a preposition meaning “toward” or “directed at.” As in: I went to the store. Give the book to John.
Too is an adverb meaning “excessive” or “also.” As in: That pepper was too hot for me to eat. I want to go to the movie, too.
Two is generally used as an adjective specifying number. As in: I have two tickets to the ballet. It can also be used as a noun.
Let’s not get these three forms of /tu/ confused.
And while we’re at it, let’s remember that a ballerina’s skirt is made of tulle and is called a tutu.
Be Discreet! or Discrete? Which Is It?
These two words are very frequently confused. I suppose that it’s due to the fact that their pronunciation is the same and that only two letters change position in the spelling.
Discreet is an adjective meaning “unobtrusive” or “in a confidential manner.” Example: Please be discreet when you tell everyone about the surprise party — we don’t want Mike to overhear.
Discrete is an adjective meaning “separate” or “individual.” Example: His “music” was a haphazard mix of jumbled noises interspersed with discrete but unrelated tones.
Be sure to check these words individually, as your spell-check will recognise either spelling as a legitimate word.
25 Easy Steps to Gooder Grammar
This came in my e-mail, but it was so wonderful I have to share it. It’s not often that you get a forwarded e-mail that is both amusing and educational.
- Don’t abbrev.
- Check to see if you any words out.
- Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.
- About sentence fragments.
- When dangling, don’t use participles.
- Don’t use no double negatives.
- Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
- Just between You and i, case is important.
- Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
- Don’t use commas, that aren’t necessary.
- Its important to use apostrophe’s right.
- It’s better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.
- Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.
- Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized.
- a sentence should begin with a capital and end with a period
- Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.
- In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.
- Watch out for irregular verbs which have creeped into our language.
- Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
- Avoid repetitive, unnecessary redundancy.
- A writer mustn’t shift your point of view.
- Don’t write a run-on sentence you’ve got to punctuate it.
- Make sure your points are (a)clear, (2)precise, and (D)in order.
- A preposition isn’t a good thing to end a sentence with.
- Avoid clichés like the plague.
Sheer and Shear May Confuse You!
A simple tip today: don’t get these two homophones confused.
Sheer is an adjective used to describe something that is nearly transparent (like sheer stockings) or that is smooth (like a sheer cliff). It is rarely used as a verb meaning “to move abruptly in a different direction,” as in The plane sheered away from the cliff and just avoided crashing.
Shear is a verb meaning “to cut off sharply.” Scissors may be called “shears” for this reason.
So you might say: The plane sheered upward to avoid the trees, but it wasn’t fast enough, so one of its wings was sheared off by a branch. The resulting crash caused sheer panic in the immediate neighborhood.
But you must not say, In shear anger, she slapped his face and kicked him in the shins.