Geras on Copyeditors (revised)
I do not generally [consider deleting, or move to beginning of sentence] hold people in contemptbecause offor their profession,theirjob, ortheircalling. But copyeditorsediting! That is something [Make consistent with either ‘editors’ or ‘editing’ in previous two sentences] different. Not as bad, Iwillgrant, as war criminals or child molesters, they nevertheless belong in one of the very lowest categories of human intelligence, and indeed morality. You will [consider ‘may’] object that copy editors perform a most useful and necessary function, turningwhat isoftenill-formed and error-strewn text into something more presentable. This, too, I will grant. However,itthere is no excuse for whatcopy editorsthey [referent is clear] also do - which is to [run-on; consider breaking into two sentences] interfere with people’s painfully-crafted stuff [lazy choice of word] when there is no reason whatever for doing so, other than some quirk in the ^mind of the particular copy-editoringmind which isat work….
posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2003 at 11:06 pm
I agree I mean jack kerouac never used editors in fact he just let the prose flow freeform and right off the tip of his pen punctuation be damned. Personally i think jack transferred all his punctuation to Allen Ginnesburg durring a peyotee ritual back in the fifties. Who needs all those comas.
Why did you let “will grant” pass the second time? You’ll have to shape up if you want more work from this publisher, Kieran.
“Painfully crafted”, forsooth. Nice one, Kieran. Doug M.
Classic!
How true. How very true. How very very true. Having been on the receiving end of – often seemingly arbitrary – copy-editing of the manuscripts for my books, I can confirm that it is often a subjective process (although sometimes helpful) and causes disagreements in which the author (ego) invites the copy-editor to go pound sand up his ass. Conciliation has its limits! Stu Savory
Hilarious! (now can someone do this for my dissertation?)
The hyphen in “painfully crafted” is incorrect. I’d advise “carefully crafted” since there’s no particular merit in the pain suffered by the writer. When I was a copy editor, my favorite saying was: “There is no joy on earth greater than changing someone else’s copy.” As a writer, I make it a point of pride not to whine about copy editing.