Ponderings
Published by Deanna Hoak October 4th, 2006 in copyeditingWell, my notion to have people post good and bad copyediting stories flopped like a fish a few feet from the water, didn’t it? As a blogger, you wonder why something like that doesn’t work better. Because I asked for specifics? Because people don’t have both kinds of stories? Because people only want to share one kind? Interesting.
At the moment, too, I’m hugely busy both personally and professionally. Bear with me if my blogging gets sparse. :-)
I’ll leave you with a word I’ve seen misspelled quite often lately: barista. It should only have one r. I’ve seen it in at least five manuscripts this year, and I don’t think it’s been right once.
23 Responses to “Ponderings”
Leave a Reply
Search
About
I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
Next: Advances in teleportation
Previous: Author query: The good and the bad of copyediting
RSS FeedCategories
- blog (473)
- conventions (14)
- copyediting (54)
- food (12)
- grammar (2)
- kids (21)
- praise (14)
- SFnal (11)
- writing (23)
The hardest word to spell is squirrel. Squirel? Sqiurel? Squriel. Squirtle (I think that one is a pokeman.) Anyway a small rodent with a bushy tail that leaves in a tree.
Lives! Lives up in a tree! Okay I will go now…
I’d have replied - only I’ve never been copyedited. I’m a technical writer, though, so I find I spend a bit of time in my writing group acting as a very basic copyeditor for them.
From the sounds of things, you do a great job. If I’m ever in a position to request you, I’ll be there like a shot. :-)
Do you figure that’s because barista is an almost-homophone for barrister, which may be where that double-r is coming from?
That’s as good an explanation as any, Chris.
What’s interesting is that it’s not misspelled on the web more than it is. (I get 141,000 hits for “barrista” but over three and a half million for the correct spelling.) Based on how often I’ve seen it wrong in manuscripts, I’d expect to see it incorrect on the web far more often than that.
Well, OK, I can actually give you a bad copy editing story. Back when i was writing record reviews, I wrote a review of guitarist John Fahey’s Live in Tasmania LP and referred to one of his long improvisations as “raga-like.” The ignoroid editor changed it to “reggae-like,” which was really ridiculous in context. Of course I didn’t see it till it was already printed. I just saw her the other night (like me, she migrated from Seattle to NYC), and I still think about that. (It doesn’t help that she’s just as obnoxious as ever, but that’s another story.)
I’ve just read Elizabeth Bear’s ‘Blood and Iron’ and was surprised she thanked her copyeditor. (It’s a very nice sentiment, but…)
The book contains a number of inconsistent uses such as fae/fey , and gems such as Tir Na Nog, better known as _Tir na nOg_. With an accent I can’t produce on this keyboard but which is important.
nOg is an Irish word with an article. Nog is, variably, a strong ale, an beverage containing eggs and alcohol, a wooden peg, or a piece of wood fitted into a wall you can nail things to.
Noggin is what I wanted to bat against the nearest wall.
I haven’t read Blood and Iron but you have me curious about how Bear used fey. (I’m most familiar with the “whimsical; strange; otherworldly” definition.)
The Compact OED doesn’t even list dictionary.com’s “chiefly British” definition of “doomed/fated to die”…heh. ;-)
Green Knight: I haven’t read Blood and Iron, but in defense of whomever Bear’s copyeditor was, you honestly can’t tell what the copyeditor did or didn’t do by looking at the final book. Sometimes proofreaders come along and change things, or authors stet items, or the comp forgets to input a change or makes a typo and no one catches it, or any number of other things; if the author was happy with the CE’s job, it was probably a good one.
I’ve seen the original Irish spelling you mentioned, but the OED uses “Tir-na-nog” (with no accent) as the primary spelling.
Kendall,
she uses it as an adjective meaning ‘of faerie’ - but she uses both fae and fey. It’s not the only place where she does that - she has the same character refer to ‘the Cat Anna’ and ‘Aoine’ variably etc.
It’s the sort of thing I expect a copyeditor to catch.
I’ve only been published in non-fiction, and none of my editors have sent back things for me to correct. I usually only hear from them when they have an assigment.
As for stuff I’ve read, the worst copyedited was our library’s copy of Suspension by Richard Crabbe. There were terrible mistakes, such as exclamation points where elipses should be. I haven’t looked at any other editions, but I’m curious to know if that ever got fixed.
As for the barista/barrista thing, I’m a bit confused. Are we talking about the espresso master kind of bar(r)ista? And which is right?
And someday, could you write a post for authors on how to make your job easier with their manuscripts? What can we do to make your job easier? Thanks!
Ellen: Thank you. :-)
Green Knight: And though I can’t say without having seen the book, obviously, in general it doesn’t bother me for characters to call other characters by more than one name. I call my sister “Julie” or “Jewel” or “Ju-Ju Bean” or any number of other things, depending on my mood and the situation. *shrug*
Robert: That would be annoying! I had a nonfiction article published in a design magazine once, and the person who edited it did such a heavy and amateuristic job (which I didn’t see, despite my requests) that to this day I’m ashamed to take credit for the article.
Eliza: “Barista” (yes, a person who prepares and serves coffee or espresso) is correct. I posted here about what authors can do to make a copyeditor’s job easier. Of course let me know if you have any other questions, though!
All right–thank you! I was hoping that was right, ’cause that’s how I’ve been spelling it. Not that I spell it lots, but…
Yeeeahhh.
And awesome — thank you again! I’m going to read it right now!
I’ve only got good copyediting stories–smooth, trouble-free exchanges between me and the editor.
There is one minor anecdote: one editor asked if I could expand a section in an article. The editor wanted to see more info on the “minstrel” tradition’s influence on the development of the subject.
I thought it quite nice that I knew the proper term was “bardic” tradition… but then, that’s why I was the one writing the article.
It is one of my better articles.
Not that it’s an excuse (not a very good one, anyway), but some of these misspelled baristi you received might have actually been checked by the authors to verify their spelling.
A common way to do that is to, obviously, see if the word is in a dictionary. And on-line/computer dictionaries are often faster to use than printed ones, and often suggest spelling alternatives if you put it a misspelled word.
Maybe the most popular on-line dictionary currently is the one at dictionary.reference.com , which is both pretty decent with spelling suggestions, and contains several different dictionaries so it’s easy to get a slightly wider range of definitions.
They have a single source for a definition of barista. They *also* have one for barrista. From the same source, a certain “Webster’s New Millenniumâ„¢ Dictionary of English”.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/barrista
Since such mistakes are usually rare, finding a word in dictionary would normally be enough to convince people it’s spelled properly.
Yaron: Given how often I’ve seen it misspelled, I wouldn’t be surprised if the misspelling creeps into official English; that often happens. M-W Collegiate (the standard in publishing) doesn’t list the double-r spelling yet, and M-W Unabridged and the OED don’t list the word at all.
Heidi: It is always nice to be confident in what you’re writing. :-) A lot of the editing mistakes authors hate the most come about because the copyeditor “corrects” something that was right in the first place.
Regarding Blood & Iron: “Fae” and “fey” are not used interchangeably at all. “Fae,” (uppercase) is used to refer to the species; “fey” (lowercase) is used as an adjectival form: “of faerie.” A subtle difference.
And yes, many characters in the book have more than one name. Or a title and a name. Or several titles and several names.
(Wait until the next book; Christofer/Christopher/Kit Marley/Marlowe/Marloe/Merlin makes an appearance, and brings in tow his seventeen or twenty name-spellings.)
As for the spelling of mythical places, Webster’s wins, and if Webster’s doesn’t have it, the OED wins. It is the Way.
Even when it pisses me off.
You could take it up with the people who write NAL’s house style sheets if you felt energetic.
Elizabeth, thanks for the reply!
As for Irish (and by extention, any other foreign language) spellings - _why_ would Websters/OED be the last word? Why not go back to the source? It was a real wince-worthy moment for me - not quite ‘book/wall interface’ but almost.
Don’t know if I’m feeling that energetic right now, but given how strongly I feel, I probably shall!
(And where did you get Uisgebaugh from, if I may ask?)
Because we’re writing in English, not Irish.
Uisgebaugh is a corruption of “uisge beatha.”
I don’t have any copyediting stories yet, other than my own palm smacking my forehead when I catch yet another error in pages I’ve gone over a thousand times myself.
But I do want to say I’ve been reading closely because this is an area of the business I know little about.
If I ever do get a story to tell, I’ll send it to you, Deanna. :)
I’m late to the game since I visit this blog only once a week.
I’m writing non-fiction on an apparently controversial subject. I’m going the self-publishing route (not POD) and spent some time searching for a freelance editor to work with. I have a number of stories about editors, most of the ones I’ve written are negative.
–Two freelancers who don’t have my best interests at heart.
http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/afterhours/2006/09/21/professional-freelance-editors/
–How freelance editors often outsource work.
http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/afterhours/2006/06/14/the-dirty-truth-behind-editors/
–General grousing by me about the whole search for an editor.
http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/afterhours/2005/09/15/what-is-normal/
–The search for a freelance editor begins.
http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/afterhours/2005/08/24/my-everlasting-book-project-part-i/
I don’t know what it’s like to work with an editor through a company (like a publisher or a magazine) but the freelance editor world is something else.
On the other hand, I think the editor I chose to work with is great and I highly recommend her. Marg Gilks at: http://www.scripta-word-services.com/
I don’t know if this was the sort of feedback you were hoping for, Deanna. But thanks for bringing up the topic.
Amanda
Deanna,
what’s your stance on ‘we’re writing in English’? Because this reader is appalled when a writer chooses corruptions over correctness. Once a word has fully passed into the English language, that is another matter, but as long as it is still noticably not-English, shouldn’t one strive to get it _right_?
If you encounter languages other than English in a text, what do you do - leave them as is, check them against the appropriate dictionary, google…?
One of the things that drives me up walls is encountering bad German/French/anything else I happen to recognise in a text. To me it’s on par with bad science, because it could have been done better.
Green Knight: Well, if a geographic term has a different name in English than in its native country and if the novel is not set in that native country, I’m definitely in favor of presenting the word in English. Most readers would of course be confused if, in reading a novel set in the U.S., they encountered a word in a different alphabet; it would also seem awkward to most of them to see Deutschland instead of “Germany†and España for “Spain†and “Africa†in whatever any of the multitudinous languages of that continent call it. (Sometimes, for the needs of a particular book that is set in the native country or that has a character from that country, you might want the original term–I’m just saying in general.)
I definitely try to make sure foreign words are correct. If I encounter languages other than English in a book, I verify them as well as I can, through looking them up in dictionaries, through Googling, through talking with native speakers, through checking the grammar books I have left from my master’s in linguistics–whatever I have at my disposal. I query the author with any lingering doubts.
Once any word appears in an English dictionary, though, it is considered to have passed into English. You aren’t required to italicize it (you don’t ordinarily italicize foreign proper nouns in an English context anyway), and eventually the diacritical marks might be lost. The spelling might change. That’s just the natural process. Depending on the setting of the book, I might choose to treat such a term as a foreign word still, because it might not have become part of English at the point in history that’s being depicted.
(I’m inordinately fond of this quote by James Nicoll, btw: “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.â€)
When a “foreign†word is not considered to be foreign in the context in which it is placed (such as a word in a language that the characters are all assumed to be speaking anyway, despite the necessity of writing the majority of the narrative in English), I also don’t italicize unless the author has a strong preference for it; doing so can junk up the manuscript unnecessarily.