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.”)

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.

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.

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

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. :)

Uisgebaugh is a corruption of “uisge beatha.”

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.