(no subject)

[rivka]

This is the worst job of professional copyediting I have ever seen.

I understand spell-check errors. I can tolerate "silting" for "sitting," I guess, and I can rescue the meaning when "for" is substituted for "floor." I wince, but I see how it happens.

But then there are the errors that make the author look stupid. Please do not have a character adjust her "economically perfect desk chair," because you will jolt me right out of the story. And FOR THE LOVE OF GOD do not have a bunch of college-educated professionals who work with language for a living as newspaper reporters and columnists keep using the construction "suppose to."

Somewhere in the dimly-lit corners of Cornell University, a bust of William Strunk, Jr. has tears trickling down its dusty face.

Updated to add: ZOMG someone just ordered "trench fries."

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I did eventually discover that the one urban fantasy that refers to the "Marinaras Trench" was something the copyeditor had fixed and the writer had insisted on putting back the way it was. I am haunted by the notion that if one goes deep enough in the ocean one enters the hidden tomato sauce layer.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

Now I want to make a lasagna based on plate tectonics.

[aendr.livejournal.com]

What a good idea!

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

You an explain plate tectonics with very thick soup and slices of crisp bread.

Ahem. The things geographers know...

[rivka.livejournal.com]

That's going to be my theory from now on.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's where one finds the lair of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

That copyeditor must have been unbelievably frustrated.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I heard this story from the copyeditor in question, and yes, that would be an accurate summation of the situation.

[redbird]

Thank you.

There's a lot of poorly or not-at-all copyedited and proofread stuff out there, and the copyeditors (or absence thereof) are blamed even when the fault is in no sense theirs. Along with the writers who will think "oh, right, Marianas, why was I so obsessed with dinner that chapter?" or just notice the fix and okay it, there will be one who has the error that firmly in their brain.