(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

[rivka.livejournal.com]

*blink*

To what possible purpose?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

So she knows her copyeditor is falling down on the job.

[kateyule.livejournal.com]

Hm. I cynically assume the author has no power in such situations, but wonder about prodding the publisher, for the same reason wcg cites.

[carbonel]

In my experience, the author has a limited amount of power, and knowing about the problems means he or she can do something.

In of one Bruce Schneier's books (which I copyedited), a couple of instances of the Unix command "fingerd" got changed to "fingered" by some allegedly helpful typesetter after it the galleys had been corrected and signed off on. Catching it right away meant that subsequent printings (which happened fairly soon) got fixed.

The first version of Pat Wrede's Mairelon the Magician was apparently copyedited by someone who was unfamiliar with Regency slang. The most egregious bit was "Coo!" being transformed into "Cool." There were also font issues; the book was printed in a font that eats its own punctuation. Because of that, when the book was being reprinted, Pat got Tor to let Pat (and Pat got me) to look over the galleys, when they'd initially planned to go straight from book to press, because nothing was being changed, after all. Nothing, ha. I think close to half the pages had changes marked after I got through with them. To be fair, the sequel was much cleaner, though I found a few doozies there as well.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

There are a number of places where such errors can be introduced. To me, 'trench fries' for instacne looks like an artefact introduced in a scanning/typesetting phase; it's a different kind of mistakes to 'economic' for 'ergonomic'.

I'd say it's fair cop to complain to the publisher - it's their job to put out a good product, and to *not* skimp on the copy editing/proofreading stages.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Please don't, it will just make her unhappy when it's too late to help.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming. I've seen enough of your posts about AUGH COPYEDITING over the years...