I’ve been asked to handle a structural edit (SE) often enough, but I’ve never had the sense that the house that is asking for one actually knows what it wants, except that it’s more than a CE. You’ll find plenty of definitions of a structural edit online, all saying roughly the same thing, but remember...Continue reading
“By the way, I wrote a book”; also, I turned down a project
This will be a short post. There’s too much I could say about the subject at hand, so it will be a two-parter. It doesn’t happen much up here, but I’ve seen it happen south of the border: a wealthy alumnus makes a large donation in the expectation – earmarked on the cheque, visibly or...Continue reading
The pandemic; also, were you a child once?
I’ve had a Web master redesign my main website, matthewkudelka.ca. You can now enter this blog through a portal there. The pandemic A Friday night in March my wife and I went out for our anniversary dinner. Talk was of a coming pandemic and possible lockdown. We chose not to think about it yet, or...Continue reading
Who are you working for?: Part Two
I considered the question earlier of whether a CE is working for the author or the house. Basically it’s the house, because it’s the house that is paying you. But here I would add some nuance to that. If you are a carpenter building a table for a client, you’re working for the person who...Continue reading
Drudgery? Not really …
Mechanics as I mean it here is a catch-all for everything besides grammar and syntax that a copyeditor is expected to address. To start with, every publisher is going to have a style sheet for you to follow, and a CE will be expected to keep the text in that lane or show good reason...Continue reading
What almost always happens; Thanksgiving Türkiye
What usually happens is that I carry out the CE and send it to the author for review (usually routing it through the ME). The author gets the review back to me ahead of time, thanks me quite happily and presents a couple of quibbles, which I bow to with equal goodwill (unless he’s black-letter...Continue reading
Pet words, irritating words
Any experienced ME will tell you that every copy editor leaves their own fingerprints: a preferred sentence construction, a specific way of handling commas, and so on. Every copy editor also reaches for favourite words, which in my case include encompass, purview, especially, posit, and regarding. I can’t help myself. I simply think they sound...Continue reading
Another discussion of syntax
I will quote myself: “I will have a lot more to say about that when I get to discussing syntax.” Now try this: “A about discussing get have I I lot more say syntax that to to when will.” That sentence uses all the same words as in the previous sentence I wrote, and it...Continue reading
A War Story
I’m sure that every trade generates its war stories. Bakers have them, lawyers do, chefs do, sailors do, tuba players … jockeys … copyeditors. Moments when the job goes bad, suddenly or not, God help you, and a simple enough task goes irreversibly sideways. It could be for any reason, as long as it’s unexpected....Continue reading
Back when I knew nothing
A cousin had arranged a temp job for me at a textbook house. That meant first meeting the woman I’d be working under, who would not be my cousin. It was 41 years ago now, so forgive me for forgetting her name. I walked into an office in one of Toronto’s inner suburbs, in a...Continue reading