Sunday, July 8, 2012
God Bless Copy Editors
The copy editor (God bless his/her soul) has been poring over India #3 with a sharp red pencil, er, cursor, and I thought you might find it interesting to see what the copyedited version of a manuscript looks like. Here's a view of my computer screen. The quality isn't great but if you click on it and strain your eyes, you can see the sort of comments a copy editor makes.
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Is the first an anachronistic correction for using Old Blighty and the second a grammatical correction? Hard to tell what the second comment says. Something about eliminating "word" in the phrase "mention or word." And that's a combination of guessing and squinting to deciphering.
ReplyDeleteIt's a terrible picture, isn't it? The answer to the question is yes, it is an order (phrased as a suggestion) not to use "Old Blighty" as the phrase was first used during WWI. As for the second comment, the editor is noting that he has made a change to avoid the use of "word" twice in one sentence. Actually, I'd used "word" once and "words" once in the sentence, but the editor's change avoids the repetition.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Looking up that website to check my own anachronisms on writing.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to read the next India book (is it a short story or a full novel, by the way?).
Anyway, keep up the good work Ms. Carr
PS: Great blog too. Loved the uniforms bit :D
Hi Paula,
ReplyDeleteBook #3 will be published in February, but I'm also doing a short story, "India Black and the Rajah's Ruby," which will be e-published in December of this year. If you are one of those physical books only types, I think you can download a PDF version from the publisher's website, but I'll publish the details when I have them.