Castle Walls Editing

Category: Uncategorized

  • Bring Out Your Dead!

    While reading Mary Roach’s fascinating and surprisingly humorous Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, I came across this sentence:

    “A series of modern-day Burke-and-Hare–type killings took place barely ten years ago, in Barranquilla, Colombia.”

    In the 1820s, William Burke and William Hare became notorious for selling corpses to Edinburgh anatomist Robert Knox, who eagerly bought the cadavers for the purposes of dissection. While grave-robbing was common enough, the problem here is that the two Williams, shall we say, hastened along the deaths of the cadavers they then sold to Knox.

    * Notice the proper way to make a plural of the name “William”—the plural of the last name “Williams” would be “Williamses.”

    Of interest to us, though, is the use of hyphens and en dashes in the sentence. Grouping adjectival expressions before a noun is simple enough. We hyphenate “modern-day” to hold it together so the reader can more easily see that it’s modifying “killings.” But what of “Burke-and-Hare–type”?

    We hold “Burke-and-Hare” together with hyphens: no problem there. But then we tack “type” onto the end with the en dash, which might look a bit odd to some. Why do we do this? “Type” has to apply to the full expression “Burke-and-Hare,” so we need something stronger than a hyphen: the en dash. Were we to use the humble hyphen there, “type” could be read as applying to “Hare” only. And we wouldn’t want to let Burke off the hook.

    So . . . you dissect a line of text. A dangling participle might make one think of a criminal hanging from the end of a rope. What is a full stop but the death of a sentence? An ellipsis might suggest a gradual slipping away from this world.

    Are there any other deathly (and grammar related) allusions you’d like to contribute?

  • Now That’s a Fire

    People love to point out other people’s mistakes. Sometimes this is done with an encouraging word and a gentle smile. More often, it’s done less kindly, and is perhaps accompanied by a pointed finger and raucous laughter (try tripping over a rug at a cocktail party sometime). Whatever the case, people generally feel a smug mixture of superiority and relief (Thank God that wasn’t me!) when someone else screws up.

    As a copy editor, I get paid to find other people’s mistakes. Diving into a manuscript and locating errors, seeing one red mark become two, five, ten, beyond count as the pages flip by, brings undeniable satisfaction. With every new mark, I experience a little charge.

    There are worse ways to make a living.

    Earlier today I came across a piece of publisher copy for a book I will not name. In the copy, a fire was described as raging through a residence, rendering the house “inhabitable.” That’s one hell of a helpful fire!

    I laughed, mentally pointing—and it was damned funny—but a part of me wanted to give that anonymous copy writer a friendly pat on the back and say, “Hey, we’ve all been there.”

    I suppose most people are protective of others in their professions, and the stark truth is that mistakes happen, even to the best of us.

    Once a mistake has been identified, it’s easy to circle it and isolate it and say, “How could you miss this? How could this happen?” The person saying this is usually not an editor but someone who, having found a goof, immediately believes himself or herself capable of having caught all the other thousands of mistakes in a document. (A point to be discussed at another time is that somehow the ability to read confers on nearly everyone the belief that that person is a writer or editor.)

    Unfortunately, even the best editors miss something from time to time, especially when someone is overworked, or not 100 percent healthy, or subject to all manner of distractions that can occur in an office.

    So, yes, mistakes happen. But as copy editors, we have to move forward and learn from these mistakes, adjust our processes if doing so can prevent similar mistakes in the future, and rededicate ourselves to achieving a perfection we can at least aim for, if not attain.

  • Lie Down Already

    Today I finished a book I had been looking forward to reading, and in fact the book had been a Christmas gift from my daughter, making me savor its reading all the more. I won’t name the book, though, because however much I enjoyed it—and I enjoyed it immensely—there was an incorrect usage throughout.

    And it rankled.

    The book repeatedly used “laying” when it should have used “lying,” and each time I came across one of these instances I was taken out of the book, the narrative spell broken by an inattentive copy editor. To be fair, the rest of the book was remarkably clean, and “lay vs. lie” issues are understandably difficult.

    But with the price of hardcover editions, you have the right to expect better.

    Lay means “to put” or “to place,” and its forms are lay, laid, laid, laying. Lay also requires an object to complete its meaning (a chicken lays an egg; I laid the envelope on the table).

    Lie means “to recline” or “to take a position of rest,” and its forms are lie, lay, lain, lying (I need to lie down; he was lying on the ground).

    A good trick is to substitute the appropriate form of the word place for the corresponding form of lay or lie, and if it makes sense, then you know to use lay (for example, being able to say “I placed the envelope on the table” lets you know that you should use a form of lay).

    It isn’t the easiest thing in the world to keep straight, especially for those who couldn’t give a rat’s arse, and especially considering that the matter is further confused by lay being the past tense of lie.

    Still, mastering the correct usage of lay and lie is well worth the trouble and may even win you a nod of approval from those who notice such things.

    At the very least, keeping these troublesome words straight will prevent you from irritating your audience, and whoever your audience is, you don’t ever want to inadvertently provide an excuse to quit reading.

    To wrap up, I’ll mention that the title of this blog entry is a reference to a novella from the fantastically talented horror and crime writer Tom Piccirilli. I only used the title because it’s one I like (especially the full title; go look it up!)—to be clear, it wasn’t his book that had the incorrect usage.

    I’ll also mention that last week I returned the book-giving favor to my daughter by attending a Karen Russell book signing and landing my daughter a signed edition of the Pulitzer-nominated Swamplandia! (Lest anyone think I’m more selfless than is really the case, I also had Russell’s new collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, signed for myself.)

  • Excuse the Intrusion

    Damned if sometimes things don’t just look funny.

    The other day I ran across an “a vs. an” issue that I can’t recall having even thought about before. As we know, when choosing whether to use a or an, we decide based on whether the word the article precedes begins with a vowel or a consonant sound. Thus, while we would say “a union,” we would alternatively say “an unfair practice.”

    What momentarily threw me was a sentence that used the word great and then, to let the reader know that the author was self-consciously repeating the word, used a construction similar to what follows.

    “The Great Gatsby spends a, uh, great deal of time . . .”

    The actual word choice wasn’t that poor, but you get the idea. The point of interest here is that, as a copy editor, I’m so attuned to matching a or an with the correct sound that seeing a before uh set off the ol’ alarm bells. As if acting on reflex, a part of me wanted very badly to change that a to an.

    Then I came to my senses.

    In the sentence, uh is an interrupting element. The author intended to say “a great”—no problem there—and uh, as an interrupting element, can simply be ignored as though it were surrounded by em dashes or parentheses.

    Interrupting elements are also famous for wreaking havoc with subject-verb agreement, but that is a discussion for another day.

  • Going to the Well Once Too Often

    One guy sits at the bar in his favorite watering hole. Another guy sits down next to him. After a brief exchange, it’s established that the second guy is from out of town. The first guy asks after the football team in the second guy’s home city.

    The second guy says, “They’re looking really well this year,” and he lingers just enough on the word well to reveal a hint of pride at his word choice.

    “That’s good,” says the first guy. “I’m glad they’re not ill.”

    And then a Boy Scout, a bear, and the president enter the bar, prompting the bartender to ask, “What is this, some kind of joke?”

    * * *

    In the same way that people are deathly afraid of saying “you and me” in any context, whether it’s grammatically correct or not (“You and I!” your first-grade teacher scolds), people are also afraid of using good incorrectly. Unfortunately, this leads to them always replacing it with well, which of course renders them susceptible to looking foolish.

    Good is an adjective. Well is an adverb. Simple enough.

    Adjectives come before nouns. Adverbs hover around verbs. Got it.

    Unfortunately, there is the sad case of the predicate adjective, often following “to be” verbs. Saying “He is good” indicates that someone is in high spirits or is generally in a satisfactory place in life. Saying “He is well” would indicate that the person is not sick. The confusion arises from a fear of using the adjective when the adverb is called for. Someone saying “He hits the ball good” would have made this mistake.

    In addition to “to be” verbs, there are reflexive verbs such as “looking” that can also take predicate adjectives, because the action of the verb refers back to the subject: “The Bashers look good this year.”

    Just between you and me, I’ve had my fill of wells this week.

  • Now I’m Lookin’ at a Flashback Sunday

    Quite some time ago, I was critiquing catalog write-ups, some of which I’d written, in a roomful of writers and marketers. A particular piece contained a phrase that read something like this: “A tale where such and such . . .” I made the suggestion that we change “where” to “in which.”

    One of the people in the room smirked and said, “So you’re an ‘in which’ guy.”

    Freeze-frame.

    I don’t recall my response, but I remember being taken aback. Like most people, I don’t cotton* to those who assume things about me and smugly cast me as a certain type. The implication was worse than that I didn’t know a specific grammar point. The implication was that there was a rule governing a usage and that I was blindly following that rule, even if a less formal usage would have been perfectly suitable, and maybe even preferred, in the context.

    To set your mind at ease, this film does not resume with me turning that room into The Wild Bunch. The comment did stick with me, though, most likely because I’m sensitive to how I’m perceived. It’s bad to be thought incompetent, but it’s far worse to be thought ridiculous, and I like to think of myself as the opposite of someone who mindlessly enforces rules across all situations, no matter the appropriateness.

    Intermission.

    I’d meant this blog post to be about the attitude one takes toward grammar, and I had thought to compare that attitude to one that a person might take toward politics. I was going to levy charges against marrying oneself to a viewpoint, whether it be right, left, prescriptivist, or descriptivist. I meant to talk about my self-loathing in regard to the scornful “reasonable” view. I was even going to talk about free will, but all that will have to wait for another post. I’ve realized that this post (admittedly a self-serving one in many ways) is about something more basic: why one edits.

    Return to the Theatre.

    Many years ago, my office mates and I were charged with assembling going-away gifts for a colleague named Lars, who was leaving our group to strike out on his own. Someone in the office (an accountant, not an editor, mind you) had decorated and labeled a container as “Lars’ Jar.” I don’t remember what was to go in the jar, but it was likely to be filled with well-wishing notes or something of the like.

    One of my other coworkers, fancying herself a grammar guru, made a showy display of hand-wringing over her contention that it should be written “Lars’s Jar.” She was sorely aggrieved that anyone who saw the jar would assume that Lars, in essence, had worked with a group of slack-jawed yokels, presumably because it was such an eye-poppingly huge punctuation gaffe.

    First things [deleted] last: The manner of forming the possessive of a singular noun ending in s is a style decision. Chicago recommends apostrophe-s, while Associated Press style, for instance, recommends the apostrophe alone (saving even a single space in a newspaper column can be a big deal). But even if it were something as uncontestable as misusing “its” for “it’s,” longtime fans of Steven Goff’s informative soccer blog would recognize the woman’s outrage as nothing short of “overegging the pudding.”

    The point isn’t the right or wrong of the matter but why the comment was made in the first place. It seems clear that it was meant to mark the commenter as in some way superior while at the same time disparaging the person who’d taken the trouble to craft the jar. In the workplace or out, correcting other people’s grammar is often done for similar reasons, and many have undoubtedly witnessed someone wielding the “Never end a sentence with a preposition!” stick to carry out just this form of tyranny.

    It’s not why I edit.

    In the Robert Rodriguez vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn, murdering thief Seth Gecko (George Clooney) discovers that his brother Richie (Quentin Tarantino) has brutally assaulted an innocent cleaning woman. Horrified, Seth tells Richie, “Do you think this is who I am? I am a professional thief. I don’t kill people I don’t have to.”

    When I see an editor lording his or her knowledge (or supposed knowledge) over someone else for the purpose of belittling that person, I think, This is not who I am.

    I like to imagine that copy editors are much like trash men, who during their largely unseen, early-morning rounds clean up our towns and cities. Copy editors, also largely unseen, clean up our text. I’m comfortable with the blue-collar nature of both jobs, and the world is a better place without garbage overflowing bins or dangling modifiers confusing our text.

    I recently interviewed someone for an editing position, and during the interview I allowed as to how I enjoy editing, how I enjoy being alone with a stack of pages and keeping at my desk. In an attempt to be ingratiating, the person said something along the lines of, “It’s good to correct other people, isn’t it?”

    No, that isn’t me. I’d rather think that what I’m doing is helpful to other people. I like to do a good job and be acknowledged for it, sure. I can’t deny a certain self-congratulatory impulse to pat myself on the back every time I mark an edit. I’m not proud of it, but it’s there. At the same time, I’d like to think the majority of that impulse stems not from a feeling of superiority but from a sense of satisfaction at doing my job well. I can also remind myself that as editors, it’s easy to feel superior when we’re registering all the good catches we’ve made, but none of us are immune from that embarrassing gut-punch when someone finds something we’ve missed (and all editors miss from time to time).

    I’m not an “in which” guy, although there are any number of times I’ll recommend using those two words over “where.” I have to imagine that “in which” guys, if they exist, don’t quote Robert Rodriguez movies. I do try to keep an editing mindset that’s consistent with being a decent person. As Seth said, “I may be a bastard, but I’m not a [deleted] bastard.”

    PS: A hearty congratulations to anyone who gets the reference in the title. My only justification is that it made me laugh.

    * As for the use of the word cotton: some of the write-ups were for Western novels, you lousy coffee boiler.

  • Epistolaries at Dawn; or, POV Carousel

    You enter the tavern. Beyond a smattering of tables—some occupied, some not—a boy in grubby attire kneels by a hearth and pokes at a well-stoked fire. You feel the warmth of the blaze on your face and rub your hands together, glad to have found shelter from the night’s chill winds. You are led to a table by a serving girl whose fluttering hands distract you from the suspicious, even threatening, glances of those seated around you. You take your seat and are handed an envelope. The serving girl fixes you with her eyes but hurries off before you can question her. You open the envelope, remove a letter from it, and begin to read.

    ******

    Dear _____,

    I apologize for the manipulation, for having second-personed you. But I had to sit you in this room. Would you feel more comfortable in the third person? I’ll even render you in third-person objective, to be less intrusive.

    ******

    The individual at the table by the fire held the letter with trembling hands and cast furtive glances about the room, then continued reading the letter.

    ******

    Ah, I’m afraid that objective view just won’t satisfy. Let me try limited.

    ******

    The individual began to fear those seated about the tavern but couldn’t remember anything of life outside the tavern or even a reason for being there.

    ******

    Do I make you uncomfortable? Do you not enjoy being written of, or, should I say, being written? I can do third-person omniscient, too, but I don’t think you’ll like that at all.

    ******

    The serving girl cursed the new arrival, knowing that person wasn’t wanted there. The boy by the fire harbored thoughts of thievery. A heavyset man well into his cups thought of something far darker. Two women whispered hateful gossip, and in a dark corner, mostly unnoticed, the author smiled, thinking that everything, having fallen into place, was just as it should be.

    ******

    Ah, you don’t care for talk of the author, do you? You, the “individual,” must have thought yourself the center of the narrative. But it’s always been about me. Look around you. Behind every face are my thoughts. Cast your gaze into a mirror and see my thoughts behind your eyes as well. It seems you’re not an individual at all. You’re me, and I am you.

    CAST:

    First-Person Narrative:

    In this narrative mode, the story is told from the point of view of a person within the story. This narrative mode is marked by the use of “I” and lends itself well to a favorite of mine: the unreliable narrator. The laudanum-quaffing Wilkie Collins of Dan Simmons’s Drood is a good example of a first-person (and unreliable) narrator.

    Second-Person Narrative:

    Second-person narratives employ “you”: You enter the room. You fly into a rage. These are difficult to pull off and have a tendency to feel gimmicky. (Putting it that way makes one want to give it a go, though, doesn’t it?)

    Third-Person Narrative:

    This narrative mode is the real workhorse of literature, and readers will readily recognize its “he/she” style. Third-person objective relates actions but not the thoughts of the characters, while third-person limited relates the thoughts of one character and third-person omniscient floats among characters. War and Peace is a good example of third-person omniscient.

    In third-person narrative, the narrator is usually invisible, but my favorite stories are those in which the narrator seems invisible but gradually bleeds his or her way into the tale—this produces a wonderfully creepy effect.

  • Double Genitive: It Only Sounds Dirty

    Sarah squeezed John’s hand with enough force that, were it coal, she might have produced a diamond, but John scarcely noticed. The delivery room dissolved into a white and grey void where all that existed was his child, entering the world in a feat of biological wonder that, though he didn’t know it at the time, would leave him to forever marvel at his wife’s—and all women’s—capacity to create life.

    The doctor held the newborn, so small, so vulnerable. Was it a boy, John wondered, or a girl? The doctor met John’s eyes. Something was wrong! “Oh, no,” the doctor said.

    “What is it?” Sarah asked, again bearing down on John’s hand.

    “Your child . . .” the doctor started.

    “What? Tell us,” John blurted.

    The doctor’s face went pale. “Your child has a double genitive!”

    ***

    Anyone who’s seen the twin girls in Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Stephen King’s The Shining knows how disturbing doubles can be. Perhaps part of the blame lies in the inordinate number of times we’ve been told that no two snowflakes are alike, or maybe it’s just that our single points of consciousness reject the notion of a duplicate, but whatever the case, people feel a little frisson of horror at the appearance of a doppelganger.

    The sensation many people experience when they come upon a double genitive might not approach actual horror, but at the very least it can be described as unsettling.

    A double genitive, also called a double possessive, occurs when possession is indicated both by the preposition of and the possessive form of a noun or pronoun (for example, the baby of John’s).

    The double genitive serves a dual purpose of making otherwise surefooted readers question themselves. It’s the kind of construction that one might pass over a thousand times and never give a second thought, until one day it’s looked at in a slightly different light and the reader says to him- or herself: That can’t be right!

    There are in fact grammatical purists who will insist that it isn’t right, largely owing to its not having a corresponding construction (a literary doppelganger?) in Latin. The construction has been around for centuries, however, and is perfectly acceptable in all but the most formal writing.

    ***

    This week’s reading list:

    The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky

    The Double by Jose Saramago

  • Easy (Writing) Like a Sunday Morning

    The writer sat before his typewriter and prepared to write. He laced his fingers together, turned his palms outward, and stretched his arms. I’m ready, he thought, and felt a comforting hand on his back as Easy took a seat beside him.

    Where to begin? pondered the writer. Easy smiled and reached into his sack, pulling from it a string of words. “Try these,” Easy offered.

    The writer placed them on the page. The words were recognizable, and they seemed a likely place to start. “A few more,” said Easy, again reaching into his sack. “These should follow nicely.” And indeed they did.

    I’m writing! thought the writer. As the writer brought his hands together, excited enough to clap, Easy placed more words between them, and the writer couldn’t resist.

    The page filled nicely, and the writer began another page, and another. Easy reached again and again into his sack, but the bag looked as full as ever. The writer wondered where the language came from and whose thoughts it represented, but the ease of putting words on the page overcame any misgivings.

    I’m writing, thought the writer, but he no longer believed it.

    * * *

    George Orwell attacked “easy” writing in his essay “Politics and the English Language.” In it, Orwell writes, “Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”

    Orwell marks easy writing by staleness of imagery and a lack of precision. He says that easy writing consists of ready-made phrases that will fall together on the page, forming your sentences for you and thereby forming your thoughts as well.

    His essay is directed primarily at political writing, but his advice applies to any language we commit to the page. I think we all recognize what he means, and, even if it’s hard to acknowledge, we can see it in our own writing. Perhaps such language is inevitable in our first draft, but when we begin rewriting, we can ask ourselves the questions that Orwell suggests:

    1. What am I trying to say?
    2. What words will express it?
    3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
    4. Is the image fresh enough to have an effect?

    Orwell then recommends two further questions:

    1. Could I put it more shortly?
    2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

    Writing without ready-made phrases is difficult, even painful, but as has been so often said, writing is rewriting. When the words pour from us and fill out the pages we want so badly to look at our work and feel it’s perfect that there’s a barrier we find difficult to breach. The urge to send a piece out and have others affirm our high opinion of it is almost irresistible. It’s a struggle to go sentence by sentence and question our language, to ask whether we could use stronger, more effective nouns and verbs. Perhaps when we do so we find we haven’t said much of anything at all and have to dig back into our work. And perhaps in the process we open up our writing to new possibilities. Perhaps our language becomes more precise. Perhaps our readers reap greater rewards from the text they are kind enough to dedicate their time to reading.

    Orwell goes on to discuss stale metaphors, pretentious diction, and meaningless words. I haven’t done the essay justice, but I strongly believe that it should be required reading for any writer.

    Final thought:

    Lionel Richie’s “Easy” is a great song (though I’m partial to the Faith No More rendition), but Easy is not your friend. Writing is a solitary endeavor and should hurt a bit. I’m telling this to the only person I have any right to say it to, myself, but you might want to say it as well:

    Easy, my old friend, take a hike.

  • Rat-a-Tat-Tat

    Say, what’s the rumpus? I ain’t going back to the big house, see? I’ll fill ya full of lead, copper! I’ll fit you for a Chicago overcoat, see?

    Too many ellipses on a page and the text begins to look as though a 1930s-era gangster had strafed it with a tommy gun. Rat-a-tat-tat! Ellipses represent omitted text and are also used in dialogue to indicate pauses and trailing off. (Judge me if you will, but I’ll also cop to using them excessively in e-mail and when chatting.)

    The presentation of ellipses, however, is the cause of much disagreement. Should you use spaces between the periods? Should you use a nonbreaking ellipsis character? Why do you sometimes see four periods?

    The Chicago Manual of Style, my go-to reference, recommends using three spaced periods with a space before the first period and a space after the third (“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning . . . he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”) This is my preference. My eyes flow easily from period to period, and I’m reminded of a stone skipping across water.

    For a quotation, Chicago recommends using the terminal punctuation followed by the ellipsis when the omitted text follows the end of a complete sentence (“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .”). There we have the four periods, which aren’t a four-period ellipsis at all but a period followed by an ellipsis. Note that there is no space between the last word of the sentence and the terminal period.

    To some eyes, three spaced periods are not as attractive as a formatted ellipsis character or simply three typed periods with no spaces in between. Holding the periods in such a tight little bundle seems too cramped to me, like people standing shoulder to shoulder in an elevator, but some styles call for this, and doing so keeps ellipses from breaking across lines. You would never want to see two periods at the end of a line with the third stranded at the beginning of the next line.

    Some styles even call for no spaces to either side of the ellipsis (“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning…he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”) I would think this would leave the periods feeling as hemmed in as the characters in the trash-compactor scene in Star Wars, but, as editors, we must comply with the style our clients specify.

    Complicating matters further is that some styles call for the ellipsis (no matter how it’s formatted) to come before terminal punctuation if the omitted material comes before the end of the sentence (As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning . . . .). This practice makes it perfectly understandable why people could get the impression there is such a thing as a four-period ellipsis, but there is not, and understanding this makes it easier to adhere to whatever style you’re following.

    One of the publishers for whom I proof favors the ellipsis at the end of promotional copy for the purposes of dramatic trailing off. The copy might read along these lines:

         The desperadoes thought their reign of terror would last forever,
    but Johnny Gunhammer had other plans . . .

    The problem is that sometimes the publisher, for no apparent reason, insists on using four periods in this construction. I suspect there might be the thought that if three periods are dramatic, four would be really dramatic. It’s enough to make you want to reach for a tommy gun.

    See?