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Cheryll's second penny
Just below I've posted an example of how an editor might communicate with an author. Actually, this is drawn from a recent letter transmitting a first-round edit for author review. (Details have been changed to protect confidentiality.) This particular assignment was unusual because this author prefers red-pencil edits on actual paper. Most editing today is done electronically until the galley-proof stage. No matter the medium or how the comments are exchanged, however--or how the manuscript itself is eventually transmitted--it is true that the more "clean" the manuscript, the happier everyone will be. Including the author. And now to the excerpt:
"It is important to be mindful of consistency. In nonfiction, it is also important to stick to standard, accepted editorial conventions. A writer of fiction has considerably more leeway where, for example, spelling, grammar, and punctuation are concerned. In these cases, however, the author's choice must be applied consistently. This comforts the reader, for lack of a better term. It brings readers on board rather than throwing them over, and it enhances their ability to stay involved in the story as the author intends. Here are a few things you might want to consider:
· Spelling consistency: You'll see many notes from me about this. You might want to designate one dictionary (it can be an older one, used during the years when your story takes place) to establish your rules for terms and for spelling throughout the manuscript. This must be carefully handled, and the style sheet we've developed together will keep us on track. Its use will ensure that Superfortress, for example, always appears just so, and never as superfortress or Super fortress or super fortress.
· Compound adjectives: you will find several comments from me about these. In contemporary writing, the tendency is to 'close' compounds: 'moon-lit' has become 'moonlit,' for example. You tend to use the hyphenated form most frequently, and I think this is a good thing. It contributes to the old-time and slightly more formal tone that is perfectly aligned with the setting and your characters. But again, you should be consistent. This is where your own style guide for this novel will be helpful. If you use moon-lit once in a book or a story, you should always use moon-lit rather than moonlit in that same book or story. Where an adverb is involved, however--such as with 'wickedly pointed'--you might want to consider not using hyphens at all. But again, if you do--and you can; after all, you're the author--you should do so consistently.
· Commas: in the beginning of the manuscript, you use commas a little more liberally than you do later on. Again, modern usage calls for fewer commas, rather than more. However, you are the author and can do as you wish. It's my feeling that by using more, you retain the old-fashioned rhythm that serves your setting and characters well. But you must be consistent within the rules you decide on. One guideline? Read the sentence or paragraph or section aloud and see if it 'sounds like' something your characters would be comfortable with. Beware of mixing contemporary language with that from the 1940s--and for this book, you might want to choose the forms that are just slightly stilted. Your characters are from another culture--and one that is considerably more formal than ours, then or today.
· Novel-specific conventions: you will find notes regarding the Ph versus the F form of Raphael/Rafael; and other, more subtle conventions: Her Imperial Highness The Empress, for example (all words are capped, including The). Again, once you decide which form best suits your intent, you should always be consistent within the same novel or story.
Only a few times do you step out of your narrative stance as a neutral observer. I've marked those. I've also made a good many other marks, all intended to serve the integrity of your story and characters. I hope you find these useful and do not take offense."
So there you have it: the last of my two cents on this topic. My thanks for the opportunity to speak up about what it is that manuscript editors and copyeditors do.
October 17, 2005 10:15 PM
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Comments
Thank you. I enjoyed reading this insight into the process.
Posted by: Suna at October 18, 2005 12:01 PM
Thank you Cheryll. Those were two very interesting and educational pennies you gave us. It sounds like copyediting can be quite intense but definitely worth it to end up with the books the Sara Donati/Cheryll team gives us.
Posted by: Alison at October 18, 2005 04:49 PM
Alison -- I'd be thrilled to work with Cheryll, but she's not my editor. Generally if a book is coming out with Publisher X, that publisher uses its own in-house people for proofreading, copy editing, etc.
Posted by: sara at October 18, 2005 07:20 PM
Thanks, Sara, for clearing that up. We two are friends, Alison, and we talk about words (and many other things) often, but we don't work together as author-editor.
Posted by: cheryll at October 19, 2005 09:07 AM
oops sorry I must have missed that first time round.
Posted by: Alison at October 19, 2005 05:04 PM
You know what's funny is, this is exactly the kind of stuff I use to stall when I'm having trouble writing. I'll do a word search for every occurance of "its" or "their" and make sure the usage is correct, or spend 20 minutes checking to make sure I spelled the name of a neighborhood in some obscure Georgia town correctly. The internet's great for that sort of thing. I recently wrote a first draft of a scene on a piece of highway in Texas that I've never been to and used Yahoo to map out all the restaurants and shopping centers on the road. Spent a couple of hours on it-- which was a couple of hours I didn't have to spend working on my story.
I've often thought that having someone who checks that kind of thing would be kind of a mixed blessing, because it would take away one of my dearly-treasured excuses.
Posted by: Joshua at October 20, 2005 06:07 AM