Between the Lines Blog

Dash It All!

2009-04-21T13:24:00.000-04:00

Dashes are one of the most useful and often misused bits of punctuation. Traditionally they just set off a parenthetical statement—just like parenthesis or commas—but they’re also used to create a pause in conversational pose or to show as shift in stream of consciousness. I see a lot of dashes used too casually or incorrectly, so I’m going to talk about the right way to use them.

First of all, a dash is not a hyphen. Hyphens are only used for forming some kinds of compounds, generally used as adjectives or nouns. Examples include tight-lipped, half-hour and city-state. Hyphens are also placed by typesetters where part of a long word must be continued on the next line.

There are two kinds of dashes. The en dash, so called because it is the width of a letter N, connects numbers or places; generally, it means the same as the word to or though. 25–30, or Paris–London are examples.

The em dash, the longest and most versatile dash, joins and separates parts of sentences. They can be used where other punctuation won’t do, indicating a sudden break, introducing an aside or separating a subject and its pronoun in the same sentence. The em dash—flexible as it is—is useful, but has potential for misuse. Insert em dashes sparingly—no more than twice in a single sentence—to avoid confusion. Don’t use them where another punctuation mark makes more sense; in this sentence, many writers would use a dash, but a semicolon is more appropriate.

Microsoft Word can automatically insert a dash where a writer puts a hyphen to indicate that one is necessary. However, it doesn’t always detect one properly, or the feature may be disabled. This accounts for a lot of the misused hyphens I come across. If Word isn’t automatically inserting your dashes, you can do it manually. In the menu bar, click Insert > Symbol… to bring up a character palette. You can select and insert an en or em dash here, in addition to a number of other special characters.

If you have trouble remembering which is which, go by the length: a short hyphen combines words, but a longer dash combines groups of words. This simple rule will help you keep your writing both easy to understand and formally correct.

Link: Three Grammar Rules You Can Break at Copyblogger

2009-04-13T18:25:00.001-04:00

Copyblogger posted a nice, short article today about three rules of grammar that are meant to be broken. Check it out here.

Beware of Grammar Snobs

2009-02-23T14:41:00.001-05:00

We're all familiar with the maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This applies just as much in editing as anywhere else. When you over-edit, you risk introducing new mistakes, stripping the piece of its author's voice, and giving yourself a headache.

A lot of people out there think the rules of usage they remember from the 9th grade are the definitive way to write in English. Thus they might make unnecessary changes that actually hurt the document. I recently posted an ad for my services on Craigslist, and some kind soul had the courtesy to e-mail me and suggest that I meant to use "don't" where I said "won't." This change actually would've caused the sentence in question to contain a disagreement of tense between two clauses, thus introducing an error that wouldn't have existed before. I gave this person my courteous thanks and left the ad as it was.

There's a certain breed of people out there who, perhaps under the influence of books like Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, see themselves as defenders of correct English, and take delight in finding violations of whatever arbitrary "rules" they've absorbed most recently. Beware of these people! The aim of editing is internal consistency; as long as an author follows their own precedents, there's no need for nit-picking.

I won't deny that there's a certain standard of English usage that we should stick to - you can't get away with spelling errors or disagreements in tense just because you do things that way consistently - but people need to loosen up a little bit. Just because a writer doesn't do things the way you would, doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means we need to be respectful of their style and extra careful about making changes.

Two approaches to writing a clear introduction

2009-01-28T14:50:00.001-05:00

No matter what kind of piece you're writing, it can benefit from having a clear, precise introduction. A good introduction tells the reader what to expect and hooks them in, so they'll keep reading.

A lot of writers use their introduction to get warmed up or figure out what they're going to write about, end up putting the most important part at the end of it, and then fail to edit this introduction later. This is the worst way to write an introduction! I'm going to talk about two ways of writing an introduction that result in a great start to any document.

The Planned Approach

If you're the kind of writer that plans carefully before typing a single word and does minimal editing once you're finished, this is the approach for you. Once your ideas are clearly formed in your head, or even better, in your outline, you will know exactly what you're going to say. Start your introduction by stating your intention or main point. Then, write sentences describing what each paragraph or section will be about. They should have some sort of logical order.

Now, use each of those subsequent sentences as the topic sentence for each actual paragraph. Focus on each, and use only details that support that statement in its paragraph. Your writing will follow the plan you had for it, and will all add up at the end. With enough discipline, you won't even have to edit your introduction.

The Organic Approach

This approach is for writers who like to start by writing, then whittle their work down to its essentials. It might take a little longer than the planned approach, or it might not, because you write faster and spend time editing, rather than planning each statement.

Go ahead and just start writing, using all the time to lead in or give background information you need. Let your arguments develop as they come to you, and conclude when you think you've said everything you need to.

Now, set the work aside. Read it the next day, or have another writer you trust read it. You'll probably find that the beginning has little to do with your actual point, or that the initial statements can be better placed further on to support other arguments. Look for the single sentence that suddenly clarifies everything that came before it, that says, "This is what I'm talking about." This is your topic sentence. Put it at the very top of your first page.

Next, read each paragraph or section in the same way. Locate the strongest statements, that tell us what each part is about, then copy them into your introduction, after that first sentence. If necessary, reword or rephrase them to make sense together. When you've gone all the way through your text this way, you will have a clear introduction that grew naturally from the logical process of your thoughts. Go ahead and recycle or throw out all that unnecessary lead-in that you originally started with.

Any essay, article, or other text makes more sense and has a greater impact with a clear introduction. If you're going to take the time to write something, you'd better take the time to write an introduction that's going to get someone to read it. Follow one of these approaches, and you won't have a problem at all.

Link: What do Editors Do?

2009-01-22T09:57:00.001-05:00

I was planning on writing a post about how editors work, but this one over at About Freelance Writing is probably better than anything I could've come up with.

An editor is an advocate for the reader and for the writer. Her job is to make sure they understand each other.

That means that we have to ask dumb questions sometimes, which doesn’t
mean we’re making fun of writers’ works. Or, we can try to fix things
we don’t understand, and if we mess up, that’s a good message that the
reader wouldn’t “get it” either.

Go read it.

Might makes Right

2009-01-20T20:42:00.001-05:00

Ever wonder why tons of words have silent letters or letters that don't make their usual sound?

This article at Grammarphobia gives a two sentence explanation of every spelling irregularity I can think of, and a few that don't come to mind right away, and unlike a lot of grammar blog articles, is a damned interesting read.

The Five Editors You'll Meet in Publishing

2009-01-20T10:37:00.002-05:00

Since a lot of people out there have never even heard of copy editing, today I'm going to discuss the different types of editors and their responsibilities.

When people think of an editor, there are two types that traditionally come to mind. One is the editor-in-chief at a metropolitan daily newspaper. This is the cigar-chomping, suspender-snapping, grumpy guy in the big office responsible for agenda setting, giving assignments, and harassing the help. You might also think of the star editors of the early 20th century, turning literary riffraff into authors of classic novels used to torture tenth-graders forevermore.

As far as real editors go, the highest ranked is a managing editor. In addition to supervising the editorial staff, managing editors do most of the things mentioned above. They might find suitable writers for an idea they had for a piece, or set the overall tone of their publications. They might also get their hands dirty with substantive editing.

Substantive editors do the work we're most familiar with. They examine a work as a whole, and may remove or rearrange large sections to better express an author's point or theme. They might also ask the author to rewrite or write additional portions. A developmental editor does the same kind of work, but helps the author along while the manuscript is being written. In this sense, developmental editors are collaborators, and are often ghostwriters as well.

Copy editors work more closely with the language of a text. They examine and correct spelling, grammar, syntax, word usage, and address style. Style doesn't necessarily mean linguistic style, but a consistent way of using certain features of the language, formatting the text, and presenting the whole work. They are aided in this by style manuals, long books of guidelines for writers and editors. The style manual used depends on the publication. For example, newspapers use the Associated Press Stylebook, which is geared toward news writing.

Line editors, I believe, used to be the same thing as copy editors, except they existed in the era of Teletype machines, a sort of primitive electronic typewriter that only allowed their users to work with one line of text at a time. Line editors apparently still exist at some software companies, where they edit code, line by line.

Proofreaders have similar responsibilities to copy editors, but are the last people to work with a piece of text before it is ready to be published. Therefore, most of the errors have already been caught, and it falls to the proofreader to catch any outstanding errors in facticity, grammar or spelling.

That should explain the major distinctions between the types of editors. Of course, the responsibilities of an editor will vary depending on the type and size of the organization the editor works for - at small publications, one staff editor might have to do everything - but these are general categories, pretty distinct from one another. There are also a lot of other specialty groups, like acquisitions editors, technical editors, etc., but most of these have names that explain the essence of what they do.

And if I've raised any questions, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment, and I will do my best to write a stimulating, enlightening answer, right here.

***
Between the Lines Document Services
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www.btwnthelines.com

Try your hand at copyediting

2009-01-19T10:56:00.001-05:00

Gene Weingarten, journalist and humor writer, published a column in the Washington Post last June expounding the irrelevance of the modern copyeditor.

The column contains "57 errors of fact, grammar, syntax and style," indicating that Weingarten's stance is somewhat ironic. He concludes with the sentence, "We'll miss ya, guys, even if we didn't need you all that muck," and an invitation to the reader to catch the errors. Try it out- it's good practice, and the answers are all at the bottom of the page.
Some of problems are common sense, like the redundancy in "automated ATM machines," while others are more subtle, and might require reference to a dictionary or style manual.

Speaking of which, I'm planning on writing a series about editing reference books and books on editing, coming soon. Get excited!

Articles on Copyediting

2009-01-15T11:08:00.003-05:00

I discovered during a recent googling session that, around the time I decided to pursue copyediting, several articles were published in major news outlets about the subject. Call it the collective unconscious, call it what you will, but for some reason, copyediting, which I'd never heard of before last summer, was a subject of public interest for a brief time. All the articles address the state of the trade in some way, and they don't really have much good news for copyeditors working in traditional settings in the U.S.

The first article was published July 8 in BusinessWeek. Nandini Lakshman's "Copyediting? Ship the Work Out to India" describes an outsource company in India that now has eight major U.S. publishing companies as clients. Their editing and journalism can involve long distance phone calls to verify information or query managing editors at client publications, but not to speak with the actual authors. The most disturbing part of this article, to me at least, is about the company's projected growth. "Mindworks plans to increase its staff from 100 to 1,500 people by 2013.
Joseph has just hired a new head in the U.S. for new business development and plans to build a five-member U.S. operations team to help market Mindworks' services."

In a BusinessWeek commentary on Aug. 4, guest writer Hanan Sher addresses the previous article, describing some of the problems with outsourcing copyediting and highlighting the importance of local knowledge in editing regional news publications. He asserts it would not be possible for non-native editors to fulfill some higher-level copyediting duties, and asks the question, "...how would a copyeditor in Punjab or Pune catch credibility-destroying errors in the description of a crime scene in, say, Santa Ana, Calif.?" Outsource editors may be fine at catching spelling and mechanical errors, but, Sher says, "[Print publications] would be throwing out credibility, reliability, and any semblance of quality—the same journalistic standards that should set them apart from, and far above, Internet blogs and news-aggregating Web sites."

An article describing the changing role of copyeditors appeared Aug. 31 in the Washington Post, not long after the paper cut its copyediting staff by nearly 40% with an early retirement buyout. Deborah Howell addresses the demand that copyeditors be more flexible and do more with less resources. To some extent, the staff cuts are understandable; in the article, senior editors cited an inefficient process where 12 editors might make changes to one piece of copy. However, there is also a good quote from Post sports columnist Mike Wise:

The utter lack of people on the desk who yearn to fix our messes and make decent copy readable is, industrywide, appalling. The advent of writers' stories going directly to the Web site is even more frightening, even in blog form. Beyond the misspellings, you need that one or two good reads -- and that one good-taste editor -- to catch you from falling on your face. About the only thing we have to stake our reputations on in this industry is integrity, and when not enough people have your back on the desk to ensure that you get everything imaginable right and that your tone doesn't undermine your credibility, it really rips at that integrity.

Lastly, in the New York Times Books Review on Sept. 26, Dorothy Gallagher paid tribute to her deceased copyeditor and mentor, Helene Pleasants. At the end, she laments that "Nobody has Helene’s standards; nobody reads like Helene anymore."

What can a young copyeditor learn from all this? For starters, that my chosen profession is facing a dark age. Also, that many writers still believe in credibility and integrity in a time that seems to emphasize the mass production of text more for web traffic and profit generation than for informing and cultivating the public. To survive as a copyeditor in this climate demands more than just an expert eye for sentence style, a blue pencil or red pen, and a stubborn, perfectionist personality.

Google Top 10 Challenge

2009-01-14T09:49:00.004-05:00

If there's one thing I knew nothing about before deciding to start an online business, but now know is essential, it's SEO , or Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the use of various techniques to boost your site's ranking in search engine results. A higher ranking means more traffic, and therefore, more business. Seems obvious, yet before last week, I had never seen the acronym SEO before, and I certainly didn't realize how much internet content is devoted to it. On the freelance job boards I've been watching, companies are paying a lot of money for people to do SEO work on their sites.

When I began doing research so I could optimize my site, I realized very quickly that of all the top ranked sites of freelance copyeditors at Google, only one is deliberately being promoted using SEO. Depending on the search term, only one or two show up in the top ten results, usually toward the bottom. Now, I may be new to business, but I know an opportunity when I see one.

My goal is to get my site in the top ten Google results for several search terms related to editing by the end of February.

It's probably going to take a lot of focus and research, but it can be done. SEO is a highly demanded service, and if I'm going to be editing websites or blogs for clients, having a top-ranked site will be a big selling point. I'll be posting everything I learn here. There's already a ton of information on the subject out there, so a little more can't hurt.

I'm going to need help though. Here's where you come in, friends. If you had a document, say an article, a letter, or a website, and you wanted to find someone to edit, proofread, or even just write it for you, how would you go about finding someone? Please leave a couple suggested search terms, or any other method you might use, in a comment on this post.

Biannual, semiannual - How often?

2009-01-12T18:04:00.002-05:00

People often confuse the meanings of the terms biweekly and semiweekly. If you found out you were required to be at a semiweekly meeting, went to the first one, then showed up two weeks later, you’d be pretty embarrassed – you missed two intervening meetings! The -weeklies can be kept straight pretty easily. Just look at the prefixes: bi- means two, and semi- means half, so biweekly is every two weeks, and semiweekly is every half week, or twice per week.

Now get ready for the really confusing part.

By the above logic, you might be inclined to show up for a biannual meeting once now, in January, 2009, and then show up again in January, 2011. That’d be even worse than missing your semiweekly meeting – biannual means the same thing as semiannual, and they both mean twice a year!

If something only occurs every two years, like a House of Representatives reelection campaign, the word to use is biennial.

The worst part is that these words can be carelessly used to mean either twice per week or every other week, so we never really can tell how often that conference happens, short of calling the organizers.

Grammar Girl and Grammarphobia both recommend avoiding the combination of bi- or semi- with -weekly or -monthly. I wouldn’t hesitate to extend this prescription to the -annuals. If you mean twice a year, for clarity’s sake, just say it!

Source: The Associated Press Stylebook, 42nd ed., pp. 29-30.

What not to read

2009-01-07T14:31:00.003-05:00

Gmail just gave me the heads up about a new website that lets users rate books in terms of how they skew toward a liberal or conservative bias. Thanks to bookbias.com, you don't even have to read the front cover of a political book or know anything about it's author to know whether or not it jives with your current political opinions. I'll never get duped into reading something I don't already agree with again!

A small note on spacing.

2009-01-07T14:22:00.003-05:00

It's a fact of grammar and usage that teachers tend to teach rules that are outdated, if not just plain wrong, and that students remember them. It's another fact that anyone is capable of being inflexible with these rules, even in the face of contrary information.

For as long as I can remember caring about such things, I've been insistent that periods and commas are always followed by two spaces, and have had several arguments on the subject. However, The Chicago Manual of Style states, in section 2.12, "Line spacing and word spacing," that "A single character space, not two spaces, should be left after periods at the ends of sentences (both in manuscript and in final, published form) and after colons." I stand corrected.

Now at the end of every sentence I type, my keystrokes are PERIOD SPACE SPACE BACKSPACE. Some habits are hard to break.

Mind your Ps and Qs

2009-01-06T16:16:00.002-05:00

I didn't mention it here, but I asked myself recently, "Kevin, how does one pluralize a letter? It seems silly to put an apostrophe there, because the apostrophe is clearly only meant to signify the possessive!"

Well, my answer came along in a great blog post today at Daily Writing Tips. No apostrophes ever! Even with lower case letters, in which case, if you feel like it, you can put them in quotes like so - "p"s and "q"s - though it looks a little funny.

I don't really mean to keep writing about grammar over here - the topic is supposed to be editing. The two just go hand in hand. There's plenty of grammarians out there, and I don't intend to join their pontificating ranks.

Common Latin Phrases Revealed

2009-01-06T11:57:00.002-05:00

Latin phrases pop up frequently in reading, no matter what genre you read most. They are conventionally italicized, which calls attention to them, but at the same time, their meaning is not always immediately apparent to those of us who aren't citizens of the Roman Empire. I spent years just skipping over them, satisfied with my vague understanding of what they meant, and I'm sure many of us do the same thing. They're so common that we can understand how they're used without ever knowing what they actually mean.

Problems occur when we try them out in our own writing. Latin phrases might suggest themselves as appropriate when one is making a point, especially when trying to sound erudite. It can be tempting to use common Latin phrases that we don't necessarily understand, though, and when we do this, we risk sounding pompous, foolish, or both.

The following is a sample of Latin phrases often encountered and less frequently understood, that should be used rarely at best. I've often found myself typing, then rapidly backspacing a few of these

Ad infinitum. To infinity. This signifies a repetitious process that cannot concievably be exhausted. The tide comes in and goes out, comes in again, and goes out again, ad infinitum. Not to be confused with et cetera.

Ad nauseam. To the point of nausea. This tells us that something, such as a discussion, has gone on to the point where everyone is sick of it. Formally, it can refer to an assertion that is used repeatedly when other logical assertions are available. TV ad campaigns are often repeated ad nauseam. Often mispelled "ad nauseum."

Et cetera. And so forth. This is used at the end of the list to indicate that more examples could be included, but aren't. It does not mean there are inexhaustable other examples. The use of "etc." can make a list seem vague, indicating sloppy thought by the writer, and should be a avoided.

Per se. By itself. This one is a grave and frequent offender. People often incorrectly stick "per se" at the end of a clause to indicate that the idea just expressed is imprecise or vague, or that they expect their reader to misunderstand them at first. It indicates that the clause or its object contains more nuance, and should always be followed by an explanation. The phrase is not pretentious, per se, but it's often used by pretentious writers.

Sic. Thus. Sic is used in quoted passages to indicate that an error in the original has been preserved, and that this is not the fault of the author doing the quoting. Since quoted passages must be reproduced faithfully, "sic" can come in handy, especially when quoting poorly edited or handwritten documents.

Sui generis. Of its own kind. This is a Neo-Latin term (created after the Renaissance) found mainly in legal and academic contexts. It refers to something that can be understood only according to its own substance, that defies categorization or comparison to other examples. The impact of the internet on our lives must be understood sui generis; it has no historical parallel.

Do a Google blog search for any of these, especially "per se," and you will quickly realize that the misuse of Latin phrases has been going on ad nauseum for a long time. These six examples by no means exhaust the list; they're just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. Feel free to comment and suggest any others.

A Headache of a Question and an Honest Inquiry

2008-11-16T20:14:00.005-05:00

I recently came across a phrase I knew needed fixing in a current editing project. "An historical overview..." doesn't sound right to me, and raised a question I've occasionally pondered before. Should the article a or an be used before a word beginning with H?

A and an are indefinite articles; when you want to talk about a noun, such as "an apple" without talking about a specific noun - "the apple" - or more than one noun, you introduce it using one of these. A is used for words beginning with consonants, and an for words beginning with vowels. This is a straightforward rule, and we use these articles frequently without a second thought.

However, when the noun in question begins with the letter H, our assumptions are thrown out the window. H is a consonant, but some words with an initial H will not accept a. A quick search turned up a few articles indicating that the appropriate usage is determined by the pronunciation of the noun in question.

In many words, the initial H is silent, so the word effectively begins with a vowel. In these cases, an is the acceptable pronoun. Where the H is pronounced, a is used. Thus we might read A History of An Herbal Tea.

Of course, pronunciation does not establish a uniform rule; H-dropping is subject to regional variation. Even Merriam-Webster defers to the author: "You choose the article that suits your own pronunciation." We Americans would go to the cafe and order "an 'erbal tea," while a British person might ask for "an herbal tea," with the H enunciated If the rule is determined thus, we're bound to come across a few articles that brush us the wrong way whenever we read something written, translated, or edited by a Continental.

World Wide Words also suggest that many people follow an "extended rule:" when the stress is on the second syllable of an H word and not the first, an is used. We might check in to an hotel in an historical area. However, the article states later that younger people tend to prefer a to an in all cases, and I tend to agree. I changed "an historical" to "a historical" in my client's manuscript, because even such acceptable use of an really rankles me.

It seems difficult to draw a conclusion here. I think it would be best as an editor to apply the rule according to the speech of the author's intended audience. Next time this issue arises, it'll be a matter for the style sheet, though I'll probably encourage the author to follow my recommendation and use a in all questionable cases.

I raised another question for myself in this writing. When a word from our lexicon other than a noun is used as the subject of a sentence, should it be in quotations, italicized, or left alone? For example, should one use "a" before H or an before H? The Wikipedia article "A and an," perhaps because it is authored by multiple people, does not use either style consistently. Unfortunately though, this is a matter for another entry and another night.

An Elegy for Michael Crichton

2008-11-06T21:35:00.002-05:00

As I read this NY Times article about Michael Crichton yesterday, I found myself mentally checking off the titles of the books I'd read. I wouldn't call myself an avid reader or adoring fan of Crichton, but weighing in at seven titles, he's a strong contender - at least in terms of quantity.

As for quality, looking back now I can see how nearly each of these novels astounded me with their tightrope plots, encompassing worlds, and playful reflection. I was shocked and appalled when a junior high school teacher pointed out the "Fiction" label on the spine of The Great Train Robbery and refused to admit its facticity. At a wide-eyed fourteen, I stumbled upon my first lesson in the mechanics of female genitalia, a third of the way through Disclosure. Congo capsized my vague trust in our human evolutionary superiority.

I never went to much effort to seek out his novels, but every couple of years one would come my way anyway. Each time I expected to have outgrown him, but each time found my enjoyment of the book far greater with the expansion of my sophisticated literary palette. Timeline resonated with a passing taste for the Arthurian; Eaters of the Dead, most recently, recalled Borges with its presentation as a systematically studied translation and mythological bearing.
Few books have absorbed my attention as fully as each of these has. They always seem to end suddenly, after more things had happened than could possibly take place in the two or three days it took to read about them, making my return to reality - school the next day - seem a colorless indignity.

Although totally escapist, these books never take us to comfortable places, but ones where barely knowable phenomena threaten our deeply held, even subconscious, convictions of safety and consistency. For all his intellect, Crichton found an accessible, popular mode of expression in detailed, action-packed novels that happen to lend themselves to film adaptation. As an editor, I can take a lesson in focus and subtlety from his oeuvre, on top of all the hours of entertainment.

Welcome to my blog!

2008-11-04T16:28:00.002-05:00

Introducing the Between the Lines Editing Blog!

Here I'll post about my projects (with client permission, of course,) as well as grammar, books, and other things about the internet. I hope you'll find it interesting. I hope I find time to update frequently.