Ruminations, mostly editorial
Tunnelsstrictly editorial
November 29, 2006
The funny thing about the novel that will never end is that I think it won't. Thanks to the technical changes in the dialog, each time I finish the edit of one page, I've added two to the total. Or so it seems. Nonetheless, I can smell the light at the end of the tunnel... which makes me a singularly special person. Or so it sometimes seems.
November 29, 2006 7:22 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Oxbridgestrictly editorial
Grin grin smile smile. Having in a manner of speaking begun my editorial career with Oxford University Press, I now seem goody goody to have got a minor toe in the side door of Cambridge.
I received your resume from Ed Carey, and I am contacting you regarding two temporary copyediting positions we have available in the journals department at Cambridge University Press. The position for Perspectives on Politics must be filled immediately. I have about 29-35 book reviews of approximately 3-5 pages each which need to be copyedited by December 15. The other job, copyediting manuscripts for the Canadian Journal of Political Science, is more flexible and can be completed after the PPS project.
Whither the toe goeth...
November 29, 2006 3:20 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Wholesalestrictly editorial
November 28, 2006
From time to time, a wholesale delete is the only solution.
Reviewing the latest data of injured and dead drew tears to her eyes, as Air Force One made low altitude sweeps over areas devastated by radiation fallout. Transferring to Marine One for a closer view, Victoria flipped through papers, cross-referencing casualty lists with topographical maps, directing her pilots to areas of greatest damage. Witnessing the anxiety on her face, as she walked through hospital wards and overflowing hallways of dead, injured and dying, George tried as best he could to comfort the president while monitoring events set in motion by her executive order, signed the previous day. Watching cable news analysts on the return flight, they silently watched fellow Republicans broadcast criticism for her lack of action. Placing the latest rating numbers to the side, George reassured the president, “well, latest polling shows the entire country favors annihilating Iran.” With eyes remaining fixed on the flat screen monitor, Victoria added, “my son reminded me of an old military axiom, that twice as many troops are required to hold onto, than it takes to seize a place.” Eyes red and with exhaustion written on her face, she looked away from the screen, through the aircraft’s windows to the rust colored sky refracting light from the setting sun. “I won’t commit this country to any action or expedition unless there’s a reward other than revenge.” Turning her head back to the screen, she continued in a lower tone, “we’ve shed enough blood being the world’s policeman with little or no return; I intend to change that."
This is a tunnel. A very long tunnel. Somewhere, god willing ....
November 28, 2006 1:01 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Social chatterstrictly editorial
On page 262 of 370, I'm tempted to switch places with Sisyphus.
Attempting his utmost to dribble social chatter without informing, a tall distinguished looking man stood to the side of the large room, fending off inquisitive females unaided, until his uniformed companion intervened offering a glass of champagne.
November 28, 2006 7:29 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Contemplating diet plansstrictly editorial
November 27, 2006
Maybe she needs to go on a diet? Or is she, perhaps, rather sinewy?
Spread out on sofas and club chairs, she sat in a less comfortable armchair, placing a folder down on the coffee table before being seated.
The truly abysmal passages compound semantic and factual horror with gaggable emotion and overwrought adjectives. It's odd in a way, that as bad as a decidedly weak manuscript may look on initial review, the quality seems nonetheless to drop exponentially after the contract is signed and the work in progress. Sigh. One wonders about the perverse humor of the universe.
November 27, 2006 2:07 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Refuelingstrictly editorial
If I had a dime for every misplaced modifier and dangling participial phrase, we'd all be in clover. This does, in its way, entertain.
Knocking on the cockpit door, the flight engineer responded to the president’s gesture for silence. Thinking the flight steward arrived with his order for coffee, the senior pilot busily checked instrumentation, snapping “where’s that coffee airman?” Turning to George, who had peeked in, “would you mind getting the colonel some coffee,” brought the officer’s head quickly around as he provided a red-faced apology. With a co-pilot’s right seat view, Victoria took a mental break, chatting while observing the refueling of the remaining Raptors now a safe distance away.
Sigh
Perfectly sensible money ($4000) if I could only finish.
November 27, 2006 12:25 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Tax deductionsstrictly editorial
From: dcpubs@yahoogroups.com
I've been advised not to bother with home-office deductions because they're audit bait and (mostly) because depreciation is countered by tax consequences when the house is sold (having to pay cap gain taxes on profit above the *depreciated* value of the home office space..
To: dcpubs@yahoogroups.com
Interesting. I think I'm disagreeing in part — primarily because of the "audit bait" mention.
Context: I've been calculating home-office deductions for twelve years. The first six were in rented space, the last six not. I've undertaken only one repair that affected my office space. I'm about to undertake another. I've been audited once (after the repair) and gone to accountants for a review of my preparations twice. Each time I've been vetted, though the accountants have given suggestions for alternative approaches on certain details. Call me a control freak, but I prefer doing my own taxes and doing them manually. This said, I never depreciate if I can legally take a deduction off the top, which by and large I find I can.
FWIMBW.Now, of course, I get a friendly offlist response asking for more detail and this have to defend my disagreement with facts. Open mouth . . .
November 27, 2006 11:13 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Counting the hoursstrictly editorial
November 21, 2006
Worse than having too much work to do and too many directions to follow is being shackled to a chair in a lightly populated office on an old computer with a slow connection and too little to do, $50 an hour notwithstanding. One's mind wanders. One reflects that as difficult the discipline of cracking out a medium copyedit at a rate of 10 pages an hour, even more difficult is dragging same out to 1 paragraph an hour.
One remembers recalcitrant manual typewriters. One recalls memorizing poems for elocution class some years back.
On the eighteenth of April in seventy-five, hardly a man is now alive, who remembers that famous day and year...
Who touches a hair on yon gray head, dies like a dog, march on, he said...
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies [...] And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
November 21, 2006 3:48 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Site visitstrictly editorial
November 20, 2006
We have commuted to a client office for the first time in what feels like a decade but is, on reflection, barely four years. All in all —three miles of walking and thirty miles of subway travel each day— a tidy experience. Too little to do but generous enough recompense, affable people, and pleasant circumstances. The $800 and scribbing edits by hand on the train amount to a worthwhile change of pace, but only that.
Among other things, single-tracking metro trains entertains only on the first go-round. "Would passengers to Glenmont please move to the Shady Grove platform. All Red Line trains will arrive and depart from the Shady Grove platform. Please stand back. Another train will arrive in one minute. Will all Glenmont passengers please return to the Glenmont platform. Please stand back. Another train will arrive in two minutes." How many passengers can fit in a subway train? Far more than the laws of physics would indicate. How many people can cram onto a subway platform? Far more than security guards would prefer.
We have also gotten an increase in our hourly rate at Russell Sage. Not by much, but very pleasant when one hasn't asked for it. The next question being how soon we can move beyond the introductory rate at Sage Publications.
Will we work on our political thriller tonight? Have we the stamina . . .
The momentary silence was deafening, as all watched this middle aged, elegant beauty dance effortlessly across the floor.
Hiking their way up a hillside, the vice president and Frank Gwenyth loquaciously bantered like two teenage boys who had skipped school.
Not tonight, Josephine.
November 20, 2006 9:15 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Alka seltzerstrictly editorial
November 18, 2006
An academic journal slides gracefully into oblivion. Relative oblivion. Relative to me.
A check in the amount of thirty-five fifty-five (no decimals), made out to me, arrived today. The last check. The last issue. The last three years ...hmm... a most interesting stretch in its way, and the acerbic essence of a few individuals indelibly imprinted on the cranial log. Mercifully, however, it is all very much ended.
Wahooooooooooooooo !!!!
November 18, 2006 7:30 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Content is kingtangential
November 16, 2006
Sunday I drove through the rain and downtown Washington, DC to the Building Museum for a volunteer event. On the way I listened to CSPAN and a lecture by Lee Kuan Kew, the former prime minister of Singapore, the first PM, thirty years service. I'm told he is the biggest ego to hit Asia since Mao died. That puts a spin on things ....
His talk, which he had given on October 19 —as the leaves turned in the Shenandoah— was one from the Tate Lecture series, sponsored by SMU in Dallas.
The subject was global and timely, centering on and in fact titled opportunities in Asia, challenges in Middle East. I was, ego or no ego, entranced. I'm no longer sure why. Admittedly commonsensical, much of it. O well.
SMU had no transcript. CSPAN had no transcript. The Singapore embassy—I learned today—did. Now I do.
Read: Opportunities in Asia, Challenges in Middle East
November 16, 2006 9:27 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Great American Novel (cont.)tangential
Rain falls. The woods are dreary and smell of mold. One wonders about being nabbed by the secret copyright police for loose translation of convention. This does not daunt the artistic urge ...
[click to enlarge]
November 16, 2006 6:53 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Words one can do withoutstrictly editorial
November 15, 2006
The beginning, I've decided, of a list that will end up longer —perhaps— than I might like . . .
philanthropoid
November 15, 2006 8:31 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Dentist, deadline, dinnertangential
Order of the day: first the dentist and the veneer, then a deadline for a manuscript, finally a long-delayed dinner with a neighbor friend.
In the meantime, one's moral obligations ... forty minutes looking over discussion lists and finding the titles and authors of a book on ghostwriting that one has panned loudly and publicly, and reading, among other things, BBC news, but let it be known primarily checking Rob and Bucky and Satchel, without whom the day would launch badly.
Some call all this procrastination. Most accurate observation.
[click to enlarge]
November 15, 2006 7:42 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Nomenclaturetangential
November 14, 2006
Moving with as much dispatch as possible through a lucrative manuscript that recounts (in lucid if long-winded prose) the development of social science philanthropy, I pause with a grin that would have gotten me in considerable trouble in grade or high school.
Call it a pseudonym and everso apt. Maria Roustabout.
Just like riding a bicycle ...
November 14, 2006 10:35 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Seeing the unseenstrictly editorial
To avoid the headache, doubtless utterly my own making, of the EFA website, I dwell for too long a time on the picayune vagaries of scholarly and academic writing. On one absurdity in particular, the concept of a "see unpublished manuscript" reference. The camaraderie of editorial discussion lists provides, at least, some solace.
Last night ...
G: The stumbling block —just to be clear— is telling the reader to go check the unpublished paper, which by definition the reader cannot do.
A: Well that's just plain *rude* of the author. Rewording is certainly called for.
And this morning ...
L: Helen asks logically for "an explanation that makes a modicum of sense" regarding putting an unpublished paper in a reference list.
Unpublished papers get circulated a lot a scientific conferences, and are often works in progress. And sometimes they are written by students for coursework, sometimes even a thesis. And sometimes they are papers that were meant to be published but never got that far. Or maybe they are reports originally meant for internal distribution. In any case, just because they are not published does not mean they are unavailable. The interested and dedicated reader can track down the author (or sometimes institution) and ask for them. At the very least, the reader should be able to contact the author of the article in which it was referred to and ask for a copy.
It would be great if all referenced material was published. Would certainly make our lives easier. But it's messy out there. If you're at a conference, listen to a great speaker, and pick up a copy of his manuscript afterward and simply HAVE to refer to it in your work because it set you on a specific path, it would be a shame if you couldn't because the manuscript has not progressed far enough. Your choice would be either to ignore this great idea, or lie about it and claim you got it on your own. Given those choices, I'd rather see credit go where it's due — to an unpublished paper.
G: Many thanks for a comprehensive and sound explanation, but I admit I'm still puzzled by the rationale of a "see unpublished paper X" reference. It's the see component &mdash "Ho there, see something you can't see" — that ties me in knots. I therefore edited it to read "unpublished paper X says so and so." The author and manuscript are still a citation and a reference list entry and can still be tracked down. They just don't sound (to me) quite so (ahem) silly.
L: Well, that's just because you're thinking and actually reading the material instead of mechanically editing!!Seriously, I think this is one of those things that researchers are so used to that it doesn't bring them up short. That doesn't make it right, however. I think your edit was a good one.
Sigh.
November 14, 2006 8:06 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
RIP to an old flamestrictly editorial
November 13, 2006
Another overly fine (or simply outmoded, possibly misguided from the outset) point of distinction bites the dust. Having surrendered to ambivalence on the serial comma, I find myself suddenly seeing other word choices and punctuation conventions differently. In this bog have now settled the colon and my old flame the em dash, though and although, and last but not least policy making.
The last of these is, in fact, a bow to Merriam-Webster 11 and Mr. Emerson. At the same time, mind you, I stand firm when it comes to since in a causal sense and the rampant flagrant misuse of while. They can die another day.
November 13, 2006 2:11 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
The audience questiontangential
Who reads the great American novel? For whom is it written? Bucky might know.
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November 13, 2006 8:30 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Sage test resultstrictly editorial
November 10, 2006
A nice close to the week.
....I'm the one who evaluates copyediting tests for Sage Publications. Your skills place you among the few candidates who make the cut, and I have recommended you to the managing editor of Sage Books. I'm returning your test with a little feedback and some other notes that should help as [you] copyedit for Sage. I'm also attaching a file with a few notes about how Sage style differs from APA style....
Tenacity pays off. Now, of course, to anguish myself silly when the first manuscript arrives.
November 10, 2006 12:49 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Distaff productivitytangential
November 8, 2006
Yesterday, Court served as a judge. Specifically, a check-in judge in precinct 0705 of Montgomery County. Not a lick of work done, of course. For my pains, $145 to be paid on December 15, a bonus point with a client, and a clear conscience.
The alarm went off at 4:15. I left the house at 5:50. The drive down Grubb and up Beach took, of course, barely 5 minutes. I got home about 10 o'clock that night. A long day? Perhaps. An engaging one.
Very nearly a 65 percent turnout. One face to face with Paul Wolfowitz and another with Charles Krauthammer. In the line of duty, I asked and confirmed their street addresses and birthdays, but mercifully —in the name of efficient use of valuable cranial real estate— remember neither for neither.
Krauthammer cannot sign his name. He could sort of hold his voter card and voter action slip on his leg with his forearm, but it was tricky. He's a pleasant looking man, with a kind way about him. Also gracious. As he began to spell his name aloud, I cut in saying simply, "ah yes. I read." He smiled faintly for a millisecond. "Thank you."
The sole technical snafu of the day was the voting machine that broke down early. A card got stuck and could not be extricated. The voter got a new card, and all the gruesome details to record the troublesome one and the second issue to the same voter was recorded on paper in several places.
The memorable troubles came from several individuals in different circumstances. One insisted on a paper ballot because he didn't trust the machines. Apparently he's done this for the last three or four elections. Each time, he finally goes to the voting machine and votes electronically rather than not voting.
An obnoxious fellow in all senses of the word. Another —a medical doctor, I recall his tie was sage green and his manner affable— insisted that his cell phone was off as he voted, saying only his pager was ringing, and was exquisitely rude and loud and belligerent to the chief judge who came over and addressed him on the issue, though he finally turned it off.
One brought his son and his son a camcorder (a white finish, to recall an irrelevant detail), insisting that the polls were a public place and that one could film anything one liked. A vehement series of exchanges, lasting quite a while but seeming to end --it was a mob scene and I had to focus on what I was there to do-- with amazing friendliness and laughs and handshaking and references to the next election.
Most rewarding ... the sense of vitality and the decidedly high number of very young and very old voters.
One couple —I can see them now— were so like the essence of my parents I was almost dumbfounded. He was the same year as Captain, she two years after Mimi. 1915 and 1918. They tottered off, white-haired and smiling, ready to wait as long as necessary, leaning on something, to vote. I got a glimpse of them later, he standing off to one side of a voting booth as she cast her ballot. I was poised to defy anyone to ask him to move. No one did ask.
All that came close to that was the number of 18-year-olds.
It was a good day.
November 8, 2006 10:00 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Turns of phrasestrictly editorial
November 6, 2006
I bumped into a phrase, came to a sudden stop, and now watch as instincts and inclinations and second guesses battle it out. The fighting's ugly. They're debating how best to juxtapose danger and corrupt and illegitimate. I've turned to intercessors.
Most prominent was the conviction that ideological movements of all sorts had revealed themselves to be highly dangerous, let alone corrupt and illegitimate, as bases of political regimes.
Garner says that let alone used to mean not to mention. (What on earth does "used to mean" mean? Does it no longer mean that? Does it mean something entirely different now?) Bernstein discusses it in relation to leave along, saying it can and should exclusively mean allow to go undisturbed. (This doesn't help at all.) Fowler 2 notes that it equates to not to mention, that it was once deemed colloquial by OED, and that it now has literary status. (This doesn't help much and I've never been impressed by ostensible status.)
Should things be left as they are? Might things be changed? No. Yes. In that order.
We will go with ...
Most prominent was the conviction that ideological movements of all sorts had revealed themselves to be highly dangerous—and often enough corrupt and illegitimate—as bases of political regimes.
We love what we do.
November 6, 2006 10:32 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Freelancingtangential
November 3, 2006
If I could master this, I wouldn't have to tie myself in knots about organization memberships and editorial tests, nor about picayune clients.
[click to enlarge]
November 3, 2006 11:11 AM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
Off the cufftangential
November 1, 2006
One wonders at the many gaps between a prepared statement and the words that fall off the tongue.
You know, education — if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.
versus
I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.
O lordy lordy lordy.
November 1, 2006 12:19 PM | Add comment | Read comments (0)
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