Editing Is NOT An Exact Science!
April 24, 2007 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
Editing is not an exact science any more than writing is. Two professional writers and editors went through my new ebook and guess what? Each one spotted totally different errors! And only a couple of the suggested corrections were of the “it’s my opinion” type.
Between them, they picked up about half a dozen spelling errors or wrong word choices – and there were no duplicates! How about that?
I’ll bet if two more editors went through it, each would find at least an error two.
Small wonder we see errors that slip through in so many books and magazines.
Write well and often,
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That’s why I couldn’t be an English teacher.
I’m not enough of a perfectionist!
Good luck with your e-book!
truly,
Sylvia C.
That’s why I couldn’t be an English Teacher.
I’m not even close to being a perfectionist!
Good luck with your ebook!
truly,
Sylvia C.
me too!
Anne,
It’s funny that you should mention that, because when preparing for our May issue, “The Wings of Self-Promotion,” I sent an article to two contributing editors and received totally different results. This happens quite often. Of course, there are standard rules that we all abide by, but as you mentioned, even spelling is subjective! I think it’s because of the differences in the English language, in what passes as acceptable, and personal opinion. There are so many different ways to say something, and many of them are correct. It’s all a matter of sound, and what’s musical to the editor. Even MS Word has its own opinion, which isn’t always correct. It tends to give yucky green underlines to brief sentences it considers fragments, but sometimes those fragments are called for. To make a strong point. (E.g. I know Word would give that last sentence a green underline, LOL.)
fortunately word is fairly easy to ignore!