Category: General

Introductions and such

What it doesn’t take to win the Robinson

I’ve been pondering a lot since Friday night. I mean, I was nearly dumbstruck by the events as they unfolded, even with last year’s laureate, Karen Yin, patting my arm and telling me to take deep breaths. (She had asked to sit with me at the banquet so we could catch up and chat. SURE KAREN, WHATEVER YOU SAY.)*

[Note: It wasn’t Karen who did the patting. It was Dan Sosnoski, who nominated me. That’s how verklempt I was. No small feat, conflating those two …]

I can tell you what is not required to win the Robinson Prize for excellence in editing.

No memorization of anything, whether it’s dictionaries, style manuals, or usage guides.**

No big-name connections from past jobs.

No flying around the world to ensure people know who you are, so they’ll vote for you.

No red-carpet moments. (They’d be cool, but are def not required.)

Not self-confidence in the nomination, that’s for damn sure. I was in denial right up into the middle of Sarah Grey’s reading of the news release to the attendees, before she called my name and I somehow managed to walk to the stage. What tipped it? “Register.” I’m the voice in the wilderness. Maybe that will change now.

Not national or international attention prior to the nomination. It’s not like the Oscars. There’s no Golden Globe or People’s Choice to pave the way. You stand on your merits. Period.

Not a string of letters behind your name. I have two BAs: one in British Literature pre-19th century, and one in healthcare administration.*** No master’s degree, certainly no doctorate. I’ve taken two developmental editing courses through the EFA. That’s the extent of my traditional professional development.

I keep rereading the words from my clients, and I continue to be moved nearly to tears. I knew I was a good editor. I love my work. And I figured they thought I was good, too, or they’d not continue to hire me and pay me. I just didn’t know that my peers would think I was that good, too. (Thanks again, Dan, for being a pushy bastard.)

I still feel a bit like Sally Fields, though.****

*Karen Yin is a sweetheart and she knows I’m jesting. We talked about working together on a YA fantasy, and I am STILL STOKED about that.

**My performance in the Merriam-Webster Spelling Bee notwithstanding.

***YES I STYLED IT CLOSED FIGHT ME

****If this means nothing to you, a) you’re a kid and b) I invite you to search for “Sally Fields you like me GIF” and be enlightened.

#SpellcheckCannotSaveYou: a bit of explanation

This has gotten a little attention in the last month or so, mostly thanks to June Casagrande (a fantastic editor-person who’s written a number of highly accessible grammar and style books, most of which I own). One thing that some folks don’t quite understand is why it’s “cannot” and not “won’t” or “will not.”

Simple. And it’s got NOTHING to do with the fucking apostrophe (which kills a hashtag every time, y’know).

I don’t care whose software it is; the fact is, no spellcheck program is able to save you from yourself. It is incapable. It is unable. It CANNOT save you. It can ensure you won’t have any egregious misspellings, but when it comes to homonyms, it cannot save you. If the word’s spelled correctly, but still the wrong word, spellcheck is unable, incapable, powerless to save you.

It’s not a case of it being unwilling to perform, or uninterested in doing the job.

It cannot perform that duty. Only a human brain in conjunction with human eyes and reasoning abilities can parse the difference between cleaver and clever. No spellchecker will flag either of those words, unless for some reason you have manually told it to. (You did know you have that kind of control, right? Like, telling the program to always flag the word “pubic” to save you from mortification?)

Spellcheck cannot save you from errors stemming from correctly spelled words used incorrectly. Not that it will not (although technically, that’s true — it won’t save you, but there’s more to the sense behind the phrasing), but that it cannot. It is not capable. It is unable. It cannot perform that action.

Spellcheck cannot save you.

Obligatory new year post

Not “New Year,” because this has next to nothing to do with the holiday that’s several days past already. Just “new year,” because in fact it is a new year.

Last year there were quite a few changes in our household, but I’m not here to talk about them. Face it; you don’t give a shit about what happens in my house. Not unless it’s editing, and especially if it’s editing YOUR project. So, don’t sweat it. This isn’t the blog equivalent of some dreadful/dreaded holiday letter. Continue reading “Obligatory new year post” →

Back to basics: commas and appositives

I’ll bet I scared someone already with the last word in that title.

Let’s start at the beginning. This post came about because of a conversation on Twitter, begun by this tweet from Andy Bechtel (@andybechtel):

I’m not agreeing with that decision, either. Nor are many folks. But there are a few who don’t understand why it’s wrong. This post is for them. (Maybe it’s for you. I don’t know.) Continue reading “Back to basics: commas and appositives” →

I failed an editing test.

Made you look, didn’t I?

It’s true. A couple of years ago, I took a technical editing test for someone who runs an editorial services company, of which many clients are suppliers to the government. The test comprised a spelling section and a practical section. The latter was a six-page proposal (I’m sure there’s a special term for it, but I’m not aware of what it would be) in a Word file. The instructions were to edit for prose flow, AmE idiom (not use of idioms, per se, but “natural” wording), and GUMmy stuff.

I took my best shot, and sent it off.  Continue reading “I failed an editing test.” →

ACES 2017: The rest of it

Friday night, as I said last time, was the banquet. Because so many of us editor women have embraced colorful hair, there was a group photo taken before we were seated. Eleven of us assembled in front of the (old) ACES logo sign in the hallway for our moment of fame. The largest discussion focused on whether we should line up in ROYGBIV order. (We did not.) As most of us are purple of some flavor or other, we were in the middle, with the green, blue, orange, and red on the outside. Molly McCowan (@InkbotEditor) has rainbow streaks in her blonde mane, and took center position. (I envy her ink.) Continue reading “ACES 2017: The rest of it” →

The State of the Blog: The First Four Years

When Ray and I first had the idea for this blog, we were both solidly in the “English is falling apart, usage is doomed, grammar is abysmal” camp. I, in particular, had just read a few self-published ebooks (for which I paid nothing, in exchange for reviews) that contained a horrifying number of actual errors. I mean, grammatical errors. Not stylistic choices. We’re talking about missing words, wrong words, agreement errors, and so on. Not long after that, during the early discussions about the purpose of a blog (if we were to create one), I decided to hang out my editor’s shingle and help some of these poor (literally – they’re not wealthy folks, as a rule) writers publish professionally edited work. That was in June of 2012.

We’re nearly to June of 2016 as I’m writing this, and man, things have changed for me. (I won’t attempt to speak for Ray. He’s got a full-time job and does freelance game design, writing, and editing as well, and hasn’t been active on the blog for quite some time. We’re both okay with that.) I’ve gone from a very prescriptivist view (this is right, that is wrong, and I don’t know why the hell you’d want to write that like you did) to a pragmatic view (you can read about it here), and I keep inching toward descriptivism a little every day. Why? Mostly because I’ve been learning from linguists and lexicographers over on Twitter. I’ve been editing steadily (indeed, I’ve tripled my income since I started the indie gig), and I learn something from every client. Editing fiction is not like editing textbooks or game rules. If I were editing mostly academic or technical materials, I might well have remained firmly on the prescriptivist side of the fence.

But I’m not, and I didn’t.

So, rather than posting a lot of photos of greengrocers’ apostrophes and other mechanical errors and typos common to public signage (everything from professionally printed billboards to the corner store’s handwritten notice), I’ve been steadily moving toward writing about, well, grammar and usage and mechanics, but in a way that teaches rather than vilifies. I must be doing something right. One of my most popular series of posts remains the trilogy “The Mechanics of Dialogue,” which I wrote in October 2014. I still see people sharing links to that (particularly the third installment about interrupted dialogue) on Twitter. I’m happy it’s of so much interest and use to folks.

I was concerned that there wasn’t a place for my kind of grammar blogging because, frankly, there are already so many amazing grammar bloggers out there, what’s one more? However, some of them follow me on Twitter (and I squeal like a four-year-old when I get a notification that another one has added me!), and we chat sometimes, and that’s something I never dreamed would happen. My writing voice is unlike anyone else’s. My method of teaching is unlike anyone else’s. My blog posts might be about the same topics, but they’re written in a way that’s unlike anyone else’s.

I’m finding my voice. And while I’m doing that, I’m continuing to help writers find and polish theirs.

That’s what it’s all about, four years on.