When GMO goes too far...? (aka "When proofreaders go to the store...)

(Fair warning: No recipe this week. Also no video.)

I'm sure you've all seen the test where you're shown a color word that is actually colored differently than the word's name. It's apparently a test to see whether or not your brain can deal with cognitive dissonance or something like that. (I don't actually know if that's the right term. But it has to do with being able to hold two competing thoughts in your mind at the same time.) Anyway... it's like this:

There's another part of that test where you're asked to say the color of the word, and not simply the word. Which is more difficult to me than trying to hold two competing thoughts at the same time.

I'm not sure what that says about me. (I also don't know that I want to know what that says about me.)

At the same time, however, there's a part of me - the editor/proofreader side - that simply wants to correct these and make them match up. I want the Blue to be blue, and the Yellow to be yellow.

(I'm suddenly wondering what those would be like if you were colorblind - or on a black-and-white screen, for that matter.)

So, that cognitive dissonance is something that I've always found interesting - and it sometimes follows me into the grocery store.

You see foods that are "the wrong color" all the time. Purple potatoes. Yellow tomatoes. Purple carrots. Yellow beets. (Why is it that so many foods alternate between other colors and purple or yellow?)

You also see mini-foods, like personal-sized melons, or overgrown things like giant squash. They've all been modified along the way, and we've gradually accepted them - even if part of our brain thinks "That's not what they were like when I was a kid!"

Well, last week I found something that even I couldn't wrap my head around. I fully admit that it shocked the editor in me - while part of my brain was also thinking "Wait. Is that something new that I don't know about?"

What do you think?

Personally, I think that that is taking genetically modified food just a little too far.

For now, I'll see you in a week!

-----

Do you ever have a point where your job carries over into your life and it makes you wonder what the heck is going on? Does it impact your food choices - or your shopping sanity? Let me know what you've found that has made you go "Hmm...?"

Writing 101: Memoirs and Holidays

Holidays with family and friends can be the perfect time to observe people, retell family stories, and share (or at least compare) memories.

This, of course, means they are the perfect time of year to commit familial genocide to start writing down your history – either for your personal archives or to share with others.*

But, before you launch into your writing, you need to consider what kind of history you want to share. Are you going to be in it – possibly as the hero (or anti-hero) of your own story? Are you going to simply write down the family history as a sort of biographical exploration? Or are you going to use the family as a starting point and interpret it however you wish?

Yes, it’s possible that you might get a good start and then make your decisions as you find what bubbles to the surface, but you’ll still need to know which pieces of your history to pay attention to. Should you jot down tales of the ne’er-do-well uncle you’ve never met? Or would it be better to wax comedic about the game of Life that went horribly wrong when you were 12?

Then there’s also the debate over “truth.” After all, if you put two siblings in the same room and ask about the bike they fought over, you’ll probably get two very different stories.

All of these topics would probably fit under the very broad category of “Memoir,” which is obviously closely tied to the word “memory.”

So, before you begin, it might be good to consider what type of book you’ll say you’ve written when all is said and done and someone asks you about it. (If you’re really not sure, perhaps you should do a few trial pages/chapters/stories and hand them off to an editor – like me, for instance – for input and direction. Having the right writing partner can make all the difference in the world!)

Biography and autobiography fall on the “you need to research this and get the details as right as possible” end of the Memoir spectrum. Whether writing about someone else’s life (biography) or your own (autobiography), you need to make sure you’re sticking to the facts – and, yes, it’s usually most interesting if you tell the full story (both the good and bad). (Though, of course, you don’t have to – it’s your book, after all.) Yes, this sounds a lot like writing a history text – but “history” tends to look at broader aspects of a culture, while biography focuses its light on individuals.

Memoirs, as their own genre, tend to fall in the middle of the “capital-M Memoir” category. When compared to biographies and autobiographies, memoirs can be a little bit loose with specific details, though their intent is (in the hands of most authors) to tell a specific version of the truth – not a fiction.

Far from biography, on the other end of the Memoir spectrum, you’ll find things like “fictionalized memoir” or “historical fiction” or any number of labels that should alert readers that liberties have been taken with some of the “based on a true story” details. These could actually be novels with a historical figure at their center, or short stories and essays about your family that might not be entirely truthful because they were written for enjoyment, not education.

Oh. And if you want your friends and family to still be friends and family when you get done, you should take that into account as you begin, as well. The legal ramifications of writing about someone who didn’t want her/his story told can be just as painful as being hit with a lump of coal pulled from your Christmas stocking. Yes, you can “change names to protect the innocent,” but if you only have one sibling with red hair and your main character has one sibling with red hair… well… people just might figure out who you’re talking about. (And we all know that you never want to piss off a ginger…)

So, should you still work on your book about your family? That’s entirely up to you. (But, if you’ve been thinking about it at all, this would be a good time of year to at least start your research.)

Whether you move forward or not with it is kind of like deciding whether or not to go home for the Holidays – each of them might turn out to be amazing, or they could require large amounts of alcohol, and a few trips to therapy after the fact. It's up to you to decide whether it's worth it.

*Please be aware that a lot of memoirs get written by people who aren’t famous. Some of them are very interesting to read. Some of them aren’t. A certain amount of that falls to the author, but some does fall to the subject, as well. 
Before you dive into any memoir writing – or any writing, really – be sure to decide what you want to get out of it. Will you be happy with a file folder of stories to pass down to your kids? Or do you somehow need it to be a best-seller? As in any writing endeavor your answer to those questions will determine whether or not you’ll eventually see the results as “successful.”

All photos in this post are from StockSnap.io.

Editing 101: When Editors and Authors Collide

One of the strange things about working as a freelance editor in the digital world is that you seldom (if ever) meet the authors you're working with. In fact, depending on where your jobs come from, you might never have any contact at all with the person on the other side of the manuscript.

The latter version is how much of the past year of my freelancing has been: I've been working as a freelance editor and proofreader mostly for one particular company - they've been sending me the jobs, and I've been working on them and sending them back. Frequently, the only "contact" I've had with the authors is putting a note on the final edit saying "Here's what I've done/what you need to do."

Part of me enjoys the no-strings-attached world of that. It's nice to be able to do my work and send it back without any debate or discussion. That work has all been for authors who are self-publishing, and so they can accept or reject my revisions as they see fit (for better or worse) and there's no hard feelings.

On the other hand, there have been a few times when I have had author contact, and that typically does make for a richer experience. It's good to know that we're both working toward the same goal - and that we each understand the role the other is playing.

When I know why an author is using the words she is using to describe a main character, it's easier for me to understand both the character and the author. When I hear from an author that he intends to use 1950s slang for his 2017 character to set him apart from the crowd, then I can also allow that to flavor my responses (and stop questioning what's going on).

There are, of course, those times when authors and editors clash, however. For me, that tends to be when an author is choosing words or phrases that aren't going to be understood by the reader on the other end. After all, I'm not even one to fight over grammar unless something is truly unintelligible. I may point out grammatical errors and offer suggestions for fixing them, but if an author really wants to use them, that's often a style choice.

But when the grammar or word choice or writing style becomes so bad that even I can't understand it (and I've had years of reading between the lines), then I start to push back. And, sometimes, that can be kind of painful.

How much do I push back? Well, to be totally honest, what it comes down to is whose name is going to be on the final product. If I'm going to be named as the person who had final say on the page (which is kind of the implication if you list someone as your editor), then - yes - I'm going to want to have final say.

On the other hand, if the author's name is the only name that's going to appear, I'm more likely to defer to the author for the final decision. (Though I'll want to be able to make all of my recommendations so that I can point them and say "See? I tried!")

Of course, in a perfect working relationship, the two (author and editor) will be working together and finding creative compromises so that both names can be proudly displayed. That's the kind of collision that creates a new star - instead of simply a black hole surrounded by planetary fragments.

-----
All images from Stocksnap.io

We Are All the Caretakers of Our Language

Just because something gets repeated over and over doesn't mean it's true. 

It also doesn't mean that it's good grammar/style/usage. 

Here are two (well, three, really) of my current least-favorite turns of phrase: 

"ISO of" - as in the social media posting "ISO of plumber recommendations." Don't get me wrong - I'm all for getting good plumber recommendations. I'm just not in favor of using "of" twice in that phrase. Because, you see, "ISO" is an abbreviation of "in search of," so "ISO of" in that phrase translates to: "In search of of."

This is, obviously, closely related to the infamous "ATM machine," which, when broken out becomes "automated teller machine machine." I don't know about you, but I really don't need a machine which will give me more automated tellers.

A relatively new phrasing that has been showing up at the bottom of commercials is "Real people. Not actors." This has replaced such phrasing as "Real reactions from real people" or "Participants were not paid for their reactions" and comes alongside other disclaimers such as "Actor portrayal of real reactions." 

What gets me in this is that, in saying "Real people. Not actors." the assumption is to be gained that actors are not "real people." But I'm pretty sure actors are people. They may be paid to perform roles and become other people, but - at the most basic - they're people. Just like all four of the "one out of four doctors" are people. 

I know these are kind of weird little things. But, from a language perspective, they're pretty big - and important to the way we speak and write. 

After all, if we don't take care of our language, who will? 

Writing 101: Working with a Thesaurus Can Be Scary

As we enter the month of Halloween, I'm sure you're already seeing all of the costumes available to help you change your persona for the holiday. In a way, a thesaurus is a costume for your writing. 

When you use a thesaurus, you're taking your usual words (your day-to-day persona) and turning them into something else. But - as with any costume - if you're not careful you can end up getting too much trick and not enough treat. 

To help explain, let's take a look at a basic sentence: 

The guard turned to open the door. 

It's straightforward, right? We probably all have the same basic image in our minds of someone in a uniform pivoting in some way to "un-close" a door of some kind. 

If we grab a thesaurus, we can move all sorts of different directions, though. For instance: 

The sentry twisted to unlock the gate.

Or possibly:

The guardian pivoted to unhinge the portal.

Each of those is evocative of a very different situation. (In my mind, we've gone from a possible prison situation in the original to something possibly medieval, to something that might be science fiction.)

But, if you're not really paying attention to your thesaurus and the parts of speech that the replacement words give you, it can get pretty bad. After all, "guard" can be a verb and "open" can be an adjective. This means that a bad trip to the thesaurus could result in:

The protect changed to overt the ingress.

or

The bulwark revolved to commence the aperture.

Neither of which is as successful as the earlier options. It's kind of like searching for a Halloween costume and instead of buying the Joker you get the Riddler. Or when you're shopping for a vampire costume instead of Dracula you end up looking like Edward Cullen (though, honestly, I'm not sure which is more terrifying).

Your thesaurus can be a great treat - just be careful that you don't get tricked. (And, if you're in doubt, ask an editor. We're here to help!)

**All photos from StockSnap.io.

Proofreading 101: No Job Too Small (or too "Hugh")

When I talk about the work that I do and mention to people that most of my time is currently taken up working on book-length manuscripts, I often am met with "So do you work on shorter things?"

I understand how this could come up if we were talking about writing, because there are certainly different skills involved in writing a 500-word newspaper op-ed or a 50,000-word science fiction novel. I also know that there are editors who have very specific skill sets and specialize in one genre or another. (And, again, they would be looking for different things in short works versus long ones.)

So the fact that I edit pieces that are 125,000-word manuscripts, and also 125-word postcard mailers, is a little odd. I get that. And I definitely do kind of psych myself up in different ways for each of those tasks.

For proofreading, however, the task is pretty much the same whether the piece is a one-page blog post or a thousand-page magnum opus.

I mean... I'm guessing this is wrong - though there is the possibility that the person having the sale is named Hugh...

Proofreading is all about looking for the minor details that have fallen through the cracks along the way. The period that didn't make it at the end of a sentence. The incorrect homophone when their replaced there. Or maybe the paragraph which has a wonky indentation at the start.

No matter what length the project is, those pieces are going to need to be fixed. The only difference is how long the fixing will take.

So, yes, I'll happily work on pretty much anything - whether the project is really small, or the project is... well... "Hugh."

Editing 101: If the Shoe *Doesn't* Fit

I saw something posted on social media, recently, that asked "If Cinderella's shoe was a perfect fit, why did it fall off?"

It's an interesting question in and of itself, but it also got me thinking, once again, about choosing a "perfect" editor (or proofreader, or ghostwriter, or general contractor, or spouse...). What do you do if the one in front of you isn't the one?

It's been a while since we talked about choosing to work with someone on your manuscript. In a lot of cases, it's hard to really tell what the person will be like to work with until you're in the middle of the work. 

This is why working together on a sample chapter or something of that type can be a good place to start. It's a little like on-line dating: you start out knowing nothing about each other, you correspond for a while, then - if everything goes well - you have a first date, and if that goes well then you consider another date (and so on). And you can edit happily ever after.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who "date" on apps that are pretty much one-and-done, and there are a lot of people who hire freelancers that way, too. A number of websites match up freelancers and authors with little more than "Can we get it done in the time we have?" and "How do I pay you?" - not exactly phrases that bring to mind a great relationship. Though, we've probably all used those sites at one time or another, and they're good for what they are. 

When you decide to create a working relationship to move your manuscript forward, however, you need to be sure you're both compatible. This could be as simple as verifying you both use the same style guide, that you both feel the same way about the Oxford comma, or that you both use the same version of the English language (American versus British versus Canadian versus...). 

There can be other issues, though. While you're building your working relationship, many of these topics should be discussed in advance, and some might be deal breakers, depending on how you both feel: 

• Do you both understand the market being written for? (Will your editor know the youth market as well as you do? Will your editor understand the jargon of the business you're writing about?) 
• Do you both hold the same political/social/etc. views? (An editor with a contrary view might yield a rocky relationship, but might also be very helpful in giving counter-arguments and adding depth to your discussions.)
• What are the timelines you're working under - and can your freelancer meet them? (If an experienced freelancer tells you that you're expecting too much work in too little time, he or she probably has a reason for saying so. But, at the same time, if he or she says "no problem" then you need to both be on the same page.)

And, of course:

• What are you willing and able to pay - and can the freelancer work within that framework? (Relationships and money... now that's a tale as old as time.)

If you do your due diligence, and if you and your prospective partner give honest answers to the questions that are raised, you should both know where you stand when you start on your project - or when you decide to say "No, thank you" and move on.

And if you find out that you aren't a match? Remember to keep this polite. Although it's a much more personal process than, say, an oil change, it is still a business transaction - and should be treated as such. 

Consider finding a freelancer to work with to be more like a trip to a shoe store, and less like a trip to the ball. And remember: even the shoe that looks perfect might not fit once you try it on, but don't worry - there are a lot of other shoes in the store.

-----
All photos from StockSnap.io.

Bad, Spellcheck! Bad! (aka sleeping on the job)

I've been working on a manuscript for the past few weeks that has had some, shall we say, "challenges" when it comes to punctuation.

There have been a lot of commas. And ellipses that go on for seven or eight "dots." (Though - unlike the manuscript before this one, the ellipses were used in the proper places, instead of at the end of every line of dialogue.)

These are all pretty standard things to fix, though, and - in the case of the comma usage - can truly depend on the author's "voice" and writing style. Consequently, until I'm truly comfortable in the manuscript, I don't go about willy-nilly getting rid of commas.

What finally got me, though, was a question about commas that came through from the author.

Or, rather, it was a question about comas. You know... those long periods of unconsciousness often caused by traumatic accidents, or induced through medical means.

Yep. The author wanted to know why I kept removing the comas from his manuscript.

"Dude, I don't know what happened. I was reading along and suddenly I was just ... asleep!"

I kind of wanted to assure him that I didn't think his manuscript was going to put anyone into such a state of unconsciousness - but at the same time I wasn't sure whether some of the characters might not end up that way before all is over and done. (The revision process has been known to do that to more than one fictional person.)

In the end, I must admit that I simply explained that not every comma was necessary - and that sometimes it's better to break sentences into smaller pieces, or to use other punctuation (semi-colons or em-dashes, for instance) instead of commas - for the sake of helping readers to follow along.

Spellcheck. The only writing tool I know that can take a short pause between words and turn it into a traumatic period of unconsciousness.

If that's not a good reason to use it sparingly, I don't know what is.

-----
Afraid that you might be under the influence of Spellcheck and unsure how to get out? Contact an editor! We can help break the spell and make sure that none of your commas end up causing comas. Just think of us as a bracing splash of water across the face of your manuscript - in a good way. 

Editing 101: I Am Not a "That" (and neither are you)

All of us have our pet peeves. They range from "people who drive slowly in the fast lane" to "flowers that only bloom during the one week while you're on vacation" and all sorts of things in the middle.

Editors are no exception.

Yes, we follow style guides that give us the basic (and not-so-basic) rules for how material is supposed to be presented. And we lean on dictionaries a lot to confirm spellings and proper usages of words. And we think about how our English teachers explained grammar and usage to us all those years ago. Then, once we have all of that in hand, we go out and apply it to what we're editing.

But, in the same way that we need to figure out the author's own style, we also tend to have our own.

A few examples:

• Current usage is moving toward "they" as a singular, non-gender-specific pronoun. Your editor has to help you decide whether that is right for your piece of writing and its audience. 
• There is constant debate regarding whether or not sentences can end in prepositions. You and your editor should discuss how you feel about that. (Trust me - if you want to make that a hard-and-fast rule, you could end up with some pretty painful sentences.)

And a huge pet peeve of mine, which I probably altered about one thousand times in one of the last things I worked on:

• Current usage frequently allows the pronoun "that" to refer to a person, instead of only indicating objects/places/animals/etc. 

Here's the thing: who and whom (yes, I realize a lot of people find "whom" to be archaic) are made to refer to people. Sometimes, it's obvious:

• Who is at the door?
• Who gave you that bouquet?
• To whom does this sandwich belong?

I can't imagine anyone saying "What is at the door?" or "What gave you that bouquet?" And "To what does this sandwich belong?" sounds to me like someone at a deli is trying to figure out why there is an extra sandwich after all of the orders have been bagged up.

When it comes to usage within a sentence, though, it can get a little more interesting:

• "Who is the person that is at the door?" should be: "Who is the person who is at the door?" 
• "Do you know the person that owns that?" should be: "Do you know the person who owns that?"

I realize that this, in the broad scheme of life, is not a life-and-death situation. But it is a person-versus-object situation. And, while it's easy to fall into the "that" usage, it makes people into things with just the change of a word. Which, to me, seems like a bad thing to do.

I can't imagine anyone saying "Who is the person what is at the door?" (Can you?) But again, in essence, that's what the "that" in that sentence is doing. It's making a person into an object.

Personally, I don't want to be an object - I'd rather be a person. And, when I'm working on an edit, I do my best to make sure that the people are people throughout, as well. (Unless... you know... it's part of the story where a person becomes an object, but that situation would probably need a whole different set of rules.)

Publishing 101: Font Smatter

I debated for a while on what to call this post. To give you an idea of what we'll be discussing, here are two of my other options:

Graphic Smatter

Space Smatter

Yep. We're talking about unfortunate font/graphic/space choices that can truly alter how your reader sees (and understands) what you're working on.

On the most basic level, this can be something like the choice you make when offered Times New Roman, Calibri, and Comic Sans. Each has a purpose and a place - and they're not entirely interchangeable.

For most fiction works, a serif font (like Times New Roman) is used. For a lot of non-fiction works (or online web pages), a sans-serif font (like Calibri) is used. For comic books (or for comic relief), a font like Comic Sans can be used. But there aren't really any hard-and-fast rules. Mainly, you just want to make sure that your readers are able to read what they are being presented (and, in the event of misplaced usage of Comic Sans, avoid ridicule).

When we move on to design elements - such as cover art - it becomes important that the font chosen not only be legible, but also be evocative of what is inside the book. Good graphic designers know a lot about how fonts impact viewers - and many of them have even created their own fonts along the way. (There's a very cool story about fonts in a book called Marcel's Letters - which is part history, part memoir, part font-creation. And, okay, I'm especially partial to that particular font because we used it for all of our wedding materials.)

When fonts get artsy, though, they can also become hard to read. Think of graffiti that - to many of us - might look like blobs or scribbles, but actually contains names. Or think of the doodles you used to put in the margins of your notebooks in junior high, where your name became a dragon or a daisy. Those may look great as finished products, but could you really still read them?

Oh - and I should mention, of course, that spacing is incredibly important. If you've ever looked at a page of text where the words are spread from side to side without ragged right-hand margins, you've probably also noticed that the spacing between words - and even letters - might be different from line to line. This adjustment of the amount of space before and after a character of type is referred to as "kerning." [CLARIFICATION: While "kerning" refers to the space between individual pairs of characters, "tracking" is a better term to use when discussing the spacing either between words or of an entire line of text.]*

(I won't lie: "justified" text - where the text fills the whole line - makes proofreading a pain, because it's really hard to see exactly how many spaces have been left between words and after punctuation. But that's a story for another day.)

So what does this all have to do with the title of this post? Well, as you may have guessed by now, the title (and the alternative titles) all have to do with reading a piece of text wrong because of how it was originally presented. In other words, what we're talking about today is the fact that:

Fonts Matter

Graphics Matter

Spaces Matter.

This was brought to mind a week ago when I was with some friends and we saw a piece of public art in the Union Depot in Saint Paul. It's a really cool piece, and as you look at it you realize that there is text on it. Which, due to the spacing of the letters - and the placement of the split line between the panels - seems to say: 

Forevers Aint Paul

Even though I was standing in Saint Paul at the time, I first read that and thought "Wow. Someone really doubts Paul's ability to commit." It took me a moment to realize that the intended sentiment was "Forever Saint Paul." 

Think I'm exaggerating? Check it out, and let me know what you think:

Personally, I think it means that fonts, graphics, and spaces all matter. Which is why, along with your editor and proofreader, you probably want to hire a professional to do your artwork. Otherwise, you may just end up dealing with smatter. 

*I'd like to thank my husband for the clarification in the terms used, here. I like to think of this as added proof that you probably don't want your editors doing your typesetting.

Editing 101: The Musicality of Words

I truly love how words sound.

I love the word serendipity, which makes me think of sudden joy.

And the word ephemeral makes me momentarily all happy and warm.

Cozy sounds just . . . well . . . cozy, and spelunking sounds like it will include dripping water in mysterious caves.

There are words, however, that may sound fine but may not mean what you think they mean.

Penultimate is not quite as final as it sounds.

Inflammable actually means the same thing as flammable.

And, getting back to the sound of words, "sang" and "sank" - though both perfectly fine for Spellcheck, as well as sounding almost the same when read aloud - have very different meanings.

Which is why I laughed pretty hard when I read "Exhausted, he sang deep into the chair" earlier this week.

It was, for me, a serendipitous moment of ephemeral joy as I "spelunked" my way through the penultimate chapter of the manuscript.

When Proofreading Gets Graphic(s)

I know I've mentioned many times that Spellcheck should be considered a "frenemy" because it doesn't always catch obvious errors.

Unfortunately, once you get really used to having Spellcheck in all of your documents, you tend to forget that it doesn't check the spelling of graphics. In other words, if you've got an artist creating images for you, those images won't be checked by the program when they're inserted into your work. (Which probably seems pretty obvious.)

What may not seem quite so obvious is that this also applies to a lot of file-creation programs. Even programs that are made to integrate seamlessly into MSWord or other word processing programs don't usually have MSWord-style spelling checkers. In other words, if you import a spreadsheet from Excel, or an image from PowerPoint (to name just two programs) - there is an odds-on chance that your MSWord won't spellcheck them for you.

(I should note that there are ways to have your spreadsheets be readable to MSWord, but they can result in the formatting being really off. So most people - for the sake of formatting ease - tend to import them as images. Hence the problems.)

Much of the time, this isn't a problem. After all, a good graphic tends to rely on the images, not the text. But... well... sometimes even the shortest phrases can have errors that slip past people.

I won't mention which morning show this came from - but if you figure it out that's on you.

And... yep... suddenly that typo is being broadcast to a nationwide audience. (Unless, you know, a "seson" is a Florida thing I don't know about.)

Proofreaders - we're the people who keep your graphic text from resulting in graphic language.

Editing 101: Sometimes Brief Is Too Brief

So often, people send me things saying "I'd like this to be shorter, if possible."

For the most part, I have no problems with that. Many of the authors I work with spend a lot of time putting a lot more words onto the page than they really need. It's often easy to cut out a certain amount of text.

Barring any issues with the author's style preferences, shaving

"Then, he moved to the door and leaned against it, with an air of disgust." 

down to

"Disgusted, he moved to lean against the doorframe." 

is often pretty easy, after all.

And, taking it a bit further, I have to admit that I absolutely love condensing entire books down to the text on the back cover. (I used to work at a job where we had to boil entire operas down to three or four words. That was challenging, but really fun.)

What I'm trying to say is that I completely understand the desire (and need, at times) to strip text down to its components. However, if you go too far it can have some pretty ridiculous - and indecipherable - consequences.

Take, for instance, this set of words found on the packaging for some toothpaste:

Maybe it's just me, but I kind of expect that the listing on a package will be telling me what the product is good for. My expectation is that it will either give me a list of the things the product will do or the things that the product will get rid of. Does that sound right to you?

So, looking at the list, above, and seeing that "cavities" are the first item, I'd assume that this is a list of the things that this toothpaste is going to get rid of:

• cavities
• plaque
• gingivitis

     -----

• enamel
• tartar
• breath
• whitens

Wait... wait... wait...

The first three make sense, but why do we want a toothpaste that gets rid of enamel?

So maybe that line in the middle means that we've switched gears and the rest of the list is good stuff? But what about "tartar"? We obviously don't want more of that. "Breath" has me confused here, too. Is the toothpaste going to get rid of my breath? Is it going to make it easier to breathe? What does that mean?

But even breath (because it's a noun) makes more sense in this list than the verb "whitens." After all, you can't add a "whitens" to something. You certainly can't remove your "whitens" from your teeth.

The more frustrated I became as I looked at this packaging, the more I thought "I must be missing something," so - in the interest of full disclosure - here is a photo of the entire panel:

Okay. So the bottom line does clarify what we're doing with the plaque and tartar. But if we apply the "prevent" idea to the first set ("Prevents cavities, plaque, and gingivitis"), then what do we do with the second set? Do we really want to say that this "Fights enamel, tartar, breath, and whitens"? (And, again, how would one "fight whitens" anyway?)

Luckily, because this was a mini tube from the dentist - and because I tend to keep those for when I'm travelling - I dug around in my stash and found an older box of the same brand.

Thankfully, the older box had been printed before someone at Colgate had decided to eliminate a whole bunch of the helpful words. It yielded much more information:

Remarkably, in the exact same amount of space (and even after giving more space to the logos), we're presented with actual phrases and clauses that make sense.

Okay, if you're paying close attention, you'll see that the older version does not mention enamel at all. But - is it really worse to not mention it? Or is it worse to insinuate that the toothpaste removes it along with the tartar and plaque?

I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that this was one situation where a few too many words were removed for the "author's" own good.

(I won't lie. There's a part of me that is really looking forward to my next trip to the dentist, just so I can see what the latest version of the packaging looks like.)  

Drawing an Editorial Map

As an editor, I spend a lot of time trying to coach authors down the paths I think they should take. I also try to nudge them away from things that I just don't think are working.

I was trying to figure out a nice way to explain this to someone I was working with, recently. Sometimes that's much more difficult than others.

Then, as I was out walking the dog that evening, I came across this driveway, and realized that maybe working with authors is easier than working with some drivers - or maybe contractors - I'm not entirely certain what prompted this.

Luckily, I've never had to resort to neon orange spray paint with my authors.

But it's good to know that it might be an option sometime if I really need it.

Yes. Your Translator Needs an Editor. (And vice-versa)

I am a native English speaker. My "mother tongue" is American English - though I do have some Canadian/British English influences.

The town I grew up in had some German speakers in it, so I picked up some of that along the way. (For instance, I know how to say "turn off the light" and "very hot.") I studied French in college and lived in Paris for a year. So I am relatively comfortable in basic French - but my comprehension is better in Paris than Montreal.

In most other languages, I simply speak food. I can read menus in Italian and Spanish. I can watch a telenovela and guess at the plot - but I can't pretend to know what the actors are saying.

What does all of this have to do with editing? It points out that knowledge of a language isn't the same as full comprehension of the intricacies of that language.

It's a little like telling someone "That is the out way" instead of "That's the exit." Technically, the former isn't wrong, but it also isn't truly right.

I ran into this recently when I was in South America. We found very quickly that - for the most part - you don't throw any paper into the toilets. There are signs posted almost everywhere (at least everywhere that tourists might go) that depict through graphics what you are and aren't supposed to do. Often, these are accompanied by a message in English:

Please do not throw paper into the toilet.

Pretty self explanatory, right? But... well... not everyone understands the use of proper prepositions - and "into" can be kind of confusing - even for native speakers. 

We often saw the also-correct: 

Do not throw paper in the toilet.

We saw the not-quite-correct:

Do not throw paper in to the toilet.

And, once, we saw my favorite warning:

Do not throw paper to the toilet.

Of course, being an editor who was frequently running on little sleep, I really assumed that there should have been an explanation for that last one, such as "Do not throw paper to the toilet, because it has no hands and cannot catch." 

Did it make it impossible for us to understand? No. And, honestly, we could figure out all of those signs. Nothing was so far gone that it left us not knowing what to do or not do. Why? Because each of the translators knew the mechanics of the English language.

But, as an editor, my job is to make sure what I'm working on is not just mechanically correct - it also needs to be grammatically and understandably correct to a native speaker. It needs to feel right to its readers, and not be filled with rough edges that readers have to try to sand off while reading. 

(And, yes, the same can be said for American English and British English - or any different dialects of the same language.)

As with most other processes involved in writing a manuscript, there aren't shortcuts in this. If you want your book to reach its full potential, you need to go through each of the hoops - one round for the translation and (at least) one more to make sure that the translation is not only mechanically correct. (And each of those rounds should be done by a person specializing in that process. A translator for the translation. An editor for the edit(s).)

If you're ever not sure it's worth it, just remember all of those people who may be trying to play catch with a toilet.

Editing 101: The Case of the Traveling Case

Sometimes a misplaced modifier (those words or phrases that are supposed to talk about one thing, but seem to talk about another) are really just too fun to ignore.

I came across this gem a while back, and it stayed with me (so to speak), so I decided that I had to share it:

"Upon entry into the unnaturally silent apartment, the suitcase was exactly where it was supposed to be."

I love the way that sentence progresses - from the creepy factor of the "unnaturally silent" room, to the kind of joyous feeling of knowing that the suitcase has found its place in the world.

Let us hope that we all find ourselves as contented as that suitcase at least once in our lives.


(Yes, I know that the author intended to say "Upon entry... I found the suitcase..." and, thanks to her editor - that'd be me - her future readers will know that, too.)

Editing 101: Thanks (?), I Think

When you're starting out doing freelance work, you tend to take jobs from pretty much anywhere. So, while my preference is for working with fiction and memoir, I work on a certain amount of book-length non-fiction, as well as short pieces (such as postcards, or two-page brochures, or annual reports, etc.).

This means that I see all sorts of styles and text - some better than others. And, when I look at them, I have to not only try to make them make sense, but I also need to match the brand style.

What is "brand style"? It can refer to the logo of a company, the colors that they use in their materials, or the music played in their ads or in their stores. For my purposes in editing and proofreading and copywriting, it is both the mechanics of style (what words do they capitalize? how do they format headlines? do they use the Oxford comma?), but also the tone of voice in what is written. 

My personal brand style, for instance, uses the Oxford comma, and uses a modified Chicago style for more mechanics. It also includes a conversational, yet teaching, tone with a touch of wit (hopefully) and just a little snark.

This week, I saw something that kind of made me cringe, because I wasn't really sure how to interpret what was being said in a form letter that I was looking at.

Of course, form letters are hard. They have to cover a multitude of issues all in one, while still sounding at least slightly personal. This is even more difficult in a form letter being crafted to be sent out as a rejection letter after someone has applied for a position with the company. I totally understand that.

In prior positions I've had, I have needed to write friendly, "wishing you well in your endeavors" messages to a number of people, and it's always hard to find the right words to say what you want to say - in your brand style - without going too far one way or the other.

Even so, I think this one may have gone a bit awry along the way. I suspect it was written "by committee" and a bunch of people all wanted a say in what the final takeaway from the letter was. In my mind, this was a whole group of people saying:

• "We want it to be friendly, but firm."
• "We want them to know we support all artists, in any field."
• "We definitely want them to know we care about them."
• "We want to keep the door open for them to donate to us in the future, even if they don't work here."

And (again in my imagination) they then looked to an unpaid intern and said "You can do that, right?" Which resulted in this:

"While we are no longer considering you for this specific position, your interest in exploring what’s next for you within our company is important to us."

So... Okay... We've got the rejection in the first part. That's clear.

In the second part ("your interest in exploring what's next for you") seems nice - warm and fuzzy, and all that.

But when you add on that third part about the "what's next for you" being "within our company" it gets a little odd. I mean... If they're so interested in what's next for an applicant within their company, wouldn't it make more sense for them to be suggesting other open positions, or something? Or maybe rephrasing it to something like "We hope you'll consider applying again in future"? (Of course, they may not want some candidates to do that - which, again, goes back to the difficulty of using form letters.)

Still, when you go back to brand style, this sentence does give us a good feeling about the overall level of "caring" of the company - but the slightly convoluted nature of the phrasing makes me wonder what their personnel handbook is like.

My vote? Next time hire a copywriter before you hire an editor. After all, it's not overkill if it gets the job done right the first time.

Editing 101: You Found It Where?

At times, editing can be a bit like a jigsaw puzzle - if the puzzle pieces were scattered around the room like Easter eggs.

Although I work with a lot of first-time authors, I don't think that this is a problem specific to them. After all, if you think about Faulkner or Dickens or Joyce, you know that a lot of famous, established authors were known for convoluted sentences and paragraphs that refer back to things that you didn't think were important before.

So instead of scolding any of my authors or marking their manuscripts up with great big red markers and sending them back, I do my best to search out the through line of the text and put it into an order that will make sense to readers.

Oddly enough, this doesn't seem to be as big a problem with fiction, possibly because people writing fiction often have the "Point A to Point B" in mind when they start. But with non-fiction and memoir... well... that can get more interesting.

I think that's because people writing in those genres are more likely to be writing conversationally - they're putting the stories down on the paper the way they would tell them to other people. Which is great - mostly - because in a lot of non-fiction and memoir what really sets books apart is the "voice" of the author. A conversational tone brings the reader in in the case of memoir. A formal, academic tone (in the case of non-fiction business books, for instance) can add an air of authority.

But, in either case, the author still needs to make sure the puzzle pieces are able to be quickly found and easily placed in the right order by the reader. (Again, this might be different for a piece of fiction with an unreliable narrator, or one where suspense is being built up.)

This past week, I encountered a sentence that left me a bit boggled. It's in a memoir and is describing a crime scene and a witness. Though it might be a bit difficult to tell which is which:

"Lying on the ground, next to his deceased brother's body, he stated that he found a gun."

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why the speaker was lying on the ground next to his dead brother when he told the officer that he found the weapon?

Or did the author simply mean to say that the speaker had found the gun, which had been on the ground next to the dead brother?

Based on the context of the paragraph (the speaker had been interviewed at the police station, not at the crime scene), I assumed that the gun was lying on the floor - but that the speaker was not. So I reworked the sentence accordingly:

"He stated that he had found the gun where it had been lying on the ground next to his deceased brother's body."

Mystery solved. (At least until the next paragraph.)

Editing 101: Should I Quote You On That?

We've talked about this kind of thing before: the facetiously placed quotation marks that cause us to question what we're reading. (Most recently in this post from December.)

With the latest rounds of political finger pointing in the news lately - and the assertion that we're all supposed to simply understand when people are joking or not - I've actually heard government officials say things like "Well, he made those 'air quotes,' didn't he?" and a reporter say "But the tweet was in ALL CAPS - there weren't any quotation marks."

This kind of thing is often in my head, since I spend about eight hours every work day trying to make sure that what I'm working on is as clear and understandable as possible. And, today, I found something that really made me raise an eyebrow.

The headline on an ad was:

** 2 Brookstone "Massagers" for Sale **

Okay. Is that a euphemism? Or are we just supposed to think the "massage" is only one of the possibilities offered by these items?

I decided to read on to find out what, exactly, was being sold. No jumping to conclusions for me - time for research. I backed up a bit.

To start, I took in the context: A very family-friendly website. Seems to me that a massage might be just a massage on a site like that. I read on...

The first item up for sale is specifically described as a "lower-back massager." Sounds pretty clear. No worries. Obviously, the quotation marks were just an oops, right?

But what about item #2?

"The other is good for many sore areas and has a long cord with various speed/mode adjestments." 

(Benefit of the doubt: I'm just going to go ahead and give them "adjestments" as just a typo for "adjustments" - no kind of "jest" intended.)

Not going to lie. At that point, I kind of gave up trying to figure out what was intended. There are way too many ways to read into that description. If I were working on that as an editor, I would just write a query in the margin and send it back to the author. 

As it stands, I'm just going to leave it alone - keeping my hands (and my opinions) to myself.

Whatever it is that's going on, I hope that the buyer asks enough questions that he/she gets what he/she is hoping for. (Kind of like when you're going through the process of hiring an editor.)