09.09.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 8:16 pm by Administrator
Freelancers spend a lot of time getting potential clients to notice them and, hopefully, hire them. We join professional organizations and subscribe to job boards. We post free ads on Craigslist or pay to advertise with search engines. Sometimes we even spring for a print ad in a relevant publication. We post little tidbits on Facebook. We blog. We tweet. Seriously, it’s a wonder we ever get any actual work done.
In the undercooked pudding that is the online universe, it can be difficult to get noticed by the right people. (Please note that when I say “the right people,” I mean “the people who will gladly pay me to write or edit something for them.”) Hence the posting, blogging, and tweeting. It’s all about showing potential clients that I’m for real, that I’m more than a Web site with some testimonials and a list of prices. I’ve blogged for about two years now and have been mildly to moderately successful at it. People actually read what I have to say, and once in a while they even e-mail me about it. A few of them have hired me. I count blogging as a successful, even essential, endeavor. Facebooking and tweeting, not so much.
I’m a lousy Facebook friend. I do remember to post things—mostly about articles I’ve written—a couple of times a week, but I rarely check up on my friends. I long to play Farmville and have virtual snowball fights with them; alas, I never do. I’ve joined groups on Facebook and have become a fan of various things on Facebook, but I don’t keep up with any of them either. My Twitter activity is even worse: I signed up, tweeted exactly once, and (in the ensuing six months of inactivity) forgot my login and password. You might say I’m a failed tweeter. I could end up as a failed Facebooker too, but I’m still trying to turn that one around. (I’ll be a better friend—I promise!)
Failure is not something I accept easily, but I’ve pretty much put my tweeting failure behind me. You have to choose your targets, and in my spoonful of virtual pudding, I choose blogging, with the occasional Facebook post thrown in for variety. Tweeting? Who’s got time to tweet?
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09.07.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 7:17 pm by Administrator
English can be a wonderfully confusing language. We have so many homophones—words that sound alike but differ in spelling, meaning, or derivation. Homophones can trip up even native speakers and writers who are otherwise excellent spellers. Take, for example, palate, palette, and pallet. These similar-sounding words hit the homophone trifecta: They differ in spelling, meaning, and derivation.
Palate refers to the roof of the mouth, the sense of taste, or a taste or liking. The word comes to us from Middle English and the Latin palatum, meaning “the roof of the mouth.”
A palette is a thin handheld board that a painter uses to mix paints on. It can also refer to the colors on the palette. The word comes to us from French and Middle French and literally means “little spade.” The French borrowed their word pale (“spade”) from the Latin pala (“spade”).
A pallet is a straw-filled mattress or temporary bed. This word has worked its way through Middle English, Anglo-French, and ultimately from the Latin palea, meaning “chaff, straw.” In case this isn’t confusing enough yet, pallet can also mean (among other things) a portable platform for handling, storing, and moving materials. If you’ve shopped at a warehouse store, you’ve seen plenty of wooden pallets. This meaning comes from the French palette (see above), meaning “small shovel.”
Definitions from Merriam-Webster.
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09.01.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 6:02 pm by Administrator
A few weeks ago, I received a query about doing some editing for a student named Dependra Santha. It looked like a fairly typical query, complete with two academic papers for me to provide quotes on. I did a quick sample edit on a few pages, provided price quotes for both papers, and the next day Santha gave me the go-ahead to do the work. He/she was attending school in London and would have someone in the States mail me a check for the whole amount. Not my usual procedure (I normally use PayPal and ask for half the fee at the start of the job, with the second half due when the job is complete), but I’ve accepted checks before and it worked out fine. I agreed to the payment arrangement, waited a few days, and then started the edit (there was a tight deadline).
When I was about halfway through the job, I received the check. It was a cashier’s check from a U.S. bank, but it looked fishy. First off, the amount on the check was about $3,400 more than my editing fee. Second, the paper didn’t seem quite right and the watermark looked off. Chagrined, confused, and more than a little ticked off, I contacted the author and was instructed to deposit the check, deduct my fee and an additional $200 for my trouble, and wire the remainder to Santha in London. Yeah, right. The check, the envelope it came in, and a hard copy of the e-mail trail sit in a folder near my desk, just waiting for some righter of Internet wrongs to swoop in, find this “Dependra Santha,” and throttle him/her.
Now, I am not a stupid person. I receive some sort of scam or phishing e-mail at least once a week, and I’m normally onto them right away. Looking back, I suppose I should have been onto this scam sooner, but it did seem like a legitimate job. I only lost about a day of my time, but I understand several other members of the Editorial Freelancers Association were scammed by the same people, and some of them lost money—a lot of money.
I must add that 99 percent of the people I work with are honest. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the vast majority of my clients are conscientious about paying me in full and on time. But you still have to keep your guard up, as I’ve just been reminded.
If you have been victimized by this or any other Internet scam, you can report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). They might not actually investigate your case, and I doubt if they actually perform throttlings, but at least you will feel like you’ve done something.
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08.31.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 7:55 pm by Administrator
Habit: a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition.
Writing is a habit. When you do it daily it becomes second nature, part of your routine—I won’t say it ever gets to be easy, but getting your thoughts on paper (or screen) does become easier with frequent practice. Once you’ve been in the writing habit for a while, your brain becomes a writing machine; ideas come easily, connections fall into place, words flow. This process also works in reverse: Fall out of the writing habit and you can have a dickens of a time getting back into it. I know.
I write local cat-related stories for an online publication. I try to write at least three times each week, and I try to keep a variety of stories in development. Last week I was sick and didn’t write at all. Then this afternoon I sat down to write the story I’d meant to write over a week ago … and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t assemble the pieces into anything coherent. For a moment I panicked and thought, “Oh my God, I’ve forgotten how to write!” Of course this wasn’t quite true. (I attribute the melodrama to lingering side effects of antibiotics.) I just had to get my brain back in the habit. I struggled a little longer until my brain woke up and the pieces fell into place, then I wrote the story and almost immediately got an idea for another story.
For quite a while I was blogging three times a week (okay, sometimes only two times a week). Coming up with ideas was easy, the writing was easy, finding time was (usually) easy. Then I got busy with other things, I was away from home for part of the summer, we got a Wii Fit … talk about a perfect storm. The first thing I do at my desk every Monday morning is make a list of everything I need to accomplish that week. Each week, I put “Adventures in Editing, M-W-F” at the top of the list. Then my week actually starts to happen. By Friday evening, everything (okay, almost everything) on the list has been accomplished … except “Adventures in Editing, M-W-F.” Coming up with ideas is hard, the writing is hard, finding time is (always) hard. I’ve fallen out of the habit, and I’m having a dickens of a time getting back into it.
But now I’m swinging myself back onto the blogging bandwagon. I’ve almost written one whole post and I have ideas for two more. This could get to be a habit.
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07.01.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 7:21 pm by Administrator
Situation: Your two best friends have gotten into an argument over whose turn it is to buy beer (or Ensure, for those of you who are perhaps a little older and more health conscious). They go back and forth, becoming angrier with every breath. Eventually, when they are both too angry for words, the silent glaring begins. Tension builds. Will this be the end of a beautiful friendship? Of course not! Because you are there, ready to crack a joke and break the tension.
Now, when you crack that joke, are you defusing or diffusing the situation?
I am pretty sure I have never seen an author get this one right. I see it wrong in print all the time. I saw it wrong in print just this morning. I see it wrong so often, I have to look it up every time I come across it in my editing, just to be sure I’m not going crazy.
Defuse (the correct answer) is a verb meaning “1: to remove the fuse from (as a bomb) 2: to make less harmful, potent, or tense” (italics added).
Diffuse as a verb means “1: to pour out or spread widely 2: to undergo or cause to undergo diffusion 3: to break up light by diffusion.”
When you crack that joke, you are making the situation less harmful, potent, or tense; you are not pouring it out or spreading it widely or causing it to become diffuse. You are instead removing the fuse from the bomb that is about to go off in your buddies’ friendship. You are defusing the situation.
(Definitions from The Merriam-Webster Dictionary.)
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06.29.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 6:27 pm by Administrator
To hyphenate or not to hyphenate—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler to preserve that hallowed dash
Dividing one letter from its brother in the manner of Chicago
Or to take arms against superfluous marks
And, like Webster, end them.
I recently stumbled into an editorial conundrum. Actually, I’ve been stumbling all around this problem for months—years, even—and didn’t even know it. Long story short, I experienced an enlightening yet humbling moment of learning this morning. Now for the long story …
The enlightening, humbling moment began with a question about the word “coworker”—or is it “co-worker”? For years, following the trusty Merriam-Webster Dictionary that sits at my right hand, I have used “coworker.” I don’t think anyone has ever asked me about it before, but this week an author brought it up. “That looks strange to me,” he wrote. I began writing a reply, explaining that “coworker” is the standard spelling according to Merriam-Webster, and that “co-worker” is a variant spelling. I even looked the word up, just to be sure. Yup, I was right. Then I went to Merriam-Webster Online, thinking I’d send the author a link to the “coworker” entry (I do like to be helpful that way), and I got this message:
The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary.
Huh? I went back to the print dictionary, and there it was again: “coworker.” Just for kicks, I searched for “co-worker” in the online dictionary.
The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary.
Fascinating. I fiddled around online a little longer and found an entry for “coworker” on Dictionary.com. I was momentarily happy, but then I decided to check Chicago (which trusty volume sits at my left hand). And there it was, under Words Formed with Prefixes (7.90):
co: coequal, coauthor, coeditor, coordinate, cooperation, but co-opt, co-worker.
Crap (to paraphrase what I actually said at that enlightening, humbling moment). So all these years I’ve been following my trusty dictionary and unknowingly thumbing my nose at my trusty style guide? Sorta kinda, but there’s more …
Just for more kicks, I checked the APA, MLA, and AP guides. APA and MLA both use “coworker” (yay!), and AP uses “co-worker” (but they’re weird anyway, so who cares?).
Of course there’s a lesson here, and it is this: Know your style guide, and don’t assume that it will always agree with your dictionary. The style guide has the final say, no matter how wrong you think it is.
(But come on, Chicago, “co-worker”? That’s so twentieth century!)
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06.24.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 7:53 pm by Administrator
My friends, there are homophones among us. Homophones, in case you’ve forgotten, are words that sound alike but have different meanings, spellings, or derivations (according to Webster). When used incorrectly, these words can make us chuckle or weep, or perhaps scratch our heads in confusion.
Aisle and isle are homophones. They sound alike but have different meanings, spellings, and derivations. An aisle is what you walk down in the grocery store or movie theater; an isle is a small island. (“Here on Gilligan’s isle …” Surely some of you are old enough to remember an educational program called Gilligan’s Island—anyone?)
Authors are forever turning their aisles into isles. I’ve seen characters walk down the isle to get married, spill popcorn in the isle at the movies, and visit the candy isle at the grocery store. I’ve even seen slightly insane characters running up and down the store isles trying to kill one another (I guess they had really long legs). In each of these cases, the characters were actually in an aisle. I personally checked this just today by searching for the candy isle at our local store. Sadly, there was no island of candy. I selected my bag of Tootsie Rolls from an ordinary old aisle.
The lessons? First, sometimes spell-check is stupid and will lead you astray. Second, it’s a good idea to go to your grammar book or style guide once in a while and skim through the list of commonly confused or misused words, even (or especially) if you think you already know it all.
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06.23.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 8:00 pm by Administrator
One of the best ways to find out just how you’re doing as a writer is to ask several people to read your work and give you honest feedback. These several people must not be related to you in any way, and they must not be your best friends, your employees, or your dog and/or cat. (You probably already knew that the dog or cat wouldn’t count. I mention them just in case; one can never be too careful.) A writing group or workshop might be just the thing for you. I’ve never been in a writing group, but I took two workshop-type classes in college, and they were some of the most valuable experiences of my life.
The workshops were set up so everyone read and critiqued everyone else’s writing. We also read our work aloud to the class and got immediate feedback. (Note to shy people: This is not as horrible as you might think. I’m quite shy, I read my work and listened to the critique, and I did not die. Surely you can do it too.) That feedback helped me see my work through a reader’s eyes—a valuable skill for when you find yourself acting as your own editor. Oh, and providing feedback on others’ work was one of the earliest steps in my editing career.
Honest feedback can help you diagnose problems in your writing. I learned pretty quickly that I have two main problems: 1. Sometimes I write stuff nobody understands; 2. I’m easily ticked off when nobody understands me.
Is anyone surprised that the second problem has been the harder one to deal with?
Picture this: You’ve written a smashing little piece of nonfiction. It’s tight, it’s entertaining and informative, the pacing is perfect. You’re extremely pleased with yourself. Then the feedback comes in. Certain parts of your smashing little piece are so tight they’ve left your readers muddleheaded. You’ve put your words together in a way that is beautiful but confusing—at least that’s what your readers tell you. The readers begin to ask stupid questions. You begin to wish they would all just shut up.
What a fabulous situation! There’s so much to learn here. First, can you take yourself out of your writing long enough to see the work as it really is? Then, can you take those “stupid” questions seriously and identify the parts of your writing that are truly problematic? Finally, do you work on those problematic parts? Is your writing going to be strictly for your own amusement, or will it communicate something useful or entertaining to your readers?
If communication is your goal, you have to check your ego, listen to your readers, and admit that sometimes sense you do not make.
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04.15.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 12:03 pm by Administrator
Just for the few moments it takes to read this post, please pretend it’s yesterday. I don’t mean “yesterday” in the literary sense of “back when you were four and your big brother took your Twinkie, pushed you into the mud and laughed his mean, hard laugh, thus shattering your sense of family and forever destroying your ability to trust.” No, I mean literally yesterday, April 14, 2010, because that was when I meant to write this post, but somehow the day slipped away from me. Lately, the days have been doing that with annoying frequency.
So, it’s yesterday.…
This is an important day for lovers of American words, for it was on April 14 that Mr. Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language was published. The year was 1828. America was a very young country, in many ways still working to define itself. Language in America was, well, messy. Some people spoke and wrote all British and proper, which was a problem in itself because, as Mr. Webster said (more or less), “Hey, we’re not British!” Then there were the regional dialects, the lack of standardized spelling (an editor’s nightmare) … It was messy.
With his new dictionary, Mr. Webster hoped to bless America with a common language, a language full of uniquely American words like “skunk,” a language in which “skunk” would be spelled exactly the same way no matter which state one happened to be writing in. His project was initially ridiculed by some, eventually respected by most, but at $15 or $20 a copy the dictionary was just too expensive for most people to buy. It didn’t sell well. After Mr. Webster’s death in 1843, the Merriam brothers bought the rights to the dictionary. Today I have half a shelf loaded with Merriam-Webster products and their online dictionary is one of my best friends. Plus, I know how to spell “skunk.”
And so, April 14 should be celebrated as Dictionary Day. Wordy people everywhere, rejoice!
(Thanks to Garrison Keillor and The Writer’s Almanac for sparking yet another Adventures in Editing post.)
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03.03.10
Posted in Editorial Musings at 12:46 pm by Administrator
Where have all the hyphens gone? Nearly every day, everywhere I look, I see these little spaces where there should be hyphens. In the community newspaper, in national advertising, in Jeopardy clues, on product packaging, and of course on the Internet, the hyphens have somehow been left behind.
Just yesterday, I had to look something up on the AARP Web site and learned that their magazine is the “World’s Largest Circulation Magazine.” So it’s an exceptionally large magazine about circulation? I’ve leafed through my mother’s copies of the magazine (I myself am not quite old enough to subscribe), and it seems to cover a lot more than circulation. Or maybe I’m taking it all wrong. Maybe they mean it’s the largest magazine that circulates. That might make sense—sort of. But still, I can’t help thinking that they actually mean it’s the magazine with the largest circulation in the world, in which case there really should be a hyphen connecting largest and circulation.
Yes, I know that some styles (notably APA, which I work with frequently) don’t use hyphens in compounds with comparatives or superlatives. This drives me insane. It is almost physically painful for me to let phrases like “higher scoring students” slip by without a hyphen. I imagine a group of students receiving their scores as they sit atop extremely tall chairs. Meanwhile, the lower scoring students are seated on the cold, hard floor. But no normal person would worry about such a thing; no, it takes an editor to come up with an image like this.
In case you’re not an editor (or in case you’re an editor who can still masquerade as a “normal” person), this is the sort of thing editors think about all day. I haven’t actually done it—yet—but many times I’ve been tempted to write to various companies and alert them to the fact that their hyphens have all run away. If I ever get to retire, pointing out cases of lost hyphens will probably become my main hobby. Perhaps I’ll become an amateur hyphen detective, à la Miss Marple. I’ll knit, I’ll read AARP’s circulation magazine, and someday, if I’m very fortunate and very skillful, I’ll find out where all those hyphens have gone. I shall begin my search in the Caribbean; it seems the most logical place.
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