Back to Basics

[a handful of copyeditorial notes, plus the usual digressions]

In the 1941 Moss Hart–Kurt Weill–Ira Gershwin Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, high-powered, high-strung fashion editrix Liza Elliott (played by Gertrude Lawrence) finds herself unable to decide between two proposed covers for the latest edition of her magazine: an Easter cover and a circus cover.¹

Liza’s indecision drives her, unwillingly, to a psychoanalyst, but you’ll be pleased to know that after a single week on the couch, a few lavish dream sequences, and the love of a man who’s not afraid to boss her around (ye gods), Liza’s lifetime of neuroses and self-hatred are 100 percent cured. Would that it were so simple.

Not quite as high-powered but possibly just as high-strung, I’ve found myself these last couple of days unable to decide between a column on copyeditorial basics and a more-or-less stream-of-consciousness phantasmagoria that begins with the 1910 Edison Studios film of Frankenstein and somehow concludes with one of my favorite speeches from one of my favorite plays, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

Let’s get some copyediting done first, I think.

I’ve been a copy editor for just north of thirty years now, and in that time I’ve assembled what I think of as a hefty bag of tricks with which I’ve endeavored to improve writers’ writing. Mind you, I don’t tell writers what or how to write—I’ve barely figured out for myself what and how to write—but I do know a thing or two or seven about how to polish, tighten, clarify, and otherwise spruce up prose. And though I’ve covered these points in a myriad² of social media posts to say nothing of a whole-ass book, the thing about tips and pointers is that they bear repeating and relearning. It’s like playing scales, I guess.

Off we go, then. Three biggies and three not-so-biggies.

1. I’m bullish on the series comma (which you may also know as the Oxford or serial comma). That’s the comma, in a construction like “apples, pears, and cherries,” that comes between the “pears” and the “and cherries.” No sentence has ever been harmed by a series comma, and many a sentence has been improved by one. Every now and then someone will hurl at my feet some freak of a sentence they’ve cleverly devised in which the series comma seems to be a troublemaker, but what one usually sees in such sentences is that they’re as troubled without the comma as with it. Some sentences don’t need to be repunctuated so much as they need to be rewritten. I’ve also encountered writers who insist that they use the series comma when it’s absolutely necessary for clarity and skip it when it’s not; I’ve found over time that they do precisely the opposite. So, truly: Just use the series comma. It’s one less thing to think about when you should be thinking about other things, like your questionable grasp on grammar basics and your overuse of “not only X but Y” constructions.

2. One of the best ways to check your writing for errors and other infelicities is to read it aloud. Recording the audiobook of Dreyer’s English, I found myself, a half handful of times, tripping over one of my own sentences because I’d put a comma in the wrong place or overloaded the sentence with subordinate clauses. I also found that I’d used the term “garden variety” four times over the course of some 70,000 words, which is three times too many. Happily, I had the chance to do a little last-minute cleanup before the print version of the book went to press.³

3. Reading your own work aloud, you may also become aware of habits that you might charitably think of as My Style but that are more honestly labeled My Tics. I’m well aware, for instance, of my predilection for parenthetical asides and what I think of as jaunty adverb-adjective combo packs (“enthusiastically dull,” “direly funny,” that sort of thing).⁴ So I do, reviewing my own writing, try to cut back on those, however halfheartedly. (I like the way I write, what can I tell you?) As to parenthetical asides, a journalist friend of mine once confided to me that his editor would home in⁵ on anything encased in parentheses as a fine candidate for deletion. If it were important, the thought went, you wouldn’t have stuffed it between parentheses. (That’s not unsensible.)

4. You can go your whole life never actually needing to write the word “actually.” Or you can write it, but, having written it, consider deleting it. (I’ve left the one just above in place as a fine example of an “actually” that’s not worth its keystrokes.)

5. Anytime you’re about to pluralize a word with an apostrophe, slap yourself silly and start again. Or contact me and I’ll come over and do it.

6. The past tense of “lead” is not “lead”; it’s “led.” “Lead” where “led” is meant is, I daresay, the commonest error that eludes writers, copy editors, and proofreaders and makes it to print. Be on the lookout!

Well, then. That should do it for today. One doesn’t want to wear out one’s welcome.⁶

Meet you back here soon for that Frankenstein-Arcadia mashup.

Oh! If there’s anything in matters copyeditorial you might want me to address, feel free to message me, and perhaps I can get to it sooner rather than later.

1. Note to self: A post about en dashes will be fun; get to that. Note to you all: Did I have all these facts at my mind’s fingertips, including the date? Yes, but it never hurts to look things up, just to be sure. Also, T. S. Eliot aside, I would never publish any version of Elliott/Eliot/Elyot/Elliot/whatever without double- and possibly triple-checking. Also also: I find the word “editrix” amusing, and possibly you do too. Also “aviatrix.”

2. Is it OK to use “myriad” as a noun? You bet it is.

3. It still strikes me a little weird to refer to the print version of a book, but in era of ebooks, to say nothing of audiobooks, the specificity is not unhelpful. (Note to self: A post about retronyms and litotes? Why not. Put it on the list.)

4. Also footnotes.

5. Not “hone in,” for the love of all that’s holy.

6. Using “one” where “I” might well be called for is just one of my bad habits. It might indicate a lack of ego strength on my part, but that’s between me and Liza Elliott’s psychoanalyst.