bfdc
I admit it, I'm a punctuation wienie. Do I need to get over it?
I got my galleys back from my publisher last week. The editing was atrocious. Commas outside quote marks, periods outside quote marks. Single quotes used in place of double quotes, while my correctly used double quotes were left as they were. Written-out numbers over one hundred hyphenated. Needless compound word constructions. And the final straw: An it's used where an its should have been.
Looking at the punctuation and grammar in forums and boards, let alone books and magazines, I realize that punctuation is not important to most people. But to me, it is, and I knew, based on reality, that getting an editor with her head out the window while she's driving along was a possibility. But having it happen makes me feel horrible. Dejected. Like why bother?
On the other hand, after my initial shock and horror and a good night's sleep, I'm ready to slog on with making the book better. I've cataloged all the corrections needed from the editing. (I thought maybe some of them were mine, but they weren't. If I'm wrong about something (and anything's possible), at least I'm consistent.) I can look on this as a chance to become a better person, work against adversity, make my genius known to someone far less fortunate. Maybe I should also work on being less sarcastic. But it's hard to be nice when mistakes from high school grammar and general math (the chapter on how to spell out the numbers when writing a check) are the things I have to teach the one in charge of getting my book to the publisher.
It's the publisher's editor, too, so that doesn't bode well.
And now I feel a little better.
Bob/bfdc
I got my galleys back from my publisher last week. The editing was atrocious. Commas outside quote marks, periods outside quote marks. Single quotes used in place of double quotes, while my correctly used double quotes were left as they were. Written-out numbers over one hundred hyphenated. Needless compound word constructions. And the final straw: An it's used where an its should have been.
Looking at the punctuation and grammar in forums and boards, let alone books and magazines, I realize that punctuation is not important to most people. But to me, it is, and I knew, based on reality, that getting an editor with her head out the window while she's driving along was a possibility. But having it happen makes me feel horrible. Dejected. Like why bother?
On the other hand, after my initial shock and horror and a good night's sleep, I'm ready to slog on with making the book better. I've cataloged all the corrections needed from the editing. (I thought maybe some of them were mine, but they weren't. If I'm wrong about something (and anything's possible), at least I'm consistent.) I can look on this as a chance to become a better person, work against adversity, make my genius known to someone far less fortunate. Maybe I should also work on being less sarcastic. But it's hard to be nice when mistakes from high school grammar and general math (the chapter on how to spell out the numbers when writing a check) are the things I have to teach the one in charge of getting my book to the publisher.
It's the publisher's editor, too, so that doesn't bode well.
And now I feel a little better.
Bob/bfdc