Are there copy editors any more?

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blacbird

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I'm reading Tony Hillerman's recent mystery The Shape Shifter, which is an acceptable read, overall, but midway through the book I ran into this piece of dialogue, a law enforcement official describing some information on crimes to Lt. Joe Leaphorn, retired, formerly of the Navajo Tribal Police:

“I call in the list of places. Gallup checked the files on Shewnack. Six of the eleven had the sort of out-of-the-way robberies that fit our idea of Shewnack’s mode of operations. When the checked later, the other seven looked like they fit, too.”

Is there some policeman math with which I'm not familiar? Am I the only reader who stumbles over stuff like this? Where in hell are the copy editors to catch this crap?


caw
 

kellytijer

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I stumble over things like that as well. Usually, they vex me so much that I end up writing a letter to somebody. It drives me wild. (In a bad way).
 

Calla Lily

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[waves] I'm a copy editor. But there isn't enough money in the world to make me move my family to NYC (I hate NYC--lived there briefly) to try and land a job at a big publishing house. So I freelance.

Sorry, blacbird. :)
 

IceCreamEmpress

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What do you mean by "anymore"? I've come across a lot of similar errors in older books as well.

I do think there are slightly more errors now, because people are lulled into a false sense of security by computer spellcheck.
 

aka eraser

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I remember when newspapers actually had copy editors. If there was an occasional mistake, they'd apologize for it the next day. That's sure not the case today. I can't recall the last time I read one for more than 10 minutes without coming across an error - and often several.

And yeah, they're rife in some books these days too. It's shameful.

C'mon blacbird. Let's go to the Old Fogey's Pub and I'll stand you to a pint.
 

Claudia Gray

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Yes, copy editors still exist.

Just remember -- I don't think one single book has ever made it into publication without at least one mistake. It's like the tithe of entropy.
 

Will Lavender

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What do you mean by "anymore"? I've come across a lot of similar errors in older books as well.

I do think there are slightly more errors now, because people are lulled into a false sense of security by computer spellcheck.

Good point.

I wonder if the mistakes these days have to do, in part, with the size of the books. I know we've always had Dickensian tomes, but it seems like novels today -- especially genre novels -- are MASSIVE. You rarely see bestselling thrillers that run under 450 pages and 100,000 words+.
 

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. . .

Is there some policeman math with which I'm not familiar? . . .
On the other hand, it IS dialog. Characters can make mistakes. Maybe it was deliberate. I'd think a copy editor would be cautious about changing dialog. Perhaps that error tells the reader something about that character.

(Dunno. I've never read one of Hillerman's books.)

BTW, I recently purchased a paperback mystery/suspense/whatever that is quite possibly THE worst written commercially published book I have ever seen. The dialog is hideous (ludicrous, really), the premise preposterous, characters cardboard. On the basis of what I had heard of it, I bought it without the usual read-the-first-couple-of-pages test. Well, it is now simply a lesson in awful, amateurish writing. Early on I found the protagonist noting the sheaf of 50 one-thousand-dollar bills he'd been given to stake his undercover investigation. There IS no thousand-dollar bill. (Although if current developments go on for much longer, there will have to be one, as it would already have less purchasing power than a hundred-dollar bill did when I was in elementary school.) I don't want to name the author or title or even the publisher. Suffice it to say that it is from a small, niche-oriented publisher. Legitimate, as near as I can tell, but with low standards and a niche that apparently will forgive much.

--Ken
 

Storm Dream

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For what it's worth, several newspapers and magazines seem to have done away with copy editors in recent years. The higher-up publications cling to them, but those willing to discard are either putting a lot of faith in their reporters, or the managing editor is getting slapped with the duties. In my company, a lot of MEs started out as CEs, but they have other duties on top of suddenly proofreading.

Math errors I won't notice...probably ever...but misplaced quotation marks and apostrophes drive me up a wall. Leisure Books (I've picked up a lot of zombie fiction from them) is particularly atrocious about this; I want to take a red pen, line-edit the freaking story, and send it to their doorstep.
 

KTC

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Maybe 6 and 7 sum to 11 where the book was published?
 

johnrobison

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At my publisher, they have an editor, an assistant, a copy editor, a name and trademark checker, a legal reviewer . . . and readers still wrote in with three mistakes (so far.)

You do your best, but stuff still gets by.
 

IceCreamEmpress

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There IS no thousand-dollar bill.

There was, though. It had Grover Cleveland on it. It was last issued in 1945. If you had one, and it was in decent shape, it would be worth at least $1,200 to a collector--and, of course, it's still legal tender.
 

Kerr

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I was just reading a short story in an ezine yesterday and found at least five or six glaring errors. These ezines, where most of us are finding publication, are the worst. It seems to me that they post stories as-is, so you'd better make darn sure you've got everything correct before submitting. On the other hand, I had a story published once that I thought was perfect, but it turned up after publication with an error. The same thing happened with something I wrote that was published in a newspaper. It's bad enough when you make the mistake; it's terrible when someone else does and then signs your name to it.
 

absitinvidia

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*raises hand*

I'm a freelance copy editor too.

Sometimes an error like that gets through when something is queried ("You mention eleven files here, but elsewhere the number is thirteen.") and isn't resolved properly (a search and replace on a single word that doesn't take into account situations like this one), or not all instances are caught.
 
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benbradley

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[waves] I'm a copy editor. But there isn't enough money in the world to make me move my family to NYC (I hate NYC--lived there briefly) to try and land a job at a big publishing house. So I freelance.

Sorry, blacbird. :)
I lived on Long Island, and that was much too close (population isn't as dense, but it's pretty much the same people as in NYC).

But it seems to me a copy editor would be one job where it would be easy to telecommute. Is it all still done on the printed manuscript, the sheets of paper the author sends in or photocopies thereof?
There was, though. It had Grover Cleveland on it. It was last issued in 1945. If you had one, and it was in decent shape, it would be worth at least $1,200 to a collector--and, of course, it's still legal tender.
I had a thousand dollar bill when I was about 10 years old, my Baptist church gave it to me (as well as everyone else in that Sunday School class). Of course it was confederate money, a lot older than 1945, and not worth much of anything...
*raises hand*

I'm a freelance copy editor too.

Sometimes an error like that gets through when something is queried ("You mention eleven files here, but elsewhere the number is thirteen.") and isn't resolved properly (a search and replace on a single word that doesn't take into account situations like this one), or not all instances are caught.
I have the opinion that every spellcheck run, or now that you mention it, copy-replace run, should have every sentence where a change is made be carefully scrutinized, and probably the sentences around each change be read and understood to verify context. As a programmer I know I can usually (not always!) change a variable name throughout a program without generating a problem, but not in English - one may have misspelled a word consistently, but one may also have used that misspelling for a different word.

I read my email messages over in Thunderbird when I hit send and it brings up the spellchecker. Sometimes it has the "right" word I meant, other times it's an acronym or unusual word I don't want fixed. Catching a misspelled word is only a flag to me that something might be wrong, and the problem isn't necessarily a misspelled word.
 

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There was, though. It had Grover Cleveland on it. It was last issued in 1945. If you had one, and it was in decent shape, it would be worth at least $1,200 to a collector--and, of course, it's still legal tender.
They are not being given out in packets of 50 for use by undercover law enforcement personnel. Nor would anyone take one in trade. One can barely use a hundred dollar bill most places. It was simply a mistake by the writer, not a deliberate allusion to a bill that has not been in general circulation for a half century. (Not that many people used them then, as it would have been worth at least ten thousand dollars in today's money.)

Nice try, but the existence of antique bills of that denomination does not get the bad writer off that hook.

--Ken
 
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IceCreamEmpress

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They are not being given out in packets of 50 for use by undercover law enforcement personnel.

No, of course not. But not everyone reading the thread would know that thousand-dollar bills really did exist. Which would be an interesting premise for a short story--someone who found a thousand-dollar bill and couldn't spend it, because nobody believed it was real!
 

ResearchGuy

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No, of course not. But not everyone reading the thread would know that thousand-dollar bills really did exist. Which would be an interesting premise for a short story--someone who found a thousand-dollar bill and couldn't spend it, because nobody believed it was real!
Indeed it would. That premise could be taken in a lot of different directions.

I can even picture an anthology of stories by writers who have started from nothing but that premise, each with his or her own spin on it.

--Ken
 

Storm Dream

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I lived on Long Island, and that was much too close (population isn't as dense, but it's pretty much the same people as in NYC).

But it seems to me a copy editor would be one job where it would be easy to telecommute. Is it all still done on the printed manuscript, the sheets of paper the author sends in or photocopies thereof?

As far as my company is concerned (and we publish magazines) if you're not in the office, you're not working. Copy editing, at least in this field, would be easy to shift to a home office setting, but managers are loathe to let us out from under their thumbs.

Meh.

(Some companies may still be doing printed stuff; we're mostly digital these days.)
 

talkwrite

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As an acquisitions editor I have accepted manuscripts with content changes agreed to by the author. I then find these changes reinserted by of all people; the grammar checkers. So now, I require and take the time for a preproduction read through after they get their little hands on it.
Well, I am only assuming that they have little hands.
 

kimmer

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I'm married to a technical copywriter, who helped edit my work pre-submission, and yes, as others have said, there is a string of people at the publishers, but each time I get my manuscript back there is some little thing I didn't notice. It sucks. I'm reading a book now by a person I respect very much and within the first thirty pages there were typos. That alone has me averse to self-publishing.

When I worked a brief stint in advertising, we had a rule of three: three other people had to read something before it went out the door....and still mistakes were made. ugh.

I don't know if there really are more mistakes or we just notice it more because we are writers.
 

ResearchGuy

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. . . That alone has me averse to self-publishing.

. . .

Not all self-publishing is the same. The pros hire professional editors and produce work that is indistinguishable from commercially published books. The first hurdle is for the self-publisher to understand that outside editing and proofreading are essential. The second is to actually pay for those services (and for book design and more).

--Ken
 

Susan B

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Well, since I've been told by my publisher that my book is now in the hands of the copyeditor (I even know her name) I believe they do exist!

I know it's common these days for commercial as well as university presses to use freelance copyeditors. Don't think the arrangement matters, as long as someone scrutinizes at that micro level that the author, acquisitions editor, and various "outside readers" can all miss.

My mid-20's son works as a copyeditor at one of the major local newspapers and has been appalled by the the errors that sometimes slip through. He has also said that there is a merging of functions to save money (eg,the same person may do layout/design as well as copyediting).

I do think more errors slip by these days.

Here is the worst I've seen: The back cover of a self-published book, where the name of the publisher was spelled correctly (Authorhouse) but right below it the blurb about the writer (presumably self-penned) referred repeatedly to "the auther" :)
 
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