Time is short

There is still time, if you are nimble, to sign up for Thursday"s Copyediting audio conference, "Choosing Your Battles." Operators are standing by.  And if there is an aspect of the subject that you would like me to discuss, you are welcome to file a comment or send me a note.

Next week's coming attraction: I recorded an interview today with Sheilah Kast of WYPR's Maryland Morning that will be broadcast a week from today, March 19, between 9:15 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. at 88.1 FM. Later that day, a recording of the interview, plus some supplemental material, will be made available on the Maryland Morning website.

Choose your battles

One week from today I will be conducting an audio conference for Copyediting. The subject is "Choosing Your Battles," and you still have time to sign up here.

Whether you are editing a single short article or a major project, whether you are working for a publishing concern or freelancing, the same concerns always arise: balancing the varied interests of author, publication, and audience; establishing appropriate priorities; and, because there will never, ever be enough time for everything you would like to do, resorting to triage.

I cannot resolve every issue for you, but I can help you to prepare to face them and deal with them effectively before you go completely nuts.

Moreover, your contributions to the discussion, the insights from your own experiences in editing, will be most welcome. I hope that the conference will not turn out to be a mere monologue.

Just like making newspapers

A moment before the afternoon news meeting was to begin yesterday, a colleague remarked that he had been reading The Old Editor Says and enjoying it.

I replied that an eagle-eyed reader had just that day filed a comment listing a handful of typos and other errors in the text. My colleague started laughing and said to the group, "Of course! His readers are just like him."

From the comment, here are the things that John Cowan, bless his painstaking attention, pointed out:

Well, my copy of TOES has finally arrived and has been read three times (what I tell you three times is true).

p. 10: For "smok'em" read "smoke 'em"; likewise for "got'em" read "got 'em".

p. 16: As I understand it, goat-chokers and thumbsuckers are different things, though related. A goat-choker is stuffed full of irrelevant facts, whereas a thumbsucker is made up of dubiously informed opinions. Consumption of the former causes constipation; the latter, borborygmi.

p. 22: "does not a have a tattoo" a has an article too many.

p. 24: for "schelp" read "schlep", or better yet "shlep", as "sch" in Yiddish words is unnecessary.

p. 27: "and will be done" makes "will" look like a verb.

p. 39: Not monotype, monowidth. This is a pet peeve of mine. Monotype is an obsolete typesetting machine and the name of a type foundry. Courier, Consolas, Lucida Sans Mono, and Liberation Mono are monowidth fonts.

p. 51: "Boasts"? You'd be down on that like a ton of bricks in anyone else's article.

p. 53: I puzzled over "if not is used" for a bit until I realized that "not" should have been italicized.

p. 55: You may know all about Charlie Stough, but the rest of us don't. A word or two of identification wouldn't kill you.

p. 56: Even worse are the meetings where the actual decisions have already been made elsewhere.

p. 58: Some tools, however, are unfit for their alleged purposes (if any: see Gary Larson's "cow tools"). And sometimes the squeaky wheel actually does get a little grease.

p. 60: Well, no. Some of us edit as a sideline to our real jobs.

p. 64: It's my view that the best way to oppose a stupid rule put forth by a prescriptivist is to become a prescriptivist: "No. That is not the rule. The rule is ..." It works better than sweet reason with people who are stuck on rules in the first place: they just want a rule, and if you give them one with sufficient authority, they'll accept it.

p. 67: "Don't be so humble. You're not that great." —Golda Meir.

But all that said: well done!

Some of them are the more irritating because they had been identified and marked for correction. (Just like making newspapers.)

But now they will be. I have forwarded half a dozen corrections to Apprentice House. They will be incorporated into the electronic text, and further copies will be correct as the printer produces them.

Take care, though, that you do not discard the copy with errors in it. It may, in time, come to have some value, like those 1918 24-cent U.S. postage stamps with the airplane upside-down. 


ADDITIONALLY: Reader reactions to the book continue to come in. At Throw Grammar From the Train, Jan Freeman remarks that an evening with The Old Editor Says was preferable to an evening with the Oscars.

Muster your forces

Not that I want to belabor military metaphors, but it is sometimes useful to prepare for editing as a general prepares for battle: you survey the ground, looking for a favorable position; you muster your forces, sizing up the available resources; you deploy your forces, determining where they are likely to be most effective; and, once the cutting and thrusting have begun, you do triage.

"Choosing Your Battles"  is the title I've chosen for an audio conference for Copyeditor in which I will talk about the editor's responsibility to author, publisher, and reader, as well as to oneself, for ninety minutes, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Eastern, on Thursday, March 14.

Click on the link to see further information and to sign up.

I hope not to spend an hour and a half jabbering by myself; nobody wants that. I trust that those of you who sign up will have experiences and insights to contribute, and you will be given opportunities to do so. 

The mentor you wish you had

I drove up to Bel Air on Monday to have lunch with Andy Faith and give him a copy of The Old Editor Says, which is dedicated to him.

It was a sunny day, and I had the luck of a Haydn symphony on the radio for the trip up and the trip back. Andy was in good form, healthy and cheerful. He says that he has enjoyed retirement more than he expected to when he left The Sun in 2008, and the project that he has been working on, a vast family genealogical text, is going strong.

It was Andy who rescued me from the toils of Gannett nearly twenty-seven years ago, and it is from Andy that I learned most of what I know about being a manager as well as an editor. You would be lucky to have such a mentor.

You, too, have the opportunity to own The Old Editor Says. Just click on a link to order the print copy or the Kindle version:






(We all understand, I hope, that I have to flog the damn book myself, since no one else will do so.)

But wait, there's more:
My learned colleague Bill Walsh is about to bring out another book. If you enjoyed and profited from Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style, you will surely want to own Yes I Could Care Less.

Get on the bandwagon

Since publication of The Old Editor Says less than two weeks ago, sales have soared into the double digits. The bandwagon is rolling, and there is still time for you to clamber aboard. 

Suzanne Loudermilk commented on Facebook: Suzanne Loudermilk on Facebook: Anyone who is interested in the written word should read "The Old Editor Says" by John McIntyre. So true, so funny, so humbling. I'm glad I had a chance to work with him.

Beryl Adcock tweeted: Just raced through "The Old Editor Says" by @johnemcintyre in a single sitting, and recommend it highly. Great for writers AND editors.


You can click on the link to order the print edition: 



Or the Kindle version:



Or for iPad at iBookstore or for Nook at BN.com.

Operators are standing by. 

Not available in stores.

"The Old Editor" on Kindle

If you're hip and with-it and past that letters-on-paper thing, if pixels are your preference, you will be pleased to learn that the timeless wisdom of The Old Editor Says is also available on Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Old-Editor-Says-ebook/dp/B00BFG3EVK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360850648&sr=1-1&keywords=%22Old+Editor+Says%22

Operators are standing by.

"The Old Editor" is in

The Old Editor Says, which was first listed on Amazon.com over the weekend, is now in stock.




Someone wondered whether some samples might be posted, since Amazon.com doesn't allow a glimpse into the book. 

Here's a teaser:

The Old Editor says:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." 10-word lead. What've you got that needs more?

The creation of the universe in Genesis 1:1 does not need six paragraphs of throat-clearing before getting to the point, or a little anecdote to prime the pump. Genesis, like the Lord, gets down to the business immediately, and you, if you would like to have the reader's attention for a little while, will do the same. 


And, since there are personal and professional dimensions of editing that go beyond the texts, here's another teaser:

The Old Editor says:

Don’t scorch the popcorn, and never heat up fish in the office microwave.

If you edit solo at home, working in your pajamas, having gin for breakfast, and listening to that music you’d be embarrassed if people knew you like, that’s your business. But if you work in company, have the decency to respect the sensibilities of your colleagues. Common courtesy should be observed, along with basic table manners and the conventions of personal hygiene. 

See what The Old Editor Says

I have produced a little book of sixty-odd pages of maxims from the paragraph game, with brief commentaries. Some are traditional, some from my mentors, some my own. The publisher is Apprentice House, the student-run publishing operation at Loyola University Maryland.

If you did not have the good fortune as a beginner to work with a crusty old editor who would set you straight on the elements of writing and editing, then you can acquire a simulacrum from Amazon.com for twelve bucks.*



And, as the jacket copy advises, if you aspire to be a crusty old editor, this is the handbook.

If you are attending the national conference of the American Copy Editors Society in St. Louis this spring, and you bring along your copy of The Old Editor Says, I will happily autograph it for you. 

I am deeply grateful to Anthony Medina, my former student, who was the Apprentice House  production editor for the book. I also owe thanks to Samantha Vigliotti, another former student, who read the manuscript and made several valuable corrections; and to Kevin Atticks of the Loyola faculty, who oversaw the project.


*Amazon marks it temporarily out of stock. (And gets the title wrong, too.) The text went to the printer at the end of last week. As the printer disgorges copies, they will be available on Amazon, no doubt soon. For now, you can place an order to be filled as the books become available.

A technical question, and an appeal for help

Perhaps some of you who are knowledgeable can help me with an irritating problem.

I work on an iMac at home, and nearly every day I get shut out of Facebook or Twitter on Firefox or Safari. Firefox delivers a "This Connection is Untrusted" warning that says that Twitter has an untrusted security certificate, and Safari renders a similar security certificate error.

This happens when I leave either Facebook or Twitter logged on for an extended time, and the only remedy that I have figured out is to clear the history and restart the computer.

I never have this problem with the Dell on my desk at work, so I assume that the problem has something to do with the iMac rather than with Facebook or Twitter.

Is there something about the iMac's security settings that needs adjustment? I welcome suggestions from Apple fanciers.