You know you're an editor when someone asks whether "anyone's familiar with Chicago" and your first thought is The Chicago Manual of Style, not the city.
Granted, this question was in a group of editors, but I still laughed at myself.
A haunted house for editors: zombie rules, hills that editors have died on, manuscripts that suck the life out of you, ghosts of uncaught errors past, and people who insist something's wrong when it's really a style choice.
@RedPenRabbit@edibuddies Authors who promise they'll get it to you "first thing tomorrow," manuscript files encrypted so you can't open them (for "safety"), clients that go out of business without paying you.
I find it very rude that an author would write something in their story that makes me cry while I'm trying to proofread their novel. It's hard enough to check for typos, bad breaks, layout issues, and the like when it's not through tear-filled eyes.
I haven't tracked the hours, but I'm pretty sure that ever since I became a freelancer, I've spent half my work days staring at my calendar and thinking either "Oh no, there's a gap in my schedule" or "Oh no, what have I done?"
Is the use of "alleged" correct in this sentence from @washingtonpost ?
"The judge overseeing a civil trial over alleged business fraud committed by Donald Trump and his company issued a gag order in the case Tuesday barring the former president from making public comments about his court staff."
The judge already found T to have committed fraud for the past 10 years. Nothing alleged about it. Amiright? Or no?
I think you're probably right. I think it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. Sometimes you really should call a thing what it is. A lie is a lie, and proven business fraud is just that: business fraud
I love it when something I learned in a previous edit comes in handy. I just queried the use of "poisonous" where "venomous" seemed more appropriate, which I had learned about years ago for another edit, and I may or may not have squeed when I spotted it this time.
FYI:
venomous = toxins are injected
poisonous = toxins are ingested
Bite, sting, or barb? Venomous.
Dangerous to eat or touch? Poisonous.
It bites you, you die = Venomous
You bite it, you die = Poisonous
It bites someone else, you die = Correlation
You bite it, someone else dies = voodoo
Everybody gets bitten, nobody dies = kinky
Folks who work on very long docs in Word using Comments: Is there anything I need to look out for? I’m about to start the longest project I’ve ever done in Word specifically and am slightly concerned I’ll get partway through & somehow explode the document. Wisdom? @edibuddies#edibuddies@editors#AmEditing
@eliotedits@edibuddies@editors
How long is the doc? Are you using tracked changes or just comments? If just comments, my only advice is to back up early and often - it shouldn't make even the longest documents unweildy. If you're also using tracked changes, though, turn on the simplified markup. Otherwise that could really hang up loading.
I'd begin by saving a backup of the document before you start editing, delete comments as you go if you find them easily resolvable, and change viewing to simplified, which should speed up loading times. Keep 2 versions of the file, the one you are editing and the document before the edits started. It might also help to have MS Word save the document automatically every 1 minute in this case @eliotedits@edibuddies@editors
Thanks very much to all my virtual breakout room colleagues for sharing thoughts, hopes, experiences and more!
Bring on day 2! I'm all ready now.
*For more on critical generosity in editorial practice, read the excellent keynote address for Editorial Freelancers Association's conference last month by Cathy Hannabach: https://ideasonfire.net/editing-as-worldmaking/