Letters to the Editor
-
Thanks, Gary
As an editor turned writer, I loved this piece. I especially liked the reference early on to the writer who came away from the editing process feeling like it was better than sex. I have fantasies of getting thoroughly and satisfyingly edited like that. Alas, it has never happened.
In an ideal world, editors and writers would work both sides of the desk, preferably starting out as writers. Editors become all-powerful in the minds of writers, who are constantly trying to read the tea leaves of their responses (or lack therof). I regret now that I wasn't more nurturing as an editor; I assumed that writers who were good knew it -- after all, I gave them more work -- and that I didn't have to praise them. It was not until I encountered my own nurturing editor that I realized the error of my ways. I don't know if she really improved my prose (as a former editor, I can't help but polish everything I write to the nth degree) but I do know that she nourished my soul and made what could have been a very mundane assignment, a travel guidebook, a complete joy.
-
Questions for Slackie
or anyone who can answer them.
I've just started to teach English and get into proofreading/copyediting, and I'm always coming across things that mystify me. I'm genuinely looking for some clarification, so please don't think I'm being snarky or smug.
Slackie wrote: "It's the difference between a cleanly, clearly communicated idea, and noise."
Is that last comma, between "idea" and "and," technically allowed to be there? Under what justification?
And: "Editing's an invisible art, and, sadly, appears to be going by the wayside..."
Since that's a compound predicate (IS an invisible art and APPEARS to be going...) and not a compound sentence, why is there a comma before the conjunction?
Thanks so much for your help.
-
Editing vs. editorial planning
People have been talking about distinguishing among types of editors, and I think it's important to note the difference between the task of deciding which articles should be published, which is done by the top editor(s), and the task of "editing" those pieces to make them read as well as possible, which is done mostly by lower-level editors. Kamiya, obviously, is talking about the latter.
And by the way, it's the former with which Salon has had trouble lately. The problem with a Paglia article isn't that it wasn't edited well enough; it's that someone chose to run it at all.
-
The making of a bad editor
The prospective editor had been flown in for a series of interviews, and somewhere along the line one of the higher-ups decided it would be a good idea -- or maybe just a nice gesture -- to let the reporters take her out to lunch. So we did. She was the typically bright, ambitious j-school product, with a couple years of copy-desk experience. She was knowledgeable in the subjects she would be editing.
Then one of us asked her what she'd been reading lately.
She said she really didn't have much time to read. Newspapers, of course -- The Times, the Wall Street Journal, a local paper or two -- and a few specialized magazines. She hadn't read a book since graduate school, though she wished she'd kept up on the best sellers.
She was, from almost every point of view but ours, perfect for the job. The fact that she had no special love for language, no sense for its ebb and flow, and that her curiosity had been blunted, signalled that she would be a happy cog, moving the wheels along briskly, keeping the machine churning forward. What kind of editor would she make? You can guess.
Here's what I think, after 47 years as a newspaper writer and sometime editor: Give me any day an editor who reads, not just scans The Times for ideas and the blogs to see what's hot, but actually reads a little of everything; fiction, poetry, the classics, good magazines, even -- I'd settle for this -- an occasional best-seller.
-
Editors are great as long as they serve the piece.
What writers and readers object to is when editors take it on themselves to moderate the tone or make substantive changes to a piece. This is why blogging is popular. There are no editors "softening the edges" or "toning down the vitriol" or screwing with what the blogger wants to say.
Correct our punctuation and assist us with grammatical errors, but stay our of the content. If you want to make a statement, don't be an editor, be a writer.
-
Many, Many Thanks
Thank you, Gary, for singing our praises while (delicately) mentioning our faults. I've been editing for over 20 years and the public perception of The Editor has not changed that dramatically. We are frustrated writers who don't understand the "art" of the true creative. We are glamourous guys/gals about town who flit about from one book promotion party to the next. We are grammar Nazis dedicated to humiliating everyone by dredging up elementray school sentence diagrams.
So thank you for explaining that we're really hardworking, behind-the-scenes clean-up crews who care deeply—very deeply—about our writers and our language. And thank you for mentioning that we care, most deeply of all, about our readers.
-
RE: SouthendGirl
Well put.
-
Tim Barrus aka Nasdijj
I have never once had an editor make anything better
I find this quite difficult to believe as your letter desperately needs an editor.
-
Editor DJ
I think an analogy that will allow people to be a little less antagonistic towards the concept of an editor is to compare him to a deejay, as opposed to a gatekeeper.
There was a time (a time which still lives in some places) when disc jockeys provided a soundtrack, not by making the music themselves, but by selecting works that had some quality and weaving them into an aural tapestry going out over the club's sound system or some radio station's airwaves. The DJ was, of course, in some instances imposing his own tastes. But those tastes were informed by having listened to thousands of songs, and one needn't listen long to figure out whether that particular DJ had any real talent for discerning quality or not.
And occasionally you'll find a DJ who clearly does have that talent, who you come to trust to deliver not just music you already like, but music you've never heard of but will come to like.
Similarly, the internet needs editors, if for no other reason, to act as that trusted deejay. Bringing you not only writers you already know and appreciate, but bringing your attention to writers you could never pick out yourself from the thousands and thousands that now toss their words upon the electronic waters.