ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

editing non-writers in the past couple years, i saw an ENORMOUS amount of '[ me ] arriving at the location, the associate [ i.e. someone else] greeted me warmly'

"As she entered the room, Jessica came into the room" is 1000x as clear.

― I might like you better if we Yelped together (Phil D.), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 2:57 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ugh, see, everyone needs an editor.

let's get back to the topic of entering Jessica

"Entering the room, Jessica came into my view" is 100% clear if you assume the writer is writing with proper usage. That's my point. If you don't stick to that rule, then you can wind up writing one thing when you mean the other.

I mean in Pinker's example it works ok because the "it" doesn't represent a specific thing or object, just an idiomatic way of saying that he felt happy. 95% of the time, it actually would be unclear to write that sentence without the subject of the sentence following the comma.

After entering the room, who came into my view but Jessica!

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/comma-queen-spelling-insurance?mbid=social_twitter

this woman regularly infuriates me

"true, ensure and insure mean different things, but we use insure for everything, why because the style guide some says to use the 'in-' form for every 'en-/in-" prefix, well that is not counting this long list of exceptions"

DIE

Wait, so this person has been proofreading for the country's leading high-middlebrow rag since 1978 and still doesn't get the difference between these two words? How can this be?

i think she understands the difference, she just defers to the style guide

Help! What the hell is the plural of Lopez? Par example: Mr. and Mrs. Lopez bought a care. The Lopezs (Lopez's?) love their new car.

I used to know this shit but then I went to grad school, which has made me dumber.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/19/sports/la-sp-oly-taekwondo-lopez-20120520

lopezes?

Lopezes

Los Lopez

I would actually love to use Los Lopez, but Lopezes it shall be. Thanks! I tried writing it with the -es at first and it just looked so damn wrong. I do very muchprefer the grammarians of ILX to the ding-dongs of Google. Muchos gracias.

Now would anyone like to finish writing this paper about Los Lopez for me

had a similar brain hurdle with the plural of "yes" today but it was for a comment on a blog spot so i wrote yesses (yeses? yes’s? yeezus?) and moved on.

Along those lines, copyedited someone this morning who referred to the Peoples' Republic of China.

I mean, you could almost convince yourself that's right, even though it's not. Much like Communism.

Is there any implication of events being related if you use the word 'subsequently'? Or am I conflating it with 'consequently'?
Someone's drafted something similar to the following but it seems off to me:
"We wrote to you setting out your situation and explaining that we would do X. Subsequently, we did not receive any objection."

Maybe the word is in the wrong place? I've looked at it for too long now and it's become meaningless

I think "subsequently" is used correctly there, in terms of its meaning, but it sounds officious and maybe a little passive-aggressive.

"Since writing, we have not received any objection" or something like that would have a more neutral tone.

I'm struggling here today with "spatula" as the name of the utensil used to flip a pancake, rather than the one used to scrape batter from a bowl

also I experienced a discernible uptick in blood pressure as a result of "step foot in" appearing in an NPR headline

I agree that 'subsequently' is used correctly in the example provided, but it is extraneous and better to leave it out.

Yeah, I just deleted it in the end. I realised the writer had left it in from a version where 'subsequently' they had received an objection.

also why tf am I doing this on a Saturday afternoon with a sick kid

I'm struggling here today with "spatula" as the name of the utensil used to flip a pancake, rather than the one used to scrape batter from a bowl

also I experienced a discernible uptick in blood pressure as a result of "step foot in" appearing in an NPR headline

― Brad C., Saturday, March 19, 2016 11:23 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think this usage of spatula arose because there is possibly no good word for the utensil used to flip a pancake, and it sounds especially dumb to call it a "pancake turner" when the thing you are flipping is not pancakes.

fish slice? even though I never slice fish with it

growing up we called it an egg flip

I think I might use the same implement to scrape things in a bowl and to flip (more like gently turn over) a pancake. Don't really understand the difference. A spatula, for me, is a flat rectangle on the end of a stick, and some are bigger than others, some have holes, some are plastic, some are wooden etc. I have a lot of objects like this, and it doesn't bother me that they vary so much: it's my spatula collection.

how is the thing not called a spatula have i been corrupted

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61AhXv6rOBL._SL1200_.jpg

Spatulas

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71Q1dWUPA2L._SL1500_.jpg

Fish slice/egg flip/pancake turner/not a spatula

^ Precisely the opposite of what my sister's home ec teacher told her, apparently, based on a story where this teacher screamed about the taxonomy of rubber kitchen implements

(former is a 'rubber scraper' and the latter is a 'spatula' according to said teacher)

but its 2016 and who cares

Is this a Commonwealth/US thing? Or is it just some modern marketing department not knowing what else to call one or the other of these things?

we may be veering into 'what is a hot dog' territory

there can be different kinds of spatulas it's ok

In the US a fish slice is regarded as a type of spatula and may be called a turner

i have a different kind of question for the copyeditors and grammar fiends of ilx - is it possible to make a living (or something approaching one) from freelance proofreading/copyediting without certificates and/or a ready pool of contacts? (my one selling point being a doctorate in the humanities, which i guess proves i'm basically capable of reading and writing.)

i call it a flatula

a slotted turn! That's what mine was actually called.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vsyO5yUxzs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY

i feel like 'peek' vs 'peak' issues have suddenly gotten out of hand

homophonophobia?

the origin of American confusion on this issue xp

homophonosis

The author of this piece uses "pour over" instead of "pore over." (He also spells Ashley Kahn's name wrong.) That one doesn't come up often, which is probably why bothers me so much.

I might say pancake turner if and only if I need to distinguish the comparatively rigid flipping utensil from the more flexible scraping one. That said, most ppl have little difficulty telling from context which kind of spatula is meant. Any situation where confusion could arise would be easily handled (so to speak) with other clarifying words.

"Hey, I need to sauté these onions, can you please hand me that spatula" vs. "I'm having trouble getting the last bits of peanut butter out of this jar - got a spatula?" OR just say "can you hand me that red spatula there?"

Similarly people can manage just fine with "can" meaning a metal container for beer, a method of food preservation, ability to do something, and the act of firing someone.

O and I snoozed on Merdeyeux's question upthread but the answer is yes, kinda. Would be happy to inundate with more detail but won't bother

...won't bother unless there is still interest

i have a different kind of question for the copyeditors and grammar fiends of ilx - is it possible to make a living (or something approaching one) from freelance proofreading/copyediting without certificates and/or a ready pool of contacts? (my one selling point being a doctorate in the humanities, which i guess proves i'm basically capable of reading and writing.)

i've taken a stab at deriving income from this in the past couple years, not very successfully, in a similar boat to you. i don't have any writing/editing credentials, but i did briefly work an editing job for a scholarly journal while in grad school. between that and actually being an ace editor i figure it should be doable. but i don't have the connections and have had other stuff to do, so i haven't tried all that hard to make any. i prepped somebody's master's thesis for final submission, which was a nice big job, and i've been helping an old college friend, a scientist who can't write, make articles submittable and shape up his tenure portfolio and defenses during the whole process. but the only place i've been pursuing totally freelance clients, through one of those bid-for-professional-services-in-your-local-area websites, has not been very fruitful.

my sense is that a lot of the jobs are for clients with little idea of what they want, what they can get, or what the real costs are, all of which makes it hard to pitch and bid convincingly. there are lots of people looking for small projects like business plans or maybe 'blog posts', for which, i reckon, some vague sheen of suitability would be required of you (i never pitch those). there are a lot of people with novels (excuse me, 'fiction novels'), and they want things done with them but seem iffy about what. there are a lot of set categories of editing that apply especially to fiction at various stages of doneness, and although people sometimes ask for those specific things, my sense is that few of them appreciate what they entail. some ask for developmental editing, for which you'd likely need to pass yourself off as convincingly acquainted with the basics of fiction-writing (what makes a good story, characterization, etc.), and maybe wouldn't be able to pull off without credentials or a work history with satisfied novelists. many indicate that they're looking for some kind of cleanup, say line editing for grammar or formatting, but these people often appear to me to be deluded about the quality of their writing, thinking that it will just be a little touchup that they need when really they've got 100,000 words of embarrassment for you. this makes pitching especially difficult, because you want to make estimates they can understand, based on what their jobs would really require of you, and cost you/them. a lot of people seem to be shopping absurdly long manuscripts for edits without realizing that they're far longer than most published novels, so their sense of what it would take to run through these behemoths is totally out of whack.

setting rates is itself a mystery, i'd be glad to hear what actual pros do there (i think i asked about it upthread, or on another thread, and didn't hear much back). if you go by professional market rates, prior to being established, i think you're liable to scare most potential clients off, more so the more they're not word-professionals themselves. i haven't had much luck probing the needs of people who haven't hired me, but my impression is that even low rates, moderately proportioned to the amount of work they project having for you, tend to spook them. which suggests that they were thinking this would be like, they pay you a hundred bucks and you somehow fix er right up, quickly. i've gathered that a viable strategy would probably be to underbid for a while at the outset to make sure you can get clients, then just eat the time/cost needed to do them good work, as you build up a reputation and attract a more knowledgeable/credulous clientele that are willing to pay what the work costs. but it hasn't been worth my time to shoot for that, given other work that i've had.

this is just local, in a sizeable metro area with a lot of higher ed per capita (my ideal market). i'm guessing that if you're (still?) in the london area, it would be a lot easier.