ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Ya it's the for that's great issue there

That and autocorrect

Another possibility (which occurred to me a second too late) is "...HANDLE the regurgitant blood flow."

Handle, a good honest Anglo-Saxon word.

"allow for" might make sense grammatically but is nonsensical given the medical physiology the sentence is describing

for similar reasons i don't like just using accommodate as a transitive verb -- increasing stroke volume is an active counter-response of the heart, not a passive one. "compensate for" world better for this reason -- "overcome" might be ok too. sentence probably just needs to be recast

world = works

Wd be stronger if you ditched the "for" that follows but not sure if that changes the meaning of your sentence

whoops major crosspost, 'scuse me

instead of "accommodate for", maybe "adapt to"?

Washington Post copyediting guru Bill Walsh has died. He was sensible, undogmatic, polite, funny.

He was open with his readers about the limited scope of editorial judgment, and about prescriptivism's limitations. But he also acknowledged the professional necessity of making some judgment calls--the need to draw some lines in the shifting sand. And he would defend the placement of those lines with gentleness and humor. And he was willing to change his mind, graciously, when needed.

I never met him in person (I think I exchanged emails with him once or twice). One of my personal heroes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bill-walsh-copy-editor-and-witty-authority-on-language-dies-at-55/2017/03/15/6bf9dea4-002e-11e7-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_ob-main-walsh-5pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5dc99fe5a4ca

anyone got a pointer to a good style guide for writing sensitively about chattel slavery?

how do people even get it in their head to write out "tow the line"? do they call the little things on their feet "tows" too?

Obscure though it may be, canal boats on the Erie canal, flat boats on the Missouri River, and some portages used to be accomplished by attaching a tow line to the vessel and pulling it. This required everyone's effort, so there is a some legitimacy to this misinterpretation of "toe the line".

i call them piggies

love isn't always on time

I wondered if we both thought of that, not because the song is "Hold the Line", but because it's by Tow Toe.

no no no

lol i just looked up the lyrics and i had assumed my whole life it was love isn't always on time/no no no but apparently it's oh oh oh

woah woah woah

On August 30th, the day that Hamilton dropped Abush off at Sullivan Street, the Court of Appeals published its decision; Barone did have standing as a parent.

should be a colon, not a semicolon, right?

also i just thought about the thread title for the first time: "copy editor" is two words

colon is better, yes -- semi-colon kind of implies the second is something other than the decision publishe

Hamilton became a part-time office manager at Shasty. She still had a career as a photographer: in addition to magazine and corporate work, she had a sideline, which had grown out of a personal art project; she made commissioned portraits of women who, often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons, wished to be photographed unclothed for the first time.

another questionable one from a few paragraphs later! i think this sentence just needs to be recast

idk if the new yorker has a certain house style re: semicolons that i'm just unaware of but i feel like i would have noticed and objected a long time ago if so!

Hamilton became a part-time office manager at Shasty. She still had a career as a photographer. In addition to magazine and corporate work, she had a sideline, which had grown out of a personal art project: she made commissioned portraits of women who, often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons, wished to be photographed unclothed for the first time.

^^^is how i'd rewrite it, but the one you posted isn't wrong, just a bit fussy?

"not wrong, just a bit fussy" is new yorker board description of course

the semicolon seems wrong and its placement in a sentence that already has a colon just makes everything way too messy imo. yours is better

As someone who often writes very involved sentences, I use semi-colons after colons now and then. Colon to introduce a list, but the items in the list are elaborate and wordy, so you use semi-colons instead of commas to separate them. This is close enough to that to seem OK to me at first glance -- and it's not unclear, which is always the main sin -- but it isn't actually a list, as the sentence after the semi-colon is an expansion of the sentence before it (ie calls for a colon, hence the rewrite).

Colon to me implies logical link or progression; semi-colon is a toughened up comma. Fiercer sub-editors might well put full stops everywhere.

Just use hyphens, burn the motherfucker down

the comma-dash

To reopen an ancient non-debate: why the fuck 'copy editor' but not 'proof reader'-- oh, hang on, I get it now: one who edits copy but not one who reads prooves.

('Prooves' only for an humorous effect, natch.)

Copy editor checks a story for facts, might call a source for clarification of a quote. Also proof reads.

Proof reader basically checks for spelling and grammar.

my version

Hamilton became a part-time office manager at Shasty. She still, however, had a career as a photographer. In addition to magazine and corporate work, she had an unusual sideline, which had grown out of a personal art project: she made commissioned portraits of women who, often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons, wished to be photographed unclothed for the first time.

i don't like "made commissioned" - even though it's grammatically correct you've got two past tense verb forms right next to each other, and even once you get past that half your brain is like "commissioned.... by whom? the women themselves?" ANYWAY

I don't like the length of that third sentence to begin with, and the long parenthetical puts a lot of distance between "who" and "wished."

How about "...project. She photographed women who wished to be portrayed nude for the first time (often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons).

Or "...project. She made portraits of women who wished to be portrayed nude for the first time (often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons).

or "did portraits of women who wished to be photographed nude"

i can now sense eustace t gazing haughtily at us through his monocle as we busily unravel the utter new yorkerness, the expression at once compact and deferred

i think a colon is definitely called for, not a fan of breaking it into three sentences. mark s's is what i would go with

\o/

Hamilton became a part-time office manager at Shasty, but still had a career as a photographer. In addition to magazine and corporate work, she had a sideline, which had grown out of a personal art project: commissioned portraits of women who, often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons, wished to be photographed unclothed for the first time.

<- my attempt. the first two sentences can be combined. and you can lose the "she made" without affecting the sense.

I think we should keep reworking this graf, returning to it every few days, like Picasso reworking Las Meninas

"It took ten years, but I think you'll agree it was worth waiting for."

To reopen an ancient non-debate: why the fuck 'copy editor' but not 'proof reader'-- oh, hang on, I get it now: one who edits copy but not one who reads prooves.

"Reading proofs" is exactly what proofreaders do!

I guess so, yeah. "Uncorrected prooves." Well, then, why is copy editor two words but proofreader one? That always bugged me.

Also: in this thread, many laffs. I wanted to EXCELSIOR some lol posts, but they were 10 years old.

I have moved in circles where some people believed a hyphen was best (copy-editor), others preferred it open (copy editor), and others preferred it closed (copyeditor). A standard anti-closer argument was "how many yedits have you copped?"

Everyone offered examples allegedly showing why their way was best, as though an argument from consistency should be dispositive (despite the arbitrary nature of the territory). Is a coworker someone who orks cows? Etc.

Meanwhile I'm all like "call it whatever you want as long as I keep getting paid."

I guess I had it in my head (not having thought too deeply about it) that proofreading was a type of reading (reading for proof?), rather than the proof being the thing what was being read.

As I recall, every dictionary & style guide I ever worked from was anti-hyphen, anti-close on copy editor.

This was the standard instructional text for most of my career, and even the cover design jokes about the persistence of the dispute.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41CRFYQH91L._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg