ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

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

I'd split up copyeditor bcz it looks funny and gives you pause as you read. Proofreader doesn't.

If you demand a consistent rule from me, it's "close them up unless they look weird, in which case don't". Close them up bcz the more words we end up with the better.

"Does it look funny?" is an important heuristic IMO.

mark s otm.

It's like when in the 90s people would try to argue that "email" requires a hyphen because otherwise you might confuse it with the French word for "enamel."

Don't go too far down the rabbit hole of sophistry, y'all. Sometimes things just work (or don't work) for readers. And readers are what matters.

Copyeditors never looked funny to me - copy editors did - until I became one.

Writers often want spaces around their em dashes bcuz they read them as dashes. Which boggles my mind every time.

"As hyphens" Jesus I need more coffee

By default in Word, space hyphen space autocorrects to space en-dash space. Space hyphenhyphen space autocorrects to space em-dash space. Word hyphenhyphen word autocorrects to wordemdashword. Vastly prefer the last of these, but I will adapt to house preference when needed.

The latter is the only acceptable option in print - ilx is probably a little more laxworthy.

Dang *last

I'm so out of practice here

lol

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-correct-punctuation-of-donald-trump-jrs-name

The New Yorker is welcome to its conventions. They are ugly, but at least they are decipherable, so you may quickly put them behind you, like Satan.

I like the consonant-doubling rule.

You know, an easy way to avoid that particular punctuation traffic jam is to spell out "Junior."

donald trump fils

oh god, don't go there, because then the discussion moves to fils' vs fils's

basically this is the fault of anyone egotistical enough to name his son after himself

they should just print his name at half the point size

That would cause consistency problems. How, then, to style Henry VIII or John XXIII?

henry viii half the point size of his dad henry vii, john xxiii is unrelated to to john xxii (or any other pope except possibly the borgia popes, none of whom were called john, so the problem doesn't arise