ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

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.

https://i.imgur.com/0ZcjQvf.png

FWIW I hire editors pretty often, and I don't care about certificates or contacts.

The path that Mookieproof describes is a viable one; certainly many people have gone that way and done well. There is an awful lot of writing out there, and much of it is terrible. If you offer to edit things for low rates as a way of getting yourself out there, you can certainly end up with a client base that makes sense for you.

Some people start out by doing work for free - like volunteering to help a nonprofit with its website, in exchange for warm good feelings and a reference. Or helping students/academics with papers. Church newsletters, brochures for local businesses, et cetera. Personally, I didn't have the patience for that approach (and I very much needed to pay the rent).

I am going to describe a somewhat different approach - one that focuses on professionalizing quickly and using established structures for getting work and getting paid.

You could get started by registering with editorial agencies (the big one in DC is EEI, I don't know about other places), general staffing agencies like Kelly, and online matching services like Upwork. That may all sound Way Too Corporate, but trust me it really is nice having someone else find the work, deal with invoicing, and deal with the taxes. Also they often use editing tests to determine your suitability, so credentialing matters less (as it should, IMO).

Another thing I did was to alternate periods of freelancing with periods of having a "real" job. Past employers can then become sources of freelance work, while also giving you access to professional contact networks.

Miscellaneous other considerations:

- Be aware of different style manuals (Chicago, AP, etc.) and be adaptable to client-specific and project-specific styles. It's not a good strategy to go out there with the idea that there is only one correct way to punctuate everything. Clients tend to prefer internal consistency to prescriptive correctness.

- The online marketplaces (kinda like Uber for freelancers) are new and still wildly uneven. There are thieves and scammers and just plain terrible jobs (e.g., SEO and clickbait writing), but there is also legitimate work on them. And they will become the way of the future, so you may as well learn their idiosyncracies.

- Rate setting, gah. The usual advice is to figure out what a staff person would get paid per hour, then double it. Or just divide their salary by a thousand. So if you think an employer would pay $40,000 for an in-house editor, you won't go far wrong charging $40 per hour. As mookieproof notes, some clients get sticker shock, or offer insultingly low rates because they can find people who will do it for $20 or $10. Professional freelancers are (understandably) vexed that so many people will accept these rates, as it depresses pay across the industry. OTOH, a very good reliable freelancer (particularly one with subject expertise) can charge more - and should!

Merdeyeux, are you in Britain? I can probably give a bit of regionally tailored advice if you are.

I do a little bit of this here and there, whenever I need an influx of cash; I do some social media marketing stuff, too. My regular rate is $40 an hour, but I jump that up to $50 an hour for clients I don't think will blink, and once I got $100 an hour for a several months-long project from a major record label. (I'm on the East Coast of the US and work primarily with people in and around New York City.)

if you're going to go ye mad puffin's route, which sounds good to me, then you should study up on basic copyediting practices. i've barely done that, yet i've taken competency tests covering the leetle squiggles and symbols (more of them than i ever needed when proofing msses w/ major publishers, especially since almost every stage of work except final page proofing was digital).

there's a lot of call for ap style in academic/educational editing, more than i would wish for since it's ugly and unnatural. luckily thanks to the modern internet you can steal copies of the major style guides and not have to shell out the $$$ or have library access. the chicago guide has sections on editing and publishing practices, aside from all its usage and bibliographic guidelines, which you might find it useful to read. plus there are just actual books on same, of course.

afraid to say i've probably been undercutting professionals, i think even $20/hr is too rich for the uber-market. especially the first-time novelists. i actually feel like my current client is getting a $40-$50/hr service from me, but since he's an old friend and we started out at a lower rate i feel funny jacking it up to the right level.

j brings up good points. Karen Judd's book Copyediting: a Practical Guide used to be the standard but would now seem pretty quaint.

The squiggles are not really relevant anymore except as a cultural signal among oldtimers (and I say this as a print-based oldtimer from pre-computer days).

But I do very much recommend getting a sense of soft skills like how to put together a diplomatic query - stuff like "On page 13 you refer to 'Iran-Iraq War' and on page 27 you refer to the 'Iraq-Iran War'. OK If I change all references to "Iran-Iraq War'?" or "In Chapter 3, Lorelei is described as having red hair, in Chapter 5 you have 'her black hair' - was this intentional or is it OK to change?"

And it is totally cool to charge less for friends, good repeat customers, and impoverished causes you value. I've been known to charge like $20 to an environmental nonprofit (and then make up the difference by charging Microsoft $120).

The concern about pay suppression is more about stingy clients than it is about impoverished ones (or courtesy rates extended to friends). Also, for good or for ill, there are a lot of people who do writing/editing as a hobby or avocation. Or they may consider themselves "aspiring," or they may view it as "extra" income (possibly because they have other income or a spouse has a more traditional job). I understand the POVs of those people but I also understand the POVs of people who are trying to pay a mortgage and feed a family with their freelancing.

dur, sorry, meant apa style above—been reading so many links to the OMG AP CHANGEZ STYLE story today

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/04/03/the_ap_stylebook_will_no_longer_capitalize_internet_bad_move.html

I think the AP is finally making the right move. No one breaks down on the Interstate anymore, now do they?

Has the word 'led' disappeared? I see 'lead' used instead ALL THE TIME (referring to the past tense, not the element)

I still see it in sports.

http://i.imgur.com/1bTMWP6.png

i wouldn't say it's "disappeared" for me but i've noticed it too, obviously almost exclusively in online media, and it is horrifying. that and editors who for some reason can't tell the difference between "loath" and "loathe"

i hadn't spotted these replies to my question, thanks everybody this is useful. woof, if you have any uk-centric advice (i'm based in london) that would be v much appreciated