19 Comments
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Jesse Slater's avatar

My favorite of my limited adventures in copy-editing was when the book's editor told me "This story needs more French."

Ummm... I thought they asked me to edit because I could English goodly. Nobody said anything about French. "Author! Help!"

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Laura Begley's avatar

I have absolutely no French knowledge, beyond a few very basic words! What did you wind up doing??

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Jesse Slater's avatar

Bounced it to the author. "The Colonel likes the story, but..."

Fortunately, he agreed, and gave me a bunch of stuff to plug in.

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Julie Rorabaugh's avatar

This is MY life! Give it back! Haha 😂

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Laura Begley's avatar

🤣🤣

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Ryan Twombly's avatar

Three cheers for copy editors:

Huzz-ah!

Huzzah!

Huzza.

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Laura Begley's avatar

Aww! Thanks! 🎉

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Codex redux's avatar

Been doing pro-bono copy-editing for a while. And I usually throw it in with my covers.

Keep the torch alight sister! Together we'll put "discrete" back into the ordering system where it belongs 😸

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Laura Begley's avatar

It’s great that you do that! Torch is raised! Thanks!

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John Hollowell's avatar

Thank you for your service.

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Laura Begley's avatar

Thank you for commenting! ❤️

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Beatrice's avatar

Same. I'd love to get paid work. I've not done it for pay in about 15 yrs.

We went into a new HEB about, oh, 25 yrs ago now. I was looking for condiments & was stopped by the sign. They apparently couldn't decide between 'catsup" or "ketchup" & had mangled it into an abomination that I couldn't make sense of. I tracked down the store manager & explained it to him & begged him to fix it.

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Laura Begley's avatar

I hope they fixed it! Thanks for your service in the field!

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George M Grant's avatar

i don't think the mainline publishers are doing enough copy editing anymore with the errors I've been spotting lately. They should hire more people like you.

I do my best to make your work easy and hope I succeed, but nobody's perfect. Thanks for being their to ketch me when I fail.

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Laura Begley's avatar

I see what you did there! Thanks!

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Clair Kiernan's avatar

How do you feel about Strunk & White?

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Laura Begley's avatar

I used to have a copy a long time ago, but it vanished and I haven’t replaced it, lol!

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Amanda's avatar

Thank you for your hard work!

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Laura Begley's avatar

You’re welcome!

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