From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You
We now know why so many writers thank their copyeditors! The
glitches that she picked up were amazing – the result being that she gave us a
lot of work to do!
She told us things like:
What do you mean by this? Where is the reference for that? And that? In
one place you say that it is 11% in another you say that it is 11.2% - which is
it, and incidentally, we don’t use the % sign, we write it out “per cent”.
By having others read chapters and provide feedback –
between May and September, thirty-three people had read individual chapters – I
erroneously thought that there wouldn’t be much to do at this stage.
Incidentally and sadly, I received Jeff Peterson’s corrections earlier in the
same week that he suddenly died – his rigorous review had similarities to those
of the copyeditor. A professional is able to see errors in syntax, structural
and spelling errors and help improve the flow from paragraph to paragraph.
There is no ego to her (in our case, the copyeditor was female).
Kirsten Craven was connected to Florian and I by internet at
the end of December. We have spent an intense three months together. We have
never met in real time – she’s on the West Coast and two hours behind my time
(three hours from Flo). That had the advantage that Flo and I could have
something completed for her hours before she saw her children off to school.
As a lay person – not scientific – she could see all our
faults.
Comparing documents – BC (before copyeditor) and PC (post-copyeditor)
– the improvement is outstanding!
We are almost finished ….. Please say so! Thanks so much,
Kirsten.
