Note from a cranky editor

[Christopher]

What bugged me was that period of a few years where Trek's copyeditors didn't seem to understand Klingon spelling and the editors at the time didn't catch their mistakes. They either inserted a U after every Q (so that Qo'noS became Quo'noS) or they misread capital Q as capital O (so that "Qapla!" became "Oapla!").

 

[coolghoul]

What bugged me was that period of a few years where Trek's copyeditors didn't seem to understand Klingon spelling and the editors at the time didn't catch their mistakes. They either inserted a U after every Q (so that Qo'noS became Quo'noS) or they misread capital Q as capital O (so that "Qapla!" became "Oapla!").

Why not create a Glossary of "uniquely spelt words" in your submissions to editors who don't know a "Qapla" from a "Patakh"?

Which is curious - I would think people who are going to edit Trek books should be somewhat familiar with what the most common Klingon words are. Or that Cardassians are an important race of people in the Trek Universe etc.

 

[captcalhoun]

you honorless dog, it's petaQ!

 

[Klaus]

Brings to mind the struggles Tolkien had with copyeditors and "dwarfs" vs. "dwarves"...

 

[Christopher]

Which is curious - I would think people who are going to edit Trek books should be somewhat familiar with what the most common Klingon words are. Or that Cardassians are an important race of people in the Trek Universe etc.

The editors know these things, of course. But copyeditors are something different. They're the people who go through manuscripts and check the spelling, punctuation, and grammar. There are a bunch of them, and they work for the company as a whole, sometimes on a temporary or freelance basis. They don't specialize. (Simon & Schuster publishes a whole bunch of stuff besides Star Trek.) So it's something of a crapshoot. You don't know in advance what copyeditor you'll get or how familiar they'll be with the subject matter of your book or how overzealous they'll be about enforcing arbitrary or imaginary "rules."

So sometimes you end up with copyeditors who create more problems than they fix. So it's the job of the author and the editor, when they get the copyedited pages, to go through them and flag any mistakes the copyeditors made. So there are multiple eyes checking the manuscript, hopefully cancelling out most of each other's mistakes. If a copyeditor does a particularly poor job, the editor may choose not to make use of that copyeditor anymore, though other editors in the company still may.

And these days, the Trek editors usually catch mistakes of this magnitude before they get into print. But a while back, the books were under an editor who didn't seem to be all that conscientious about such things, and so quite a few mistakes slipped through under his watch.

 

[Greg Cox]

Regarding copyeditors, it should be pointed out that a good copyeditor is a pearl beyond price who can spare an author much embarrassment. And although authors love to trade copyediting horror stories, such instances are the exceptions to the rule. I've written over forty books and I think I've complained about a copyeditor twice.

But, yeah, it's kind of the luck of the draw. Heaven help you if you get a copyeditor who is unfamiliar or inexperienced with your given genre.

I am reminded of the clueless copyeditor who assumed that "ion rifles" was a typo and changed it to "iron rifles" throughout . . . .

 

[JustKate]

I had one once - this was caught before it went to print, fortunately - who changed my absolutely accurate mention of the Packers & Stockyards Act to the Packards & Stockyards Act. Mind you, I'd rather have been writing about Packards than about packers - Packards are such very, very, very cool cars - but the plan fact was that I was not.

But of course Greg's right - the good ones and even the so-so ones catch a lot of baaaaaaad stuff.

 

[Sakrysta]

Is there communication between the copy editors and the authors? I ask because, if I ran across something like "ion rifles" showing up multiple times, and I questioned whether it was correct, I think I'd ask the author. "Hey, is it really 'ion' rifle? Or did you mean 'iron'? Because I've never heard of an 'ion' rifle, but I would think an 'iron' rifle would be inordinately heavy."

 

[Greg Cox]

A good copyeditor will query something like that rather than just take it upon themselves to fix it. They won't contact the author directly, but will flag "ion rifles" to call it to the author's attention. "Is this deliberate?"

 

[S. Gomez]

...but the plan fact was that I was not.

Run before we call ours.

 

[JustKate]

You've never heard of a plan fact? Sham on you, S. Gomez!

A good copyeditor will query something like that rather than just take it upon themselves to fix it. They won't contact the author directly, but will flag "ion rifles" to call it to the author's attention. "Is this deliberate?"

In newspapers and magazines, which is where I've spent my career, they often just change it without asking anybody because everything is being done in such a hurry. In this case, I was saved by the fact that although I had somebody else edit my article, because generally the writer is his or her own worst editor, I was actually the publication's official editor so I checked it one more time "just in case."

So understaffing actually saved me from running "the Packards & Stockyards Act." Sad but true. I guess it's got to be good for something.

 

[Greg Cox]

Speaking of newspapers:

Our local smalltown paper just confused "past" with "passed" twice in one article. As in "the parade ran passed the courthouse."

It never ends . . . .

 

[Klaus]

I don't think anyone has mentioned "towing the line" instead of "toeing the line"...

 

[Lindley]

"Rouge group, use your harpoons and toe cables!"

(Yes, both intentional.)

 

[Gryffindorian]

I refuse to go to the party on principal.
What is your principle residence?

 

[BrotherBenny]

As a reader I have often picked up misspellings and grammar errors which have somehow slipped through, though as a writer I've often been guilty of those mistakes myself. I have a fantastic fiancée who reads every chapter of mine and finds the errors I've made. Most often, my errors are simply missing letters or double words (ie, double double words) as my brain just hasn't caught up to what my eyes see.

My pet peeve, and I have seen this in a novel or two, is "definate" instead of "definite". What was really amusing is that on one occasion, less than a paragraph earlier, they had "finite" correctly.

I also came across a word recently which I thought was a spelling mistake, but after finding a dictionary, I realise it was not, though there is still the possibility that the word choice was incorrect. The word was "complaisantly" which I thought should have been "complacently" having never come across the former word before.

for clarification, what is the difference, if any, between spelt and spelled?

 

[S. Gomez]

for clarification, what is the difference, if any, between spelt and spelled?

The difference is what side of the Atlantic you're on. It's "spelt" according to British usage, but "spelled" according to American usage. Both are correct, just not in each other's dictionaries.

 

[BrotherBenny]

for clarification, what is the difference, if any, between spelt and spelled?

The difference is what side of the Atlantic you're on. It's "spelt" according to British usage, but "spelled" according to American usage. Both are correct, just not in each other's dictionaries.

Thanks.

 

[Lindley]

Plus, "spelled" can imply use of magic. It's a lot harder for "spelt" to do that....

 

[S. Gomez]

I was just reminded by way of a homework assignment of another key homonym which I often have to stop and think about. It involves 'e' and 'a'...

"The effect of human activity on shifts in climatic conditions."

"The ways in which human activity affects climatic conditions."

Not to mention "climatic" vs. "climactic" which I often have to stop and make sure I get right.