One Beautiful Quotation to Explain the Copyediting Process

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

—Enrique Jardiel Poncela

Amen.

"If your vocation isn’t a vacation, then quit, leap, change careers."

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

http://denisebarkerauthor.blogspot.com/

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue.  You give him the possibility of a whole new life. Christopher Morley
The best inheritance you can leave your kids is an example of how to live a full and meaningful life. Dan Zadra

Punctuation Rules in the 16CMS

I remember my daddy once saying, the incredulity in his voice evident, "There are comma rules?" And this is a man with a mechanical engineering degree and probably a genius IQ. Yet the 16CMS has thirty-eight numbered rules regarding commas alone (see below). So this goes to prove that someone, even with an expert standing in one field, can be not-so-expert in another.

So, just to show you some of the ~8,600 grammar rules within the 16CMS, here's a quick breakdown by punctuation mark:

• Periods (see 16CMS 6.12–6.16)
• Commas (see 16CMS 6.16–6.53)

• Semicolons (see 16CMS 6.54–6.58)

• Colons (see 16CMS 6.59–6.65)

• Question Marks (see 16CMS 6.66–6.70)

• Exclamation Points (see 16CMS 6.71–6.74)

• Hyphens (see 16CMS 6.75–6.77)

• N-Dashes (see 16CMS 6.78–6.81)

• M-Dashes (see 16CMS 6.82–6.89)

• 2-M and 3-M Dashes (16CMS 6.90, 6.91)

• Parentheses (16CMS 6.92–6.96)

• Brackets and Braces (16CMS  6.97–6.102)

• Slashes (16CMS 6.103–6.110)

• Quotation Marks (16CMS 6.111, 6.112)

• Apostrophes (16CMS 6.113–6.115)

• Multiple Punctuation Marks (16CMS 6.116–6.120)

For ebooks, the 16CMS even has rules for stray spaces and manual tabs [see 16CMS 2.77(7)] and stray returns [see 16CMS 2.77(8)]. NOTE: There is only one space between each sentence, per 16CMS 2.9.

So I caution anyone who thinks they know enough about grammar to check out the 16CMS for yourself. You'll be surprised at what you don't know.

Granted, for each rule number (e.g., 16CMS 6.18), various rules are within this one designation. Plus Chapter 6 is comparatively short, spanning pages 305–348 within a 1,026-page book, so this chapter is not even 5 percent of the book. Remember too, as organized as 16CMS is, that doesn't mean a stray rule on punctuation won't pop up elsewhere. Just FYI.

So a ton of data awaits you to review. Even if you just peruse the first couple pages, I'll bet you grow a new appreciation for your copy editor.

Yes, I'm a grammar geek.

Have a good week, folks!

"If your vocation isn’t a vacation, then quit, leap, change careers."

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

http://denisebarkerauthor.blogspot.com/

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue.  You give him the possibility of a whole new life. Christopher Morley
The best inheritance you can leave your kids is an example of how to live a full and meaningful life. Dan Zadra

What Exactly Does a Copy Editor Do?

It's easier to show than to tell what I do as a copy editor. [Note: "copy editor" used here is the two-word open noun version.] See how many errors you find in this one sentence:

He saide 'the quick brow fox jumped over moon and the grey goose was lose in the back yard, he said.

I'll show you two correct versions at the end of this post. For now, here are the errors and quick explanations where needed:

1. He saide should be He said.

2. As a dialogue tag (the He said at the beginning of a line of dialogue), it should be followed by a comma.

3. The opening quote should be a double-quote mark, not a single-quote mark, for those authors residing in and/or publishing in the United States.

4. The first word within the quoted dialogue should be initial capped, so the quick should be The quick . . .

5. Brow should be brown.

6. Jumped over moon is missing a word. Should be jumped over the moon.

7. A comma should precede and in our example above, pursuant to 16CMS 6.28, separating the two complete sentences (each having its own subject and verb).

8. Grey should be gray per US standards as the preferred spelling found in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (Web11). Our other US guideline is The Chicago Manual of Style, Sixteenth Edition (16CMS).

9. Lose should be loose. The first means to misplace, to not be able to find something, to have lost it. The second means running about, moving freely.

10. Back yard should be one compound word, a noun, backyard, per Web11.

11. There needs to be a closing quote mark, a double-quote mark for US purposes, after the terminal punctuation following backyard.

12. The second he said at the end of the sentence is a repeat of the dialogue tag at the beginning of the same sentence. So one needs to be deleted. First, because it is a repetitive phrase. Second, because you only need one tag per line of dialogue (and not for every line of dialogue).

13. After deleting the second dialogue tag as repetitious, then you must change the comma at the end of the line of dialogue to a period.

So here is the corrected sentence:

He said, "The quick brown fox jumped over the moon, and the gray goose was loose in the backyard."

If you prefer to have the tag line at the end (but mix these up in your scenes), here is an alternate corrected version:

"The quick brown fox jumped over the moon, and the gray goose was loose in the backyard," he said.

Hope you have enjoyed this little peek into my world as to how I copyedit a sample line of text. [Note: "copyedit" used here is the transitive verb format, or t.v., which requires a direct object, as in "a sample line of text."]

"If your vocation isn’t a vacation, then quit, leap, change careers."

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

http://denisebarkerauthor.blogspot.com/

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue.  You give him the possibility of a whole new life. Christopher Morley
The best inheritance you can leave your kids is an example of how to live a full and meaningful life. Dan Zadra

A US Copy Editor's Perspective: Tips Regarding e.g., i.e., etc.

Here are some quick tips on when and how to use e.g. or i.e.

First, e.g. means "for example" and i.e. means "that is." Second, a comma follows each. Third, both are normally used within a pair of parentheses, per 16CMS 6.43.

Here are examples of both:

There are many varieties of apples (e.g., Pink Lady, Red Delicious, to name two).
The patient was flatlining (i.e., registering no brain waves or heartbeat).

As for tips regarding etc., first, it is the abbreviated form of et cetera and means "and so forth." Second, it needs a pair of commas, unless it ends a sentence. Third, Chicago prefers that it be avoided in formal prose and that it be used also in parentheses, per 16CMS 6.20.

And here are two examples of its usage:

There are many varieties of apples (such as Red Delicious, Pink Lady, etc.).
Prepare your pie filling (slicing your apples, whether Red Delicious, Pink Lady, etc., or other fruits, such as pears or peaches).

Hope that helps.

"If your vocation isn’t a vacation, then quit, leap, change careers."

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

http://denisebarkerauthor.blogspot.com/

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue.  You give him the possibility of a whole new life. Christopher Morley
The best inheritance you can leave your kids is an example of how to live a full and meaningful life. Dan Zadra

About These Grammar Lessons . . .

I am a freelance copy editor for a large New York City publishing house and have been for more than three years and one-hundred-and-three manuscripts.  I have grown in my knowledge with almost each project because there are over a gazillion possible sentence constructions which stretch the application of the grammar rules as set forth in the nearly one-thousand-page Chicago Manual of Style aka the CMS.

So if my lessons within this blog post seem rudimentary, they are.  In my decades of reading books, I've found wonderful stories that were marred by simple words being misspelled or the failure to get across a thought or the meaning within its sentences that led to reader confusion.  Each detracts from the pure beauty of the storytelling.

A couple points come to mind at this juncture.  One, I believe it was Michael Jordan who practiced the basics of basketball for hours, even after he was setting new records in the sport.  Two, I read somewhere that our writing (whether commercial or corporate, I do not remember) should be addressed to an eighth-grade comprehension level.  That's sad in my opinion.  How true it is, I do not know.   But both of these examples show the need to look at the basics of our communication.

Thus my recent grammar lessons.

Plus, we have a flux of Indie-publishing authors and I want to simplify our complex grammar rules for them.  Hey, if I had had someone who could reduce the 956-page CMS to the usable nuts and bolts, I would have loved it!  I've learned through copyediting, which sees the minute details, amid a novel's story world, which sees the big picture.  Those little things help explain the larger message for a particular piece of fiction.  That is where I began to notice things that were not necessarily spelled out within the rules but were put into practice each time.

It is all about communication.  Getting the author's thoughts down into words which convey the right mental image within their reader's mind.  It is harder than you think.  Telling someone seems so much easier, what with our hand gestures, our facial expressions, our tone of voice, a laugh here and there.  Translating that to paper is tough, as any writer knows.

So maybe this is one of my life's purposes--to be able to encapsulate our convoluted English language setup so that it makes sense and is easy to remember and works within all those various reincarnations (those exceptions I mentioned above).  To make what may seem dull and boring, and with so many rules, into something fun and interesting and understandable.  To share my love of words and my love of the written word with others.  That is my goal.

Next Grammar Lesson: Dealing with N-Dashes and M-Dashes

You can go your whole life without needing these two.  HOWEVER, if you are an Indie-pubbed (my shorthand term) author doing it all yourself, you have need to know.  These punctuation marks are also called the En Dash and the Em Dash.

As set forth in earlier posts, my style guides—as a freelance corporate copy editor and as an author—include Webster's 11th edition and the Chicago Manual of Style 15th edition (or more commonly called the CMS, used for both novels and nonfiction work).   You may need a medical-based style manual or, if you write for newspapers, you will be using the Associated Press Stylebook aka the AP Stylebook.  Choose yours.  No matter the reference guide, there are still unifying guidelines throughout.  Like using nouns, verbs, punctuation marks.  Like if you are a U.S.–based English-speaking person, spelling book as B-O-O-K.

For those of you interested, the N-dash along with the M-dash can be found within MSWord's word processing system under the Insert tab, then choose Symbol and finally click on the Special Characters tab.  The regular old dash we all use to make hyphenated words is the shortest.  Then the N-dash is a little longer, but the M-dash is the longest.  You may have used one without knowing it.  Anytime you have used a double dash to add in a side thought, well, you were using the shorthand typing version of the M-dash.

Here's an example of where each should be used:

Hyphen:             He is one good-looking guy.
N-Dash:            The verse can be found at James 1:1–3.
Also N-Dash:    A North Dakota–style cold front struck our southern city. 
M-Dash:           She was young and tanned and probably weighed 120 pounds—oh, for the day when my scale stopped there!
Also M-Dash:    "I just thought—" she bit her lip "—that you cared for me."

So hyphens we probably all know how to use within the grammatically correct sphere, or can confirm with a quick check of Webster's.

If you are with a big or little publishing house, their production department works with the design of the books and the special characters, so they will have people to change any misused hyphens to their proper N-dash or M-dash punctuation before the manuscript is printed.

Again, if you are both the publisher and the author of your Indie works, then here's the scoop:

The N-dash is used for numbers (like the Bible verse quoted above) or for two-word proper nouns being modified into an adjective grouping (like North Dakota–cold being used as an adjective.)

The M-dash is for those off-tangent thoughts, to set them apart from the main line of thinking.  The M-dash can also be used within dialogue (see above) in place of the ellipsis (that three-dot punctuation mark that denotes a longer pause than say a comma and probably an interrupted speech pattern, either cut short by the speaker or by another person).

Webster's remains a monster go-to reference guide and, I'll repeat from yesterday's post, it gives a short grammar lesson when you look up "apostrophe."

The difference in the length of each of these dashes is miniscule, yet I think it serves a great function.  Even if our eye registers the three of them as "alike," I think our brain connotes the difference and gives each its own weight.  Like the shortest one, the hyphen, the dash, makes two-word combos into, essentially, one word.  Our readers skim over them just like the word "a."

I believe the N-dash is there to cause our neurons to take note, to take just a jot's pause to realize we may have read the location for looking up one verse, but it is actually the span of several.  Or to give our northern-based readers cause to smile when they read of a North Dakota–cold weather front hitting the South.  And the big one—the M-dash.  Shows us to take a moment to shift gears.

Our English grammar rules really do serve a function.  Like well-placed commas tell a reader when to pause and a period when to stop, then move on.  Isn't it wonderful that we can communicate to our readers "watch out, missing letter(s) here" by the simple use of an appropriately placed apostrophe.  It kind of boggles the mind.  Like the order of the universe.  But that's just it in a nutshell.  Order.  So consult your reference guides, or hire a qualified freelancer, and keep on learning.

P.S.  See today's additional Quote below, courtesy of Michelangelo.  It is so appropriate.  He states "I am still learning."  So true!