[Vwoolf] Leonard Woolf as copy editor

Wed Oct 30 06:21:50 EDT 2013

Ouch! Never edit a scientist unless you are very sure of your ground, would be my advice to that unwise editor. I used to write and edit medical research material and was always very wary of changing unfamiliar phrases -- as you found to your cost, even tiny edits can completely alter the meaning, or even reverse it. The fact that 're-uptake' appeared in the quotation though should have been a big clue to them!

>________________________________
> From: Mary Ellen Foley <mefoleyuk at gmail.com>
>To: Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no> 
>Cc: "VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu" <VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu> 
>Sent: Tuesday, 29 October 2013, 17:49
>Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Leonard Woolf as copy editor
> 
>
>
>I'm an editor, and I've been edited.  (Cue Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now".)
>
>My worst experience of being edited was at the Stanford Daily, the daily newspaper of Stanford University and the surrounding community.  To cut a long story short, I interviewed a professor who was doing the work on serotonin re-uptake inhibitors that has since given us the now-familiar SSRI drugs.  (This was Very Long Ago.)  But the editor decided there was no such word as "re-uptake" and changed it to "uptake" everywhere, including in quotations, so that the science in the piece was reduced to meaningless hash (since re-uptake is what happens to leftover neurotransmitters after uptake, uptake and re-uptake being separate processes performed by different cells--which I had explained in the article I wrote).  I was so embarrassed I couldn't even apologize to the professor. 
>
>I would be grateful if list members could tell me about instances of bad editing they've been subjected to, for use in an article I'm putting together.
>
>M E Foley
>
>
>
>
>On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no> wrote:
>
>Much truth in this. But there is another side of the coin. Who would have thought that the Internet would become a place where young people correct grammatical mistakes made by their peers? And yet this has happened. They may get called Grammar Nazis for doing it, but that doesn't stop them. So beware if you post online and confuse "your" with "you're" - someone will point out your error. My guess is that kids pay more attention to such corrections made online than they do when teacher makes them on an essay that no-one else sees (no criticism of teachers, incidentally). History, as Mr Eliot pointed out, has many cunning passages.
>>
>>Jeremy H
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>>
>>________________________________
>> 
>>From: Melanie White [melanie.white at comcast.net]
>>Sent: 29 October 2013 18:29
>>To: Jeremy Hawthorn; VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>>Subject: RE: [Vwoolf] Leonard Woolf as copy editor
>>
>>
>>I worked for many years as a copy editor. As spell-checkers became more common, copy editors became more expendable. In time, copy editor functions were folded into other job descriptions, based on the assumption that anyone semi-literate could do it. Many employers believed just about anybody could copy edit, so why pay a specialist? We were called on to justify ourselves more and more, and eventually our jobs were eliminated.
>> 
>>In the last ten years or so, things like texting and on-line commenting have eroded public expectations. People have grown accustomed to sloppiness and forgive it because they make so many errors themselves when IMing their coworkers or texting with their kids. 
>> 
>>I also blame reality TV for a lot of this mixing-up-of-similar-words. Not everyone can reach for the right word and lay hands on it in the moment. Most of us need a sec. But when you’re on a reality TV show and the producer has the camera on you, you don’t want to look hesistant or inarticulate. So you grab at validate but instead end up with solidify. Who cares? You get the idea. 
>> 
>>Newspapers are dying or dead, and most magazines and journals exist on paper as a sidelight to their “online presence.” And people seem way more forgiving online, so both editions are infected with rampant carelessness in the rush for 24/7 coverage of everything from Middle East protests to warning signs for botox abuse. 
>> 
>>I’m not a snob, I swear. I love the way English continues to grow and change over time. I’m willing and happy to change rules or introduce new usages. I am not opposed to change. But there’s a difference between change and sloppiness. 
>> 
>>I’m a lover of words. I consider myself one of a dying breed, the last of a dying species. I am in my mid-50s. I learned to set type on a Varityper, but typesetting was replaced by word processing, which has been replaced by the Internet. I loved the precision of setting type. I love the precision of words. I consider it an art: sensing when to abide by a rule or bend it for the sake of an effect. But some things are just plain wrong when they’re wrong. I wonder when – or whether – we’ll reach bottom in our tolerance for sloppiness. I figure when people start losing money or dying because of it. 
>> 
>>N.B. I apologize now for any typos or grammatical mistakes in this post. 
>> 
>>From:vwoolf-bounces+melanie.white=comcast.net at lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+melanie.white=comcast.net at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Jeremy Hawthorn
>>Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 6:00 AM
>>To: VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>>Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Leonard Woolf as copy editor
>> 
>>Fascinating information. Writers do seem to vary enormously when it comes to such things, with some checking every comma and semi-colon at every stage of the publishing process, and others - well, leaving it to spouses and copy editors. As Mark implies, such matters do impact on theories of textual editing. It does seem to me that if a writer leaves the fine-tuning of - say - punctuation to a copy editor, then this has to impact on matters of scholarly editing. Getting back to the "final authorial version" may not be as appropriate in such cases as it is where the writer wanted control over ever tiny detail right through to publication. On the other hand, as anyone who has had their writing copy-edited knows, leaving the final check of your punctuation to someone else must on occasions result in changes of meaning.
>>
>>Jeremy H
>>
>>
>>On 25.10.2013 14:20, Mark Hussey wrote:
>>No, VW was quite sloppy and LW copy edited her texts. In The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942), Leonard wrote of his having “punctuated and corrected obvious verbal mistakes. I have not hesitated to do this, since I always revised the MSS. of her books and articles in this way before they were published.”
>>> 
>>>Of course, as recent textual editing theory has taught us, editing is always interpretation!
>>> 
>>>From:vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Jeremy Hawthorn
>>>Sent: Friday, October 25, 2013 7:57 AM
>>>To: 'list', 'woolf' [VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]
>>>Subject: [Vwoolf] Leonard Woolf as copy editor
>>> 
>>>Is it John Lehmann who has written about how scrupulous a copy editor Leonard W was? I have a memory of some such account. But did Virginia do copy editing for the Hogarth Press? I should know this but don't.
>>>
>>>Jeremy H
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>-- 
>>Professor Jeremy Hawthorn
>>Emeritus Professor
>>Department of Modern Foreign Languages
>>NTNU
>>7491 Trondheim
>>Norway
>> 
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