[Vwoolf] Pllural of "Woolf"?

Sat Nov 4 15:47:16 EDT 2017

Most likely the author delivered a flawless ms to the editor, who handed it off to a “copy-editor,” who put it through an editing program that uses autocorrect, which of course changed “Woolfs” to “Woolves,” and then it was published and everybody was paid a few pennies except the author, who made nothing.  Just my guess.

Slàinte!

Brenda

Brenda Helt

Co-editor Queer Bloomsbury

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-queer-bloomsbury.html

From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+helt0010=umn.edu at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Mary Ellen Foley
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2017 12:40 PM
To: Mark Hussey
Cc: vwoolf
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Pllural of "Woolf"?

>From a little quick Googling, it looks like the US edition, at least, is from Bloomsbury (appropriately enough). Their style guide says to follow the Chicago Manual of Style in such matters; CMOS online says that plurals of proper names take -s or -es in the normal fashion and that exceptions are generally to be found in the M-W dictionary. Said dictionary online doesn't list poor Leonard at all, much less both of them, but does list VW, with no indication that the plural of her surname is nonstandard.

So I'd say somebody should have caught it!

(If we're dealing with the UK edition, the they should have followed New Hart's, and while I'm virtually certain that my beloved old DTB edition specifies the same plural, I am one land mass and two seas away from it at the moment. And I couldn't find the info in their online version before I lost patience with searching.)

Having said that, I know authors who have published books with noted academic presses, who have been given *no* editorial support at all. They were required to arrange for all of the editing themselves, and to pay for it.  With publishers pushing these expenses off on the authors, it's no surprise that mistakes occur; makes you wonder why they have style guides at all, if nobody bothers to ensure quality.

Mary Ellen

On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 11:43 PM, Mark Hussey <mhussey at verizon.net> wrote:

I think it was quite common in Bloomsbury. Clive Bell, for example, often notes "Woolves to tea" for example.  Whether it belongs in a scholarly work is, or could be, I suppose, another issue...

-----Original Message-----
From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+mhussey <mailto:vwoolf-bounces%2Bmhussey> =verizon.net at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Jean Mallinson
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2017 7:21 PM
To: Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject: [Vwoolf] Pllural of "Woolf"?

Reading Bill Goldstein's The Wold Broke in Two, his recent book about Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and E.M Forster and the "Year that changed Literature, I find my  interest engaged by new or forgotten information and fresh insights into the writing lives of these loved and familiar figures but I am disturbed by a small detail: he uses "Woolves", not "Woolfs",  as the plural of "Woolf"    -- not in jest but seriously. Am I right in wincing every time I read this? How could an attentive editor not have noticed and corrected this?

Jean  M.

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