 Aren’t they pinched-nosed mousy types with bifocals and buttoned-up blouses? Carol Fisher Saller, author of The Subversive Copy Editor (University of Chicago Press, 2009), thinks not.
A senior editor at the University of Chicago Press, Saller is the voice behind the Chicago Manual of Style’s online Q&A. She wrote The Subversive Copy Editor in response to two kinds of questions that make up the bulk of her mail: queries seeking confirmation that “I’m right” about something, and cries for help from writers and editors who have “hit a wall.” She establishes in the introduction that the book is not a primer on the fundamentals of copy editing, but rather a handbook on relationships: "Consider this a “relationship” book, because I’m going to talk about the main relationships in your work life—with the writer, with your colleagues, and with yourself—in ways that you might not have considered before. Ways that might be called subversive." BETWEEN YOU & ME, BY MARY NORRIS Should it be “short, balding man” or “short balding man”? “Bad hair day” or “bad-hair day”?
Mary Norris, a copy editor at The New Yorker for over thirty years, relishes these sorts of editorial decisions. “If commas are open to interpretation,” she writes in her literary memoir Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, “hyphens are downright Delphic.” As an editor, I’m naturally interested in grammar, punctuation, and usage. But Norris’s book is not a practical guide with easy-to-locate advice. What drew me in and kept me reading was her voice: smart, straight-shooting, brassy and irreverent. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she begins. “I didn’t set out to be a comma queen.” But she has risen, over her 30 years at The New Yorker, to the august role of “page OK’er.” She is the one who gives the final “okay” to stories before they go to press. |
& stuffEditing books is the best job in the world. I'm always learning new stuff! In this blog, I review books and share my thoughts on writing and editing. I hope you share some stuff, too. Categories
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