Continuing my tradition of posting on the night of the Chase Corporate Challenge (2005, 2006): Had a lovely run tonight, where I wasn't thinking about anything really besides running (fast), and finished in a personal-best-ever time of 33:15.
Something useful to make up for the self-congratulations there: The website of Deanna Hoak, a SF/F copyeditor, who has a number of excellent articles on the production stages of a book:
- The copyediting process.
- Proofreading vs. copyediting.
- Queries and copyediting.
- Helping your copyeditor. (I will note that while I understand her preference for Courier font in terms of copyediting, I really don't like Courier when I'm reading/editing a manuscript . . . It looks old-fashioned to me (yes, from the early 1990s), and more to the point it's so wide that it makes the manuscript really long and heavy. But everything else she says is great.)
I also love the fact that there's a campaign to get her a World Fantasy Award! Copyeditors deserve all the recognition they can get.
Posts
A PR! Yey!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link! I'm glad you found the posts useful. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm a proofreader too (I proof out catalogs for cattle sales! Yeah, I know, but I still like it). Some good stuff. Thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteDo you like any proportionally spaced font? How else can you definitively tell if there are enough spaces between punctuation, or is this something that copy-editors don't think about?
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the time! And although I would argue that you should allow yourself a self-congratulatory post every now and again, I appreciate the copyediting info as well!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait until you buy my book (the one in your neverending slushpile) so I can have Deanna be my copy editor! She's one of the only people who's as choosy/discerning about usage and punctuation as I am, judging from her many great blog posts. Now I'm trying to remember whether I reformatted the manuscript that I sent in TNR. I think I did. I use Courier (Old-Fashioned Typewriter) when edit on-screen and on paper because I have a visual infirmity and this old-fashioned look is easier on my eyes, but it certainly does make the printout longer. I find TNR 12 just slightly more readable than Flyspeck 3, but that's just me.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on achieving your great results in the corporate run! That is how long it would take me to trudge around the block dragging the dog (as he stops at every interesting smell and mailbox) and muttering about how much rain we're having. *grin*