Light Editing Sample

Some overly zealous copyeditors will pourpore over a manuscript, and change every “till” to '“until'” or vice versa, depending on their training, their grammatical ear, and their ideas about prose style. Although editors must try to forestall the depreciation of English into colloquial swill, they should never adopt a self-styled purism that does not allow for some varieiety of expression. When a tyrrannical editorial waves Fowler, Wilson Follett, and other venerable guardians, histhe staff should wave back Theodore Bernstein’s Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobegoblins, a thoughtfull debunking of scaacred cows in usage, or William Morris and Mary Morrris’s Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage,, which explores differences of opinion among the so-called “experts”.

A second danger: Some novice copyeditors misinterpret the recommendations in The Elements Oof Style as a mandate to change such sentences as “tThe outcry was heard round the world” to “eEvery-one in the word heard the outcry.” True, the active voice is more forceful, and a procession of passive constructions is a sure cure for insomnia. But the passive voice is preferable when the writer’s goal is variety or emphasis.zing an important word in a sentence.

Clean Copy

Some overly zealous copyeditors will pore over a manuscript and change every “till” to “until” or vice versa, depending on their training, their grammatical ear, and their ideas about prose style. Although editors must try to forestall the depreciation of English into colloquial swill, they should never adopt a self-styled purism that does not allow for some variety of expression. When a tyrannical editorial waves Fowler, Wilson Follett, and other venerable guardians, the staff should wave back Theodore Bernstein’s Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins, a thoughtful debunking of sacred cows in usage, or William Morris and Mary Morris’s Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage, which explores differences of opinion among the so-called experts.

A second danger: Some novice copyeditors misinterpret the recommendations in The Elements of Style as a mandate to change such sentences as “The outcry was heard round the world” to “Everyone in the word heard the outcry.” True, the active voice is more forceful, and a procession of passive constructions is a sure cure for insomnia. But the passive voice is preferable when the writer’s goal is variety or emphasis.