Copy-Editing

A common assumption about copy-editing is that it's simply about fixing spelling errors and changing a word here and there to correct grammar.

Instead of farming our copy-editing out to other continents, maybe we ought to consider outsourcing our presidential election campaigns.

I don't think so, but I can't find Absolut Kurrant in the product listing--looks like a copy-editing problem.) But the ever-changing white spirit market now has a generally reliable and informative road map, one worth a slot on the barbook shelf.

The book is marred by numerous transcription errors (Donald Adamson, for example, is twice called Abramson), most of which could easily have been eliminated at the copy-editing stage.

Meissen German is described as the language of 'lower Saxony'; Lessing's 'cousin' (a common error: they were not blood relations) Christlob Mylius appears as 'Christoph'; Deschamps, the author of the French model for Gottsched's Cato, is twice confused with Destouches; Cicero's De officiis appears twice as De officii; other names and titles are misspelt, and copy-editing and proofreading have in general been grossly defective.

Value-added extras include sample form contracts, a list of typesetting specifications, copy-editing and proofreading marks, sample page layouts, a 27-page model stylebook, and 10 newly updated pages of resources for newsletter editors.

Gannett's national daily, USA Today, and the copy-editing and production hub in Charlotte, N.C., for McClatchy's North Carolina titles will each take fairly large hits in layoffs and buyouts, the companies said this month.

I particularly wish to thank Lesley O'Brien for her scholarly approach to copy-editing, as well for the many other tasks she undertakes in shepherding the journal into print, and Toby Burrows for his attention both to the Reviews and to the presence of the journal in the digital environment.

Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson today announced a plan to reorganize The Journal's copy-editing system, in the process eliminating roughly 50 jobs in South Brunswick at the Copy Desk and in Pagination.