Tag Archives: Editorial Tips

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#28)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these guidelines form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #28

A good editor should remove clichés. Yet all too often the clichés hide in plain sight, the adjective-noun combinations so accepted by the reader’s eye and mind that they become almost a single-word notion.

What “fiasco” is not “total”? When is an “inferno” not described as “raging”? When is a “defeat” not “ignominious”? When is “ado” not preceded by “further”?

A good test for the editor is to supply the adjective (“Ignominious . . . hmm”) and see what noun springs to mind. If the answer is automatic, we have a cliché to be avoided.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#27)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these guidelines form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #27

A tip for all writers is to avoid the use of the word “there.” If it’s used as a noun to denote location (“When we got there, we stopped.”), it’s fine.
But as soon as it enters the narrative as an adverb with the chilling words “There is” or “There are,” it serves to encourage sloppy, boring writing, usually full of static nouns, and reminding the reader of a government report.

Instead of “There are many examples . . .” try “Examples abound . . .” or “Many examples show . . .”

Editors should hunt down these “there”s, and writers should avoid them.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#24)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these reminders form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #24
Any time an editor sees the word “literally,” sirens should sound and red lights begin to flash. For “literally” is used wrongly most of the time, by most people. “I literally died of embarrassment” is not an extreme example. Every month you will read, and hear, dozens of such mistaken uses, serving to deprive the world of a useful word that says, “And I really mean this, it is the factual truth.” Dozens of examples. Literally.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#22)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these guidelines form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #22
Recently I came across a carefully printed sign in the well-known educational establishment OISE.  It invited patrons who had used its services to pass along comments, including “criticisms” and “complements.” My comments were not complimentary.

Should this sort of spelling error matter? My response is that this was not a scrawled sign in a small-time grocery (“Cabages”), but a designed, carefully printed sign that had gone through several stages of checking by educated professionals. The resulting error reflected badly on them, and thus on OISE. I’m certain that you don’t have to be a professional editor to have this reaction. Spelling still matters to a large proportion of readers, which means that it still matters.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#21)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these guidelines form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #21
One of the many hats that a book editor should wear is that of Title-spotter. Sometimes a manuscript with a bland, khaki title will reveal a blazing, technicolour title in its pages, one that will bring the book major attention. One example. Harry J. Boyle wrote a novel named “I Am Shane Donovan” about a successful Toronto advertising man who wanted to quit his job in order to write “The Great Canadian Novel.” Guess what we called the book.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#20)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these guidelines form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #20
Make sure that lists are in a consistent form. All too often we find published lists that provide, for example, a list of aims as follows:
“ a. to entertain
b. to instruct
c. to inform
d. guidance
e to provide a model.”
Clearly, this is a very sloppy form of guidance, but a keen-eyed editor will find inconsistent listing everywhere. It’s almost as worrying as spotting a listing ship.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#19)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these guidelines form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #19
Care should be taken with adverbs, and editors should hunt down and kill surplus adverbs, taking an especially hard look at those that tell us how a line of speech is delivered. In my book I take a chance and offend against this rule. See if you think that I was right.
In the chapter on Val Ross (page 342) she is dying, and we both know that she will not live to see her book come out. “Val remarked on how many Robertson Davies books had come out since his death. “Yes,” I said, carefully, “and books do live on.”
I suspect that “carefully” has never been used more carefully.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#17)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these reminders form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #17
In her 2012 book The Literary Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada: Making Books and Mapping Culture, Ruth Panofsky quotes the editorial policy of the legendary publisher John Morgan Gray: “Gray’s ‘first job’ was to help authors realize their ‘full potential’ and he consistently followed his own ‘golden rule’ for editors: ‘[When] dealing with writers who know what they are doing don’t edit any more than requested to do; stand by to help if called on. Occasionally even the most assured writer will get too close to his work and may then welcome a hint of how it appears to someone else . . . The ideal role for the editor calls for sympathetic understanding, some talent for listening, judgment and good sense.’”

 

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#16)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these reminders form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #16
Sometimes there is a clash between the wide-ranging expectations of a publisher and the difficult detailed work that the luckless editor has to do on the manuscript. This (except in the case of schizophrenics who are both publishers and editors, cough, cough) reflects a basic difference in character. As the wise John Le Carré has one of his cynical characters remark in The Russia House, “Publishers can get their minds halfway round anything.” Editors, by contrast, can’t just be halfway professionals.