Be Your Own Editor

I’m currently proofreading a soon-to-be-published memoir that is translated from the French, and unfortunately, the translator’s word choice is so poor that it inspired this “what not to do” comment. Word choice can be a positive or negative quality in writing for many reasons. In this case, the writer’s sin is the repetitious use of words and phrases. Over. And over. And over. Most writers who do this don’t realize they’re doing it, and it’s one of the best reasons to read your work out loud—and one of the easiest writing pitfalls to fix through careful editing.

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Okay, so I lied in my last post. This is the last thing I’ll ever say about the whole O.J. book debacle. Kudos to Newsweek’s editor David Gates for calling all of the year’s scandalous accusations and revelations of plagiarism and other literary crimes for what they are (molehills, not mountains) in this commentary. But did he intentionally leave out the overblown scandal that was overblown the most (with the possible exception of James Frey)? A bizarre omission, but perhaps he was trying to practice what he’s preaching by not mentioning the O.J. book—namely that we should stop giving it so much attention and focus on more important things, such as books that actually exist.

I’m going to assume my readers don’t need to be filled in on the events of the past few weeks regarding the almost-published pseudo-confession by O. J. Simpson, and its repercussions in the publishing industry (if you don’t know the story, be thankful). I don’t have much to add, except that it’s a cruel reminder that you should take off the rose-colored glasses through which you view the book business and put some big ol’ sunglasses on.

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The time has come for “Best of the Year” lists for 2006: best-dressed celebrities, best small-appliance designs, and oh, yeah, best books. As I, unlike people who get paid to be book critics, don’t have time to read every important work of fiction released in a given year, I’ve decided to approach this semi-scientifically. I’ve consulted about 15 “Best Books of the Year” lists, which I’ve tried to vary by geographical region and type of publication (online and off, highbrow and low). Now I hereby present to you, in reverse order of the number of mentions, the most-cited fiction of 2006: The Best of the Best. If you believe the critics.

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Contributed by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta

Consider this sentence: “I don’t want no sympathy from you.”

Now, let’s assume that the person who said the above statement really doesn’t want any sympathy. But the sentence states that what the person doesn’t want is “no sympathy”—which means he or she wants sympathy. The sentence is obviously grammatically incorrect. If the person doesn’t want any sympathy, he/she should say either:

“I don’t want sympathy from you.”
OR
“I want no sympathy from you.”

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Here’s something I’ve always wondered about—and maybe some of you, and you know who you are, can enlighten me—what’s the deal with bad handwriting? I don’t mean writing that’s not perfectly, anal-retentively neat. I’m talking scribblin’, scrawlin’, needs-a-cryptologist-to-decipher messy. In my job, I work on hard copies of manuscripts and page proofs, on which up to five different people have sometimes written edits (in lots of pretty colors!). Invariably, at least three of those five can’t write a “Q” that looks like a “Q.” Is it simple carelessness? Are they so accustomed to looking at their own script that, to them, it appears legible? Why am I bringing this up, anyway?

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