What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)

My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.

Feel free to contact me directly with additional questions: landondemand@gmail.com.

Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment. Come back often.

Monday, August 13, 2012

The Art of the Snarky Query

Trying to do a week's worth of work in a day, so not much time for a post. I don't feel right leaving that haiku stuff up too long, especially as it spills into another Haiku Monday -- which, if you're playing at home, is available at Fishy's fine pond this week.

In the meantime, I offer an email I just sent to a managing editor, one who fears showing up in this column of the blog. But that's what she gets for loading me down with crazy, though remunerative, deadlines.

Ah, the power of the virtual press.

***

Just a few to get your heart started. And this is a second edition, huh?

page 36, line 2: uppercase bible.

page 39: Hitler's first name was Adolf. Adolph's is a brand of meat tenderizer.

page 42: period at end of paragraph.

page 48: you can't elide digits on BCE numbers, for very obvious reasons.

page 51: with the script, it's a little hard to discern, but I'm about 99 percent sure that seder plate is upside down. the three-letter word on the plate is the Hebrew pesach, and it should read correctly in the photo

Good thing I'm not reading this book too carefully. 



5 comments:

Fleurdeleo said...

I recently edited 25 pages of a novel for a friend of a friend. Here is my favorite edit:

The line:

"My horse was a beautiful white stallion called Roxanne."

My comment:

(Note: I don't know much about horses, but I am pretty sure a stallion is a boy—so you should give him a more masculine name than Roxanne! Rocky?)

I kept the snark to a minimum as English was not this author's first language.

czar said...

Now, Fleur, that's hardly twenty-first-century of you, especially for a Gothamite. I suspect you're surrounded, geographically speaking, by studs named Roxanne.

Fleurdeleo said...

Not in my neighborhood, Csar.

moi said...

"Adolph's is a brand of meat tenderizer." is the best laugh I've had all day. Second only to the gay stallion.

czar said...

@Fleur: You need to amp up your Peeping Tomasina skills. I doubt studs named Roxanne are quarantined in the West Village.

@Moi: The upside-down seder plate was a catch for the ages -- reminiscent of the kind of stuff that made my rep back when, well, back when Fleur and I were youthful idealists.

The managing editor, whose ass I've pulled out of numerous slings this season, wrote, "Along with everything else, you know a smattering of Hebrew?"

My response: "I was bar-mitzvahed, for Christ's sake."