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.

Friday, October 27, 2017

The Friday News Dump

is going to have to wait. If I wasn't wore out, I'd work up quite a rant against authors who once again just don't know what they're doing—and that's not by my standards. Those standards are the ones drilled into me by unforgiving managing editors with reasonable heads on their shoulders. Those standards are the same ones written in the mostly godforsaken 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. I don't think anything is more godforsaken about the new edition than the now-retiring one. They all are.

And AP. God. There's another organization that couldn't find its stylistic ass with both hands.

Authors. I've known a few I'd trust around an index. Indexes are not

* For making connections you neglected to make on page proofs
* For finding terms that your grimy little hands couldn't manage to type on the page in 330 pages of your prose
* For organizing your allegedly comparative text so that the entries are entirely compartmentalized by nation, thus disallowing the reader from seeing at a glance, for example, what the Communist Party might be up to in different countries

Another thing you shouldn't expect an indexer to do unless you've moved the sharp instruments:

* Remove abbreviations "because they are repetitive," and no one needs that cross-reference.

About 5 hours ago, I sent in the second longest index I've ever had to start whittling down. It was brutal. And now I'm back to this index, the longest ever, and of course the work is now unpaid because I'm not getting any extra ducats to do this review. It's all going through India [ugh]. Say it twice.

And the labels function ain't workin' on this thing. That ain't good.

PS: And after all that, Cousin Lazar is left on the cutting-room floor. Something seems appropriate about such summary judgment.

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