Christy Eck

Confessions of an Anarchical Editor

Editing is not an obvious career choice for someone with a conformity problem. It is

rather amazing that I, a bit of a linguistic anarchist, am attempting to be an editor at all. But,

strangely enough, I am, so I might as well try to make sense of it. I do have two important

qualities that could make me a good editoror could prove my editorial downfall. These

qualities, passion and meticulousness, are simultaneously my greatest weaknesses and my

greatest strengths as an editor.

Lets readdress the conformity problem cited in the opening. I pity the numerous teachers

who have explained the best practices for nonsexist language in my presence. In these moments,

I have seldom been able to restrain myself from passionately defending the singular they or even

the generic heanything to avoid tortured prose and needless dancing about. I am a bit

rebellious and am very loath to follow any guideline that I do not see a clear reason for. In my

editing experience, I have had to learn a lesson summed up nicely by Carol Saller: Editors need

to be conservative. Its not good for business to be on the cutting edge of grammar (53). I have

had to learn when to swallow my passion about guidelines I do not agree with and just follow

them. For example, when I edit documents, I generally do jump through the hoops of proper

nonsexist language. When I edited for the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies,

my supervisor and I would often discuss the best way to edit on specific issues. In the end,

though, her opinion was what really mattered, especially when we didnt agree. She was my

superior, after all, and, though she had never been formally trained as an editor, she had heaps

more experience than I did (I began that job before I had taken any classes for the editing minor).

While I held that job, I took a usage class. My usage teacher often said, We editors are

the ones who slow linguistic change. She would usually say this in reference to a usage that was
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on its way out and that many of us would be quite happy to see die, such as the use of whom or

the injunction against the aforementioned singular they. Do we have to resign ourselves to

slowing linguistic change? I would ask her. As I have progressed further in the editing minor, I

have learned that the answer is Yes, but not always. I have learned this partly through

statements of Carol Saller such as Your ultimate boss is the reader (5). Ah. There we are. It is

not about whether I ought to follow a style guide or throw it out the proverbial window. It is

about making the text shine, and shine for its specific audience. This helped me discover that my

potentially dangerous rebellious spirit has a flipside that could actually make me a good editor.

The flipside to my rebellion is passion. I am passionate about good, clear, honest prose,

and I am willing to make the rules serve the text. If I didnt care about language, I might simply

follow the rules sedately. That would be much easier than questioning them. The guidelines I

dislike tend to be the ones that I think make prose worse when followed. Humor me as I squeeze

one more example out of the singular they. If I were to let my rebellion go unrestrained, I would

always allow for a singular they. This would harm the credibility of authors and texts whose

readers do care about formal usage and traditional grammar. However, if I instead remember to

use my passion for creating a good text for the reader, I will recognize both when I ought to

conform to more traditional grammar (for the readers sake and the authors) and when it is

appropriate to be more progressive. For example, he or she is likely to look stuffy and out of

place in Seventeen magazine. Knowing that I serve the reader, not a style guide or myself, helps

me rein in my rebellion and make wise editorial decisions.

I learned something else about myself as an editor while I worked at the Kennedy Center:

I am naturally meticulous. This may, unlike the rebellion mentioned previously, seem like an

excellent quality for an editor to have, but it actually has at least as much destructive potential as
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rebelliousness in a practical setting. When I worked at the Kennedy Center, I had not yet clearly

learned the difference between copyediting and substantive editing, nor was I familiar with the

term light copyedit. In other words, I was overzealous. This indiscriminate thoroughness often

led me to waste time on less important projects and occasionally led me to slash, burn, and

otherwise wreak havoc on a text. In these situations, I would have to be retroactively reined in by

my patient but frustrated supervisor.

Carol Saller tells the story of a beginning editor who faithfully added a comma between

every author and date in the in-text source citations, blissfully ignorant that The Chicago Manual

of Style recommends no comma (25). I almost blushed as I read that story; I had committed

almost exactly the same error myself, faithfully introducing an erroneous comma into every entry

of the lengthy bibliography of an academic paper. After recounting this story, Saller goes on to

say, When I talk about carefulness, I am also talking about the application of knowledge. . . .

You can be the most meticulous person in the world as you start reading, but if you are ignorant

of the issues, you will happily read past problems that should set off alarms (26). She points out

that meticulousness without knowledge is useless. I would add that it is more than useless: it is

harmful, as the erroneous comma examples illustrate. I have learned my lesson in both the do

no harm (Saller 7) and the time management departments. I have learned not to follow my

instincts off a cliff; I have learned that before I make major changes to a text, I must know

exactly why. I have also learned that sometimes a supposed editorial issue is simply not worth

the time it would take to correct.

There is an obvious good side to my meticulousness. Editors, above almost all else, must

have a careful eye that catches what a casual readers eye would not. I have become proficient

with much of Chicagos content, and though I still have a ways to go, my checking of comma
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placement and compound modifiers has become almost automatic. Once I have learned a rule, I

remember it well and take pleasure in applying it correctly. This inexplicable satisfaction in

something as seemingly dreary as comma and hyphen checking makes me confident that I will

be able to enjoy editing professionally.

A lot more than I have covered here is required to be a good editor: tact, firmness,

compassion, fact-checking skills and general knowledge, mastery of multiple style manuals,

continuing study, experience, etc. I have analyzed just two qualitiesmeticulousness and

passionthat could either make or break me as an editor. I tend to balk at rules, but my reason

for balking is often my passion for beautiful (or at least sensible) prose. I am careful and detail-

oriented, but in the past this has led me to overcorrect and to get bogged down in trivial changes.

I have a bad quality that could make me a good editor if used well and a good quality that could

make me a bad editor if used excessively. Though the pen may be mightier than the sword, I still

keep two two-edged swords at my editorial disposal.

Source Cited

Saller, Carol Fisher. The Subversive Copy Editor. 2nd ed., The University of Chicago Press,

2016.