Copyeditor Update #2

Total spent by the author of this blawg to rid it of typos and grammatical errors: $420. To get your piece of the pie, look here.

It's a humbling experience to believe you are submitting your best work only to have your readers hand it back to you each day covered with red ink. The experience reminds me of Mrs. Smith’s eleventh grade English class, when I learned I wasn’t half as smart as I thought I was. (The feeling persisted until Professor Immel's Contracts class, when I learned I was still overestimating my intelligence.)

Despite the discomfort it's given me, I think my experiment with "open-source copyediting" has been a success. (The quoted term is from Michael Froomkin of Discourse.net, though I altered it slightly.) Thanks to the experiment, I'm slowly becoming a better grammarian notwithstanding my English degree.

Even so, it's time for a few rule changes, as follows:

1. From now on, please give me your corrections by e-mail rather than in the comments. The only exception I'll make is for Ted Frank of overlawyered, as long as he's pointing out an error for free.

2. Payment for helping me to omit needless words is being omitted as needless. This payment category has only confused everyone, since I'm sometimes deliberately wordy for stylistic purposes. Whether my style is right or wrong, there's not enough time in the day for us to debate the length of every sentence.

3. Comments on style are always welcome, but I won't pay you for them. (This was one of the original rules.) However, please understand that despite my best efforts, I will not always use the perfect word. Do not expect to be paid for your suggestion that I substitute one word that's okay with one that's slightly better. The only time I'll consider payment is when you demonstrate a word I used is the wrong word entirely, e.g., when I wrote "braggadocios" but meant "braggadocious."

So what sorts of errors do I care about most? The ones I'll pay you for: Typos and grammatical errors. Typos are easy as long as you remember that typos don't include factual errors, e.g., if I get a movie title wrong. I appreciate notification of factual errors but do not owe money under the rules. Typos are when I mean to write "Detroit" but write "Detrit"; or when I leave out a word entirely; or when I type extra words or characters that do not belong.

As for grammatical errors, I am mostly interested in "laughable" grammatical errors. I'm much more willing to pay without a fight if my error fails the embarrassment test, i.e., I'm so embarrassed about the error that I want to change it right away.

It happens more often than I'd like. Some representative grammatical errors I've made:

"A sort of steady, monotonous equilibrium had settled over my buddies and I at the defense firm..." (I should be me.)

"My European friend is laying low." (Laying should be lying.)

"He better make a move soon." (He better should be he'd better or he had better.)

There are certain grammatical errors that are really questions of style or usage; under most circumstances, I pay the $10 for these sorts of "errors" if I decide to change the post based on the suggestion. (Usually I don't change the post.)

Finally, thanks to Abnu of Wordlab who suggested one of the rule changes.

UPDATE 5/20/04 This rule seems obvious, but I will not pay for suggestions to fix intentional grammatical errors made while writing in the voice of a character. (Examples: Errors in a mock letter from a 15-year-old girl or errors in written dialogue.)

UPDATE 7/24/04 I also won't pay for copyediting guest posts, although you are welcome to point out errors.

Comments

[Abnu]

Your supposed to be more care full, not less so, as your writing are improving. Rules should be more strictly applied, not less of them.

I'm afraid you will laps into your prior ways under these more forgiving less rules. And I will have to get another partime job.

[Ted]

I wonder if "laying low" is one of those things like "flammable" that is becoming acceptable through persistent misuse. Google News shows 45 examples of "laying low" (including some in headlines) and "about 150" of "lying low."

On the other hand, I saw Newsweek use "just desserts" in referring to the Martha Stewart case, and couldn't get anyone to share my outrage.

[Evan Schaeffer]

Ted: I can take some comfort in the fact that Garner says lay for lie is "one of the most widely known of all usage errors." As for "just desserts," Garner calls that mistake "sloppiness or pure ignorance."

If Newsweek can't get its text properly edited, is there hope for any of us?

Meanwhile, I omitted one of my intended rule changes from the post, so I'll just state it here: Mistakes in my comments don't count. One must draw the line somewhere.

[Kevin]

Should a rule in the comments be counted, if mistakes in the comment are not?

[Evan]

Leave it to a lawyer to make a comment like that last one. Actually, in a day or two, I'm going to mention the comment rule in an update to my original post about proofreading, just so there won't be any confusion. Until then, if the ambiguity causes a dispute, we'll have to arbitrate according to the terms of the disclaimer incorporated into the original rules.

[Bruce]

"it's" should be its in the sentence "Despite the comfort it's given me" since you only use the apostrophe when you could replace it's with it is and you can't do that here.

[Evan]

Bruce: First of all, see "1" above: copyediting suggestions don't go in comments anymore--not since March 23, 2004, anyway. You can e-mail them to me. Second, I know my Grateful Dead, and they sing, "What a long strange trip it's been," or something like that. It's = it has. Get it?

So, Bruce, I'm not sure what you've been smoking--but whatever it is, I'm sure Jerry Garcia and the rest of his band would approve, God rest his soul.

[Jennis]

Hi Evan,
I just visited your blog and read your attempt to rid of typos. I am really intrigued why you spell a blog as "blawg". Or is that one of your intentional typos?

[Evan]

Jennis: "Blog" + "law" = "blawg." For more information, see here, where I recently posted a comment, or many other places in the "blawgosphere."