Periodic Copyeditor Report: Going Head to Head with Microsoft Word

Total spent by the proprietor of this weblog to rid it of typos and grammatical errors: $720. The rules for copyeditors are here and here.

Most recently, I paid $20 to a gentleman who helpfully pointed out that I misspelled "plaintiff" as "plantiff." That's exactly the sort of typo that needs to be corrected. That same gentleman, however, was so pleased to learn I was such an easy mark that he loaded a giant batch of posts into Microsoft Word and notified me of about twenty "errors." He also chastised me for "using words that don't exist," for example, unmuddle, show-offy, and fuddy-duddiness.

Needless to say, I am not willing to concede that Microsoft Word is the final arbiter of things grammatical. I also hope that in the future, my good-hearted copyeditors will grant me enough literary license to engage in some harmless wordplay every now and then. Even if they don't, my own rules allow it.

I'll close this copyeditor update with two apt quotes from Mark Twain, expressing differing views of copyeditors--

"God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made proof-readers."

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

Comments

[Dylan]

Twain was a self plagiarist! He said the same thing concerning idiots, God, and practice about school boards, and probably much else besides.

[J]

I've always preferred Evelyn Waugh's line: "It has become impossible to find decent proofreaders now that the Church no longer defrocks priests for sodomy."

[Evan]

Dylan: The source for the quotation about "proof-readers," for what it's worth, is page 481 of The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography, by Fred Kaplan.

[Fed.No.84]

Anyone who would disallow fuddy-duddiness is, well, a fuddy-duddy.

[ambimb]

The tyranny of Microsoft strikes again! Your post reminded me of something I heard a couple of years ago in a conversation among fellow educators. We were talking about how reliant students had become on their spellcheckers, and someone complained that Microsoft has become the final arbiter of spelling and they didn't even have any linguists, educators, or any other wordsmith-types working on their spellchecker. There's a bit of critique of computer spellchecking here, although it's not exactly what I'm talking about. Bottom line: relying on a computer to check your spelling is a good way to muddle your writing.

For more fun with language (plus a fun double entendre poke at Microsoft), check out Another Reason to Drop IE.

[Fed.No.84]

We were talking about how reliant students had become on their spellcheckers, and someone complained that Microsoft has become the final arbiter of spelling and they didn't even have any linguists, educators, or any other wordsmith-types working on their spellchecker.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

How annoying it is for me to write a brief on someone else's computer. I added the relevant terms of act to my spelling program. But when I use a lay persons computer, I get pretty annoyed. How much effort would it require to have some lawyers enter in commonly used legal terms? None. But since Microsoft has a virtual monopoly, it has no incentive to please me.