(E________, first draft: 13,600 words)
The U.S. version of Braking Day has come back from copyediting. Copyediting (and copy editors) have always been a mystery to me. I had this vague sense that it involved correcting typos but it’s so much more than that. For better or worse, copy editors are the enforcement arm of the style manuals. The copy editor is the one who makes sure the manuscript’s syntax is smooth, that the writing adheres to the conventions of grammar, that wording is proper and precise and that punctuation is both appropriate and correctly placed. When it comes to fiction – and science fiction, in particular – this is not an easy job. How do you tell when we have roughed up the syntax for dramatic emphasis as opposed to just screwing it up? Is bad grammar in the dialog the way a character speaks or a failing in the author? Which version of a made up word is spelled correctly? Copy editors wrestle with this every single day.
On top of that – and I really did not appreciate this – the copy editor is the last line of defense against howlers in the text: “How can this character be opening a door when he’s still sitting down?” Thank you, Copy Editor, thank you!
The copy edit for Braking Day is a masterclass in that bible of American English, the Chicago Manual of Style. While, as predicted, the copy editor came after my idiosyncratic attachment to alright instead of all right, I learned just how much I still do not know about punctuation, word usage (a hold versus ahold, for instance), and (embarrassingly) basic grammar.
The most eye opening thing about this exercise, however, concerns numbers. Everything I know about writing numbers can be summed up as follows: if it’s ten or less, spell it out in words, otherwise use numerals.
Hah!
For starters, CMoS (which sounds more like a computer language than a style-manual acronym) “advises” you to spell out numbers up to and including one hundred. No reason is advanced: it just does. And there’s more….
Don’t start a sentence with a numeral. Write it out. “Three hundred and eleven men and 302 women took to the streets.”
Spell out round numbers. “The pot was thought to be six thousand years old. Radiocarbon dating indicated a precise age of 5,998 years.”
If two numbers need to be placed next to each other, spell out the smaller number. “He ordered 15 twelve-foot boards.” “The platoon was arrayed in three 12-person rows.”
When writing discourse, numbers should usually be spelled out, with some exceptions (years, for instance – but why?). ” ‘We found a hundred and eleven bodies,’ he said, remembering. ‘That would have been back in 1985.'”
Working through all this has been a trip. I’ve learned a lot and will try to apply it to the E________ manuscript this winter. The kicker, though, is that every one of these rules has exceptions. It’s enough to drive one mad!
Or to take up copyediting.