Acknowledgements
My first thanks go to the Canberra Society of Editors in whose newsletter, The Canberra editor, the originals of these chats appeared, for agreeing to my basing this book on those articles and for joining me in this adventure. And thanks to the Society for Editors and Proofreaders for interest in the project in the UK.
A book like Working words doesn’t just happen. My sincere gratitude goes to Ara Nalbandian, who has pulled together the material into themes and edited the resulting chats. Thanks also to the rest of the Canberra Society of Editors publication team: Cathy Nicoll, Edwin Briggs, Virginia Wilton, Martin Blaszczyk and Tracy Harwood; and a very big ‘thank you’ to Carina Manning, designer.
I also acknowledge the public authorities and others who put up the roadside and other signs that I had fun writing about as I travelled. I took all of the photographs in the book.
I couldn’t have done all this without the love and encouragement of my family and friends, in Australia and England, who put up with me in writing mode for many months. I appreciate everyone’s interest in the project. Special thanks are due to my sister Judy Angus for reading drafts.
Elizabeth Manning Murphy JP DE
Canberra, 2011
Preface to the revised edition
This has been an interesting new adventure. Several of the original newsletter articles were written as long ago as 2003, so some rethinking was necessary. Most of what I wrote in the 2011 first edition still stands, but the English language has moved on and the way we express ourselves has become increasingly informal, even in formal writing. I have tried to reflect this in this revision while keeping to the basic premise that good grammar makes for good communication, and that good principles of ethics and other aspects of writing, editing and running a freelance business never change. I hope you enjoy dipping into the ‘chats’ in this revised Working words whether you are an editor, a writer or just interested in how words work.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks go to Dr Linda Nix AE of Golden Orb Creative and Lacuna for her expert editing and our really productive interchanges on editorial matters. Thanks to Linda also for her friendship as well as her design and publishing advice and all her assistance in the production of this revision of Working words. Thanks to Carina Manning for allowing the continued use of elements of her original cover design and other artwork for this revision. Thanks also to editing colleagues and friends for helping me to think through some revisions, particularly Dr Jon Rosalky whose advice on some areas of grammar was invaluable and Dr Scott Nichol for much helpful discussion about the changing usage of words. And I would like to reiterate my thanks to all the members of the Canberra Society of Editors publication team who helped me put together the 2011 edition – the overall structure of the book is unchanged, including all of the ‘chats’ in their original order, and a lot of the text that you helped me to craft has been kept. Particular thanks to Ara Nalbandian for his structural editing and for a number of examples that remain in this revision.
May your words continue to work for you, dear reader.
Elizabeth Manning Murphy JP DE
Canberra, 2019
BA Hons (Linguistics) FCES FSBT AFIML
Honorary Life Member of the Canberra Society of Editors and the Institute of Professional Editors
Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (UK)
Member of the Australian Society of Authors
Website: www.emwords.info
Publisher’s note on pages in the ebook
The text in the ebook version of this edition includes small numbers in blue subscript, for example: 15. These numbers represent page markers from the print edition and have been included to:
allow readers of the ebook to refer to the relevant print page, when quoting from or referring to passages from the book; and
provide markers for the index.
itchypencil 1
Collective editors
1 Have you ever stood on the outskirts of a gathering of people and wondered how to refer to them all at once? I found myself wondering just that at an editors’ conference I attended some years ago. There they were: such a huge ……… of editors – a bunch of editors? No, a bunch of flowers. A collection of editors? No, a collection of antiques. An amalgam – no, that’s dentists. What is the collective noun for editors? Well, why not ask them? So I sent out an SOS on various email lists, and this is what came back (with acknowledgements where I know them):
Carol in Indiana said ‘Depending on the size of the group, it could be a ream, galley, or proof of editors. Or, perhaps you are referring to the more classic and always correct punctilio of editors’. Sara in Boston said ‘I don’t know the “official” word, but how about a nitpick?’ Dwight in Florida suggested that ‘a delusion of editors sounds almost as good as a screed of editors’. John Bangsund in Melbourne suggested a barrage was appropriate, and Rishi in India recommended a column.
The suggestions also included a stroke, a pedantry, a colophon, an appendix, a bracket, a quire, or a chapter of editors. Going down the path of generic names like hoover for all vacuum cleaners, Kat in Rochester, NY, recommended a fowler or a strunk of editors. And another New Yorker, Eli, put a bit of a lid on it for a while by saying he was ‘starting to get board [sic] of editors’ (pun entirely intended)!
An individual editor was described as an itchypencil (from Al in California) and from that comes the disease that afflicts all editors: itchypencilitis.
This suggestion was what gave me the idea for a title for the little light-hearted moments that appear between the parts of this book. Haven’t you often spotted something on a signpost and thought ‘Oh for a pencil to write that down’? That’s itchypencilitis. So these moments are called itchypencils – how I wish for a handy pencil when these moments occur!
Martha in Boston suggested an emendment of editors while Ginny in Seattle thought an opinion of editors was appropriate.
Some suggestions I would blush to include in a serious journal, let alone a book, so I’ll stop here with a contribution from my friend Gerry in Ottawa: ‘According to An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, there are actually four collective nouns for editors – a mangle of copy editors, a caprice of assignment editors, a dyspepsia of city editors and an ultimatum of executive editors. For what it’s worth, there’s also a scoop of reporters, a platitude of sports writers and a query of checkers’.
1. Working words: the editor’s job
5
Welcome to my world of working words. Do you like reading, and do you find yourself noticing how words don’t always work as well as they might? Editors help writers to make their words work, and it’s an absorbing occupation. Most of what an editor does is to see that the words in a document really work to get the author’s message across. But it’s not just dealing with words. Editing is a multifaceted occupation, involving all aspects of the publishing industry, working with others in specialist areas, having confidence in your own understanding