Editing and proofreading

[doneth]

Since we have so many writers on the list, and since publishers' editors are thin on the ground these days, I thought it might be fun to have some specific horror stories about copy editors and proofreaders.

When I had contracts with Penguin in London, and the sainted Jon Riley was my editor (he is now on the Board of Directors at Faber & Faber), David Duguid was the copy-editor on the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, and he was magnificent, making queries on almost every page and helping to improve the book in a thousand places. He had retired, and after a while stopped taking freelance jobs from Penguin: 'It's only a little job,' they would say, and he replied, 'You always tell me it's only a little job!' If you take it seriously, it is never a little job.

Then when I was publishing The Rise And Fall Of Popular Music, they sent it out to a freelance they trusted who didn't know anything about music, and (it turned out) was having a nervous breakdown at the time. This was a disaster. This person rewrote sentences to say exactly the opposite of what I had written. I wish I could remember some specific examples, but the funniest thing was that everywhere I had written 'record', it was changed to 'recording', as though we buy recordings in recording shops, have recording collections, and keep them on the recording shelves. I practically had to rewrite the whole damn book, and to this day I wonder if any of the nonsense slipped through.

When I was dealing with the transcriptions of Linda Keuhl's marvelous interviews for my book about Billie Holiday, a lot of names were spelled wrong and so on; Linda (or whoever was transcribing the tape-recorded interviews) had obviously never heard of some of these people, but all the info was there, and it was a kind of fun detective work. 'Wallace Stein' stumped me until I realized it was industry executive Ted Wallerstein.

Some of you others must have stories to tell!

[Christiern]

Apropos Penguin in London, in 1986 they published a Bessie Smith biography by Elaine Feinstein that was a total rip-off of my Bessie biography. It was so bad than one reviewer suggested the woman's first line should have been—"According to Chris Albertson:"

It could not have been more blatant, she even included little things that had no direct bearing on Bessie, things that I added to anchor the period, for ex.: round the corner, a movie house was playing...." Feinstein also included a list of recommended recordings that was identical to mine, except that the catalog numbers were outdated by the time Penguin published her plagiarism.

I should have sued the hell out of this woman, and I did bring it to the attention of my publisher, Sol Stein. He asked me to send him the woman's book with the plagiarism highlighted. I told him that every page would be yellow and sent him a few samples. Stein & Day was in the early stages of bankruptcy proceedings so all they did was send a letter to Penguin. That produced a ridiculous response from an editor who, more or less, "reminded" Sol that Penguin is the antithesis of plagiarism. The Feinstein woman is still on the loose, writing (copying?) like mad.

I bring this up because here is a case where editors did not do their job. It's not as if they had to leaf through piles of Bessie Smith biographies!

BTW, love your blog.

[Big Beat Steve]

This will probably focus on editing and proofreading errors of the original author's work but anyway ...

Not long ago I had the (mis)fortune to read the GERMAN translation of the biography of Kenny Clarke by Mike Hennessey (and published in German in 2004 by Hannibal).

The bio itself is quite sympathetic but suffers a lot in the German version if it is read by somebody who does speak English as well (which happens to be my case and really struck a sour note as very often the German stuck really all too close to Englisjh idioms, makign it often sound awkward) and is also passably conversant with the history of jazz (as should be expected from any buyer of such a book).

I did not bother highlighting the errors so nothing to share right now (might update this post if I find some nuggets, though). The book did remain readable if you made concessions or were fatalistic about it but the instances where clearly the woman who translated it was totally unfamiliar with the finer points of either Kenny Clarke's life or jazz history at large were all to evident.

A real pity, not the first such case and one more reason why I hardly ever can bring myself anymore to buying German translations of music books originally published in English, even if they are available dirt cheap at Zweitausendeins.

What pisses me off, though, is that proofreading of the translation evidently was done so sloppily.

Edited October 25, 2009 by Big Beat Steve

[Larry Kart]

A little tale of editing at a newspaper. Lots of copy editors are scared of the word "like" misused as a conjunction ("like you have done" -- should be "as you have done") and thus, without bothering to grasp the principle involved, purge all uses of "like" other than "like" as a verb (and I can even imagine one of them changing "I like" to "I prefer"). Years ago, I wrote a review that began: "Like Miles Davis, Stan Getz typically picks fine rhythm sections..." or something of the sort. The copy desk changed that to "As does Miles Davis, Stan Getz" etc.

[AllenLowe]

someone pointed out recently (was it Larry?) about an editor who took the P out of James P. Johnson, saying that they don't do middle initials. Years ago this came up on the Jazz Research list, and I sent a post pointing out that this practice would lead us to the reading of T. Eliot, E. Cummings, E. Robinson, and W. Du Bois - unfortunately my post was rejected.

[DukeCity]

Several years ago I was reading Kenny Werner's book, Effortless Mastery. Throughout the book, he referred to the impact of heroine on the lives of jazz musicians. I kept wondering who this female protagonist could be...

[Christiern]

Nica

[Spontooneous]

Back when I was trying to be an upstart young journalist, I wrote something for the local newspaper that referred to Houston Person and Etta Jones. A senior copy editor "corrected" the name to Etta James -- and then sent me a pious memo about how careless mistakes like writing "Etta Jones" will damage my prospects for a career in journalism.

[Big Beat Steve]

So you did take up the matter with him and set him straight?

Did he dare to admit his fallacy?

[AllenLowe]

are you sure it wasn't Etta Baker?

[Spontooneous]

The original pious memo was sent first to my supervisor, then to me. I'm sure that the memo I sent back to the copy editor, through his supervisor, was equally pious. A couple of days later, the paper ran a correction, beginning with the words "Because of an editor's error..."

Edited October 25, 2009 by Spontooneous

[doneth]

Several years ago I was reading Kenny Werner's book, Effortless Mastery. Throughout the book, he referred to the impact of heroine on the lives of jazz musicians. I kept wondering who this female protagonist could be...

If you get her phone number, pass it around. If she's not a copy editor.

[Ken Dryden]

The hardback edition of Ben Sidran's Talking Jazz consistently refers to pianist "Denny Zeitland" thoughout his feature. I presume someone else transcribed this interview and Sidran never reviewed it, or else some bozo changed it after he had.

Note: This error was fixed for the paperback edition.

Edited October 25, 2009 by Ken Dryden

[paul secor]

I'm not a writer - just a reader. Some years ago, I read Madeleine Blais' In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle - a book written about a season with a female high school basketball team from Amherst, Ma. Archie Shepp is mentioned at least a couple of times in the book, with his name spelled Schepp. I had thoughts of contacting the author about the mistake, but never did. Checked when the paperback edition was published, and he was still Schepp.

[Christiern]

The hardback edition of Ben Sidran's Talking Jazz consistently refers to pianist "Denny Zeitland" thoughout his feature. I presume someone else transcribed this interview and Sidran never reviewed it, or else some bozo changed it after he had.

Note: This error was fixed for the paperback edition.

I reviewed that book for The Saturday Review — it was riddled with inexcusable factual mistakes, spelling mistakes, etc.

Edited October 26, 2009 by Christiern

[umum_cypher]

a book written about a season with a female high school basketball team from Amherst, Ma. Archie Shepp is mentioned at least a couple of times in the book

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious here, but - why?

[JSngry]

He's on the faculty there.

[umum_cypher]

He's on the faculty there.

Still ...

[JSngry]

Hey, steady job, benefits, the whole deal.

[JSngry]

someone pointed out recently (was it Larry?) about an editor who took the P out of James P. Johnson, saying that they don't do middle initials.

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...st&p=968749

Edited October 26, 2009 by JSngry

[Tom Storer]

As an editor (of corporate technical documentation--not the same material being discussed here, but still), I can tell you that a thread where editors discuss howlers in the original copy would also fill many pages.

My wife works in publishing and I often get to see manuscripts prior to editing. There are certainly expert authors out there who barely need any editing at all, but believe me, in many cases editors are to be faulted not for being clueless but for being excessively gentle...

[Big Beat Steve]

As an editor (of corporate technical documentation--not the same material being discussed here, but still), I can tell you that a thread where editors discuss howlers in the original copy would also fill many pages.

Ha, soulmate!!

OT and just for you:

You know that one (passed on to me by an engineer, but still ...)?

What's it that dogs and engineers have in common?

They both can't express themselves.

Yowza!

Now back to the topic.

Edited October 26, 2009 by Big Beat Steve

[Man with the Golden Arm]

The hardback edition of Ben Sidran's Talking Jazz consistently refers to pianist "Denny Zeitland" thoughout his feature. I presume someone else transcribed this interview and Sidran never reviewed it, or else some bozo changed it after he had.

Note: This error was fixed for the paperback edition.

I reviewed that book for The Saturday Review — it was riddled with inexcusable factual mistakes, spelling mistakes, etc.

'Talking Jazz' and 'Black Talk' are two different books. Your review was of his thesis based piece - a very tuff read. The book 'TJ' was a compilation of interviews that have since appeared in full on NPR etc.

errors about errors about error seems redundant. Ben has taught me lots as have you, tho.

[johnlitweiler]

While by far the worst of my experiences with editors was at the Chicago Tribune ca. 1988-92, there was an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times who cut my review of a 2007 Craig Taborn show by half in order to make room for an article that said Paul McCartney was sighted riding a bus in Arkansas. Grr.

Had a weird situation with the Ornette Coleman book. The American and British publishers published it simultaneously but used different copy editors, Ben Ratliff in the US and the late Chris Parker in the UK. Naturally, I thanked both editors in the book introduction. But the British edition deleted my thank you (the American edition kept the thanks). Chris wrote to me about how cruelly I had hurt his feelings by not crediting him -- like me, he gigged as a free-lance copy editor, a highly insecure occupation, so those thanks would have gone on his resume -- and since I lost his address, I never get to explain that it was his London employer who had fouled up.

Like Larry, I vetted books for a university press and was paid in books. Still haven't gotten to that last box of books.

[Ken Dryden]

The hardback edition of Ben Sidran's Talking Jazz consistently refers to pianist "Denny Zeitland" thoughout his feature. I presume someone else transcribed this interview and Sidran never reviewed it, or else some bozo changed it after he had.

Note: This error was fixed for the paperback edition.

I reviewed that book for The Saturday Review — it was riddled with inexcusable factual mistakes, spelling mistakes, etc.

I've never read either edition all the way through, though I have copies of both. I'm not surprised.