The Copyeditor's Desk

The ever-resourceful Mrs. Micah has a wonderful post at Frugal Hacks that is so nifty I had to forward it to all my hard-copy friends (those are the ones who live in the nonvirtual world). Did you know that through iTunes you can download whole university courses, FREE? Yes. You, too,  can attend Yale, Harvard, Stanford, or even the Great Desert University. Subjects range from the ponderous (math!) to the lighthearded (humor!). Go to Mrs. M’s post for full instructions on how to get at this bounty.

So…what does that have to do with editing? Only this: effective editors are educated people. The better educated you are, the better you do your job, the faster you do your job, and the better you can earn. A curious mind is the editor’s most powerful tool. Like any tool, it must be primed, polished, and honed.

When, for example, Author refers to  ”a fairly common set of historicomaterial and theoretical conditions and concerns,” it’s useful to know she probably is alluding to Lowith’s Meaning in History rather than intending to say “historically material” in jargonesque form.  It’s useful, too, to have some familiarity with the workings of more than one language, so you can recognize a typo or a misspelling when Author uses a non-English word, without having to look up every third word (QUICK! is it Mémoires de la Société académique d’archéologie or Mémoires de la Société academique d’archéologie?).

So…just imagine the opportunity to study with some of the greatest teachers on the planet—without the onus of grades, and free of cost! And just imagine how much more I can earn than certain of my colleagues do, because I happen to know these things off the top of my head. Check it out: iTunes University, an amazing resource.

—VH

Circulating on the Web as we scribble:

Must be the abstinence-only training.

Follows.

One surprise after another!

News alert! (Cue heartpounding music…)

In the land of the linguistically challenged headline writer, the one-armed man shall lead.

Use the active voice.

Strunk and White, Elements of Style, Principle 11.

The day a writer offered “she spoke into the microphone” as an example of the passive voice was the day I realized why so many people throw the passive voice around with abandon:they don’t know what it is! Much less do they understand how to use (or not use) it.

Because many authors live in innocence of the very existence of the passive voice and others see nothing wrong with it, you’re likely to experience times when authors reject your edits or try to argue you down. You need to know how to explain what the passive voice is, when to use it, and when not to use it.

The term passive voice applies to verbs (a verb is a word that shows the action in a sentence). A passive voice happens when the verb’s subject is acted upon rather than doing the action. The opposite of passive voice is active voice. In the active voice, the subject does the acting. In the examples that follow, let’s color theverbs red and theirsubjects blue.

Passive:

The bear was shot.(The subject has something done to it.)

Active:

Joe shot the bear. (The subject does something.)

FAQ: How can you tell the difference between the past tense and the passive voice?

Writers sometimes mistake thepast tense for thepassive voice, because the passive always contains a past participle (in this case, “shot”).Past participles sound a lot like simple past tense.

If the utterance contains the prepositional phrase “by(the person or thing that did the action)” or if it implies a prepositional phrase, “by xxx,” then it is in the passive voice.

The bear was shot.

Even though the words “by Joe” don’t appear explicitly, common sense tells us that the bear was shotby someone. The implicit message is “by xxx.” Therefore, this verb is in the passive voice.

The bear was shot by Joe.

Here, the sentences tells us explicitly that Joe did the shooting. Notice that in both sentences, the action happens to the bear. The action happens to the sentence’s subject, and the agent of the action is either implicit or explicit. Both sentences are in the passive voice.

Joe shot the bear.

This sentence is in the active voice. Why? Because the agent of the action is Joe.Joe is the subject of the verb.

When the subject does the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject receives the action, the verb is in the passive voice.

Some folks confuse verbs of being with the passive voice. If any of the words am, is, are, was, were, be, being, or been appears in a sentence, they think it’s in the passive voice. No. Forms of the word to be are used as the helping verb to form the passive voice. The passive voice looks like this:

subject + “to be” helping verb + past participle (-ed verb form) + by XXX.

A verb of being alone the passive voice does not make. Notice the much simpler structure:

She is an engineer.
He was tall and blond.

subject + be verb + predicate noun
subject + be verb + predicate adjective(s)

FAQ: What’s Strunk & White’s gripe with the passive voice?

Contrary to what many journalistic editors will tell you, Strunk and White never said you mustn’t use the passive voice. They said, “Use the active voice.” But in their discussion of principle 11, they point out that the passive voice is appropriate in some cases. Their argument in favor of consciously using the active voice when appropriate went this way:

The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative principally concerned with action, but in writing of any kind.

While writers should prefer the active to the passive voice most of the time, you’ll run into some circumstances where the passive is the better choice.

When the passive voice works:

Scientific writing

In some disciplines, it’s considered déclassé to draw attention to yourself in discussing research findings. So, the convention has authors write in the passive voice. Some journals supersede this and encourage their contributors to use “I” or “we” in narrating the results of their research.

Emphasis

The most emphatic position in the English sentence—and in the English paragraph—is at the end, not at the beginning. Because the passive voice puts the recipient of the action or the doer of the action at the end, it may be used to place the emphasis on one of these.

The bear was shot.
The bear was shot by Joe.

The structure alone—that is, use of the passive voice—allows the author to emphasize the means of the bear’s demise or the name of the perpetrator without having to resort to italics.

Buck-passing

The beauty of the passive voice is that you can state something happened without pointing a finger at the perpetrator.

Mistakes were made.
The bear was shot.

This characteristic—that the by XXX prepositional phrase may be implicit, left unsaid—makes the passive voice the darling of the bureaucratic writer. It allows you to admit to any number of caprices without shouldering any blame.

These are the uses of the passive voice, and, by extension, the reasons to prefer the active voice in most cases.

The jargony use of the noun impact and the verb to impact is almost as commonplace as the loathsome perversion of multiple. Careless use of this word sets my editorial teeth on edge.

Impact has become another mush-word: a sloppy term so overused it has pretty well lost its meaning. This kind of lazy word usage is to be avoided. Decide what you really mean, for hevvinsake, and say it! Here are some real words to choose from:

For the noun impact:

aftereffect
consequence
effect
fruit
importance
impression
influence
manifestation
legacy
outcome
outgrowth
payoff
persuasion
product
reaction
repercussion
result
sequel
significance
spin-off

For the verb to impact:

to affect
to bear on
to cause
to determine
to dominate
to force
to govern
to have the effect of
to imbue
to impress
to induce
to influence
to manifest
to militate
to mitigate
to operate on
to persuade
to seize
to sway
to touch
Garrrrrr! Take the marbles out of your mouth and say what you mean!

Academics the world over flinch in terror at the phrase “publish or perish!” Graduate students must publish to have any chance at finding a suitable position,and once said position is secured, promotion or tenure is awarded only if publishing of one’s work continues. Although there are no simple ways to get your work published, here are a matters to consider when submitting your work to a journal or scholarly press.

1. Is your work right for the journal or publisher you are submitting to?

All journals have mission statements. To get your work published, you must target your work to fit this mission statement. Seems simple. One of the journals I am familiar with,Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE), notes that

Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE) is a quarterly international journal focusing on new developments in the fast-growing fields of mathematical biosciences and bioengineering. Areas covered include general mathematical methods and their applications in biology, medical and biomedical sciences and bioengineering with an emphasis on work related to mathematical modeling, nonlinear, and stochastic dynamics. The editorial board of MBE is strongly committed to promoting cutting-edge, integrative and interdisciplinary research bridging mathematics, life sciences and bioengineering.

Authors seeking to publish their work in MBE must ensure that it fits within these parameters. Most of the editor’s rejections happen when authors submit articles that have nothing to do with the biological sciences.

2. Does your work fit the submission guidelines?

In the case of scholarly journals, submission guidelines give authors information on acceptable word counts, formatting, and even the best means of ensuring that submitted material is reached by the editors. Go to the journal’s web site to find submission guidelines. If they don’t appear there, then you should obtain a hard copy of an issue and examine it for an author’s guidelines statement.

3. Do you have the patience for peer review?

Scholarly works are always sent out to be reviewed by two or three experts in the subject matter. This process, although seemingly simple, takes time. Reviewers are seldom compensated for their work and thus fit reviewing in with a number of other duties. It is in an author’s best interest to be persistent, yet patient, when asking for the status of a submission. This does not mean that a publisher should keep your work for years with no reply. It does, however, mean that a decision will not be made in a few weeks.

The bottom line is that editors reviewing submissions will not look at your work unless it fits within a basic framework. The content and format matter: even if your article is brilliant, if it contains too many words, it will be rejected.

-TM