Thursday, February 5, 2009

Thursday's Thoughts

To continue along with the theme from yesterday, I thought I would ask this question on editing. Since I’ve been doing reviews I’ve noticed many of the manuscripts that come through have quite a few editing mistakes. Some are more obvious than others are, but never the less they are there. In some cases it may be just one like the double use of a word e.g. the the, easy to miss I know. In other cases they are splattered throughout the manuscript, it could be something like having (s) instead of (a) or the wrong name in a conversation, or half a sentence written twice.

Now my question is who is responsible for these mistakes? Is it the author? Well, to some extent it is I guess. What about the editor? Isn’t that part of their job to pick these mistakes up? Or has that changed from years ago? I know most publishers use readers to pick up these sorts of mistakes, and I also know they do this free, but shouldn’t they pick these mistakes up?
One thing I am learning is to make sure I read and re-read everything I write and everything I critique for my CPs. So what are your thoughts?


Sandie

2 comments:

Suzanne Brandyn Author said...

Hi Sandie,
It is the author's responsibility to pick up mistakes such as this.
An editor will change a mistake, but as I said it is up to the author to pick them up.
But after reading a manuscript for the tenth time sometimes authors miss the mistakes.
As for doubling up on words, usually word can pick that up. Readers are just that, readers.

Suz :)

Sandie Hudson said...

Thanks Suz, now I know to double, double check my writing. LOL.