the internship, part three

October 23rd, 2007

In my college editing class, my classmates and I had gotten to discuss each editorial decision we made. When we took a quiz, we would go through the answers together, pausing to deal with questions or confusion. The feedback there was phenomenal; if I consistently added an unnecessary comma after a conjunction (as in “So, I went with him.”), that habit would surface in class. I’d be able to not only see that it was wrong, but why it was wrong; and I’d be able to correct it.

In a publishing house, however, much of the day-to-day editing takes place without comment. When I proofread a marketing book during my second week of work, for example, I did not know if my changes had been right or not. I spent two days on it, and I turned it in to one of the assistant editors, Amanda. Amanda’s cubicle was two away, sort of diagonal with mine. She was the youngest editor, and her desk was covered with personal items like pictures of her daughter and Napoleon Dynamite notepaper. I’d marked questions on post-it notes, flagging pages where I’d had confusion. She took the manuscript and thanked me, but I never heard if I’d done what she wanted. Because I was just one in a series of editing stages the book would undergo, my changes didn’t matter enough to warrant a response or feedback.

Another editor, Bequita, a thirty-something brunette originally from Michigan who headed up the gift books editing, had a completely different approach to feedback. One of the first assignments she gave me presented the challenge of overcapitalization; every time the author used a specific term for something, she capitalized it. I found myself making lists of words I wasn’t sure about capitalizing: “Big Girl: see pages 22, 24, 35, 37, 41, 42, etc.” Some words, though, I felt sure about lowercasing, like “your story.” What possible reason could justify capping that?

The book was short, so I finished it in about two days and returned it to Bequita. “I know it seems like I had a lot of questions on this,” I told her as I approached her desk, covered with papers and projects. Laughing, I admitted, “And I guess I did. A lot of capitalization issues came up.”

Bequita took the copy from me, pausing from sipping her Starbucks drink to flip through some of my notes. Smiling, she said, “OK. That’s fine. I haven’t looked through this yet really…” She stopped her eyes mid-page. “Oh now this I would’ve left.” She didn’t explain what it was that she would’ve left, but I figured she was probably right about it.

A week later, in a department meeting, she handed me a piece of paper labeled as Bequita’s Cheat Sheet. “I think a lot of the mistakes you’re making are things I used to miss,” she said. Mistakes? “I made you a copy of this list that I keep posted so I can refer to it.” I took the list and thanked her. The sheet specified which titles should be italicized, which put in quotation marks; which numbers should be in number form and which written out. I appreciated her help but didn’t understand how I could’ve made mistakes with those things. I knew movies and books were italicized, didn’t I? I knew not to spell out non-round numbers over one hundred, didn’t I? As four of us, the bulk of the editorial department, sat around a table in the media room, snacking on Munchkins, Bequita continued. “I could let you look at my edits when I finish with it.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I agreed. Maybe seeing what I missed would help me.

Sure enough, when she handed me the manuscript a few days later, I saw she was right. A lot of her changes were preference issues, but enough of them were valid to make me think. I had missed italicizing some movie titles; I’d overlooked some numbers, etc. Looking back, I see that day as providing editing lesson #1: take your time, and be overcareful. When you read quickly, you will make more mistakes.