Adventures In Editing
The strongest drive is not to love or hate. It is one person's need to
changemodifyrevisealterrewriteamendchop to pieceschange another's copy.
I've always found this little truism (featured in Arthur Plotnik's The Elements Of Editing among other works) funny, but never before today had I appreciated how true it is.
While editing a reporter's story this morning, I was driving myself batty trying to find a better way to say "glossy." After about 15 minutes of branching through various synonyms -- and synonyms-of-synonyms -- I finally stumbled on the exact word I was looking for. So I went back to the original sentence to replace it. Chagrined, I realized that my masterstroke was the reporter's original word: "glossy."
You dared to let a reporter get away with his own word? For "glossy" I'd have gone even to the Spanish "lustroso" just to keep another writer in line.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes,
Hey Ken, maybe it is time for you to read the book again : )
ReplyDeleteWow, I guess you never know who's reading your blog!
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