A Modern History of Bad Editing
Jun. 24th, 2008 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI've kind of given up expecting decent editing in professional publishing these days. Yesterday I bought the paperback edition of Andrew Marr's A Modern History of Britain, which contains an, obviously hurriedly written, updated introduction, covering the subprime crisis.
While it might just about be acceptable for "focussing" to make its way through, I was amazed to see the phrase "fed up of" make its way past Marr's internal editing style. That's on a par with "try and make progress".
Of course, if any publisher's editor or proofreader over the age of five had gone through the copy, both would have been excised and we would have never been the wiser.
Notwithstanding all that (and realizing that I am making myself a severe hostage to fortune), the opening chapter of the book is execllent and so far the book is living up to the masterful TV series.
+++++++++++++++
It's a known fact that the games in Las Vegas are softer at the weekend; indeed, the Youngster opined after his last visit that to take the 11-day Monday to the following Thursday option was a false economy. The extra $60 or so on the hotel bill for weekend nights was as nothing to the extra edge obtained at the tables.
But in the past the WSOP has seemed somewhat immune to this. Not any more. References have been made to the weekend tournaments being notably softer.
Other signs of the times. Not only have the $1,500 tournaments been called donkaments, lolaments and just about anything else but seriousaments, but the frightening thing is that I find myself nodding in agreement. When did a $1,500 entry fee suddenly become petty cash? I remember the first series of Late Night Poker having an entry fee of £1,500 (little more than $2,300 at the time) and that seemed to me like ginormous money. I guess that building up the profit (and bankroll) over the years has made a difference to me, and to many other UK players. After all, if you can take a $400 swing on the turn of a card with little more than a "there's standard deviation for you" shrug, then a $1,500 entry fee isn't going to cause much concern.
I think that the $50k tournaments seem to me now the way that the $2,500 tournaments did eight years ago, and I suspect that there are several other UK players who have gone through a similar change of values.
_____________
While it might just about be acceptable for "focussing" to make its way through, I was amazed to see the phrase "fed up of" make its way past Marr's internal editing style. That's on a par with "try and make progress".
Of course, if any publisher's editor or proofreader over the age of five had gone through the copy, both would have been excised and we would have never been the wiser.
Notwithstanding all that (and realizing that I am making myself a severe hostage to fortune), the opening chapter of the book is execllent and so far the book is living up to the masterful TV series.
+++++++++++++++
It's a known fact that the games in Las Vegas are softer at the weekend; indeed, the Youngster opined after his last visit that to take the 11-day Monday to the following Thursday option was a false economy. The extra $60 or so on the hotel bill for weekend nights was as nothing to the extra edge obtained at the tables.
But in the past the WSOP has seemed somewhat immune to this. Not any more. References have been made to the weekend tournaments being notably softer.
Other signs of the times. Not only have the $1,500 tournaments been called donkaments, lolaments and just about anything else but seriousaments, but the frightening thing is that I find myself nodding in agreement. When did a $1,500 entry fee suddenly become petty cash? I remember the first series of Late Night Poker having an entry fee of £1,500 (little more than $2,300 at the time) and that seemed to me like ginormous money. I guess that building up the profit (and bankroll) over the years has made a difference to me, and to many other UK players. After all, if you can take a $400 swing on the turn of a card with little more than a "there's standard deviation for you" shrug, then a $1,500 entry fee isn't going to cause much concern.
I think that the $50k tournaments seem to me now the way that the $2,500 tournaments did eight years ago, and I suspect that there are several other UK players who have gone through a similar change of values.
_____________
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-24 11:18 am (UTC)"fed up of" should be "fed up with" and
"try and make progress" should be "try to make progress" or
am I just as thick?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-24 11:58 am (UTC)Both, as you might know, reflect Americans' renowned difficulties with prepositions, perhaps because the preposition is a peculiarly English linguistic trait. Well, there may be other languages, but English relies on word order and prepositions, while German, Spanish, Italian and Latin rely on word endings. Since Americans have had a far greater influence from "non-English" than have the British, this might explain their difficulties. I still reel from "different than".
But Marr is Scottish, which makes the error even more puzzling.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2008-06-24 12:17 pm (UTC)And yet today's English youff think it is "way cool" to "like" ape the American "dudes" coz "its" so "far out" (where?) "man".
I am certain most English people using Yank speak have no idea what they are saying half the time, merely having learnt to punctuate their sentences with the bastard offspring of the Queen's English.
"That sucks man!" What sucks? What is it sucking? What on Earth are you saying?
One thing I have cleared up (having lived in Mexico and Spain) is that ending sentences with "man" comes from the Spanish via Mexico where "Hombre!" is an oft used exclamation.
Oh, and don't get me started on whooping females in UK audiences (any man that does it is a homo). Whatever happened to applause, whistling and shouting "more!"?
Whooping females
Date: 2008-06-24 02:13 pm (UTC)John W
Re: Whooping females
Date: 2008-06-24 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-24 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-25 06:29 am (UTC)I hope that clears things up.
PJ
Whooping females
Date: 2008-06-24 07:31 pm (UTC)In a Darwinian sense, it seemed like a Good Idea at the time.
Now I realise that this makes me appear (in cave-dwelling, minor-public-schoolboy, garam-massala-hoarding terms) a Homo. That Would Never Do.
I will now adopt the Standard Position, a la Noel Coward:
"I'm sorry, m'dear, but I can no longer whoop you. May we adjourn to the drawing room, where I shall applaud, whistle, and shout 'more!'?"
Liniguistic Linguini
Date: 2008-06-24 07:46 pm (UTC)Pap, sir. Sheer piffle. I would go so far as to say, unwarranted drivel.
Loose thinking and even looser editing has no bearing on the origin of the speaker/writer. You are beginning to sound like a Johnson here. Even worse, a Boswell.
I did enjoy your comment that "the preposition is a peculiarly English lingustic trait." You should publish that one. (Oh look, you have.) The bit on inflections was also immensely humorous.
As for "different than;" well, some people have no taste.
Doesn't stop me eating them with a nice chianti and some fava beans, though.
Sorry
Date: 2008-06-24 04:10 pm (UTC)These people are not qualified.
It isn't true to say that, ergo, they produce drivel (although you're welcome to dig through the results with afertiliser trowel).
It is true, however, that a proofreader is practically a pain-in-the-arse when you deal with this rubbish. Publish? Yup, we'll make money. Get it right, or at the very least ineterstingly wrong? Nope.
The margins don't work that way.
For what it's worth (which, the last time I calculated it, was in the regions of farthings), Andrew Marr is a beautiful stick-insect with nothing of interest to say.
I would be sick of the London Literati, but I'm long since past that. It was an adolesecent phase, partly brought on by sharing a 25 person classroom with Jonathan Coe (McCain, eat yer heart out ... oops, somebody did, with a nice fish and coconut sauce), but mostly because I would rather live in an entirely different universe, if necessary.
Re: Sorry
Date: 2008-06-25 06:30 am (UTC)PJ
Re: It gets better
Date: 2008-06-25 09:40 am (UTC)http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7404568.stm
Illusive? I don't think that that is quite what the writer meant. Homophones rock.
PJ
Re: It gets better
Date: 2008-06-26 06:41 pm (UTC)Once you've targeted the super-rich who are easy to reach, you move on to Step Two. In Step Two you target the super-rich who are not easy to reach. At this point you may still not have met your quarterly targets, so in Step Three you target the super-rich who are not there at all.
Substitute "mortgage buyers" for "super-rich" and there you have the history of the Credit Crunch, in a nut-shell.
I think you're being too hard on all those BBC hacks, pounding away in Word. I mean, around 10% of them are red-green colour-blind. Show them a squiggly green line, and they'll double check and say "That can't be red! I've spelled that perfectly!"
Or perhaps I'm just being too kind to a bunch of incompetent, under-educated, overpaid, under-edited Metropolitan dimwits.
Once, Twice, Thrice Sorry
Date: 2008-06-26 06:33 pm (UTC)No doubt you also enjoy reading books on evolutionary theory written by somebody deep in the backwoods of Virginia; or books describing the Grand Unified Theory, as written by a Maharishi; or the sort of "faction" commonly available from all good branches of WH Smugs.
I suppose it depends upon whether your brow is engaged in high, middle, low, or neutral.
But, sneer ye not, young Doubleday. I'll agree that (particularly from the perspective of the reading list of a graduate of Kent, circa late '70s) books by Historians can often be pretty crummy reads.
Edward Gibbon ... Lord MacCauley ... R.H. Tawney ... Christopher Hill ... all pretty dire reads, really. And don't get me started on foreign historians. These fuckers can't even write in a proper language. (Well, if you exclude the Dutch. And one or two of the French. And there might be the odd American out there; but I'll concede, they are a bit long winded.)
Just from my own college, for Christ's sake (and how I hate the oily little bastard for being younger, better-looking, and a better writer than I), there's Niall Ferguson.
What was your point again?