Copyeditors

Coming October 2012

Copyediting is the one stage in the publishing process that always annoys fascinates me. How do those people (copyeditors) DO it? They find the most amazing things.

For instance, there's a scene in On the Road to Mr. Mineo's in which an old car is breaking down. 

On one page, there is the following:
Edsel turned the key.
Whirrrrrrr clunk clunk

On the next page:
He turned the key one more time.
Whirrrrrrrr clunk clunk

The copyeditor actually caught the fact that the second Whirrrrrrrr had an extra "r."

Then, on page 29, there is the following:
And something had been making holes in the dry red dirt under the old pig trough.

But on page 119 (that's, um, 90 pages later!):
And out by the Ropers' barn, the little brown dog sat in the rain beside the empty pigsty and howled.

The suggestion was to change to old pig trough for consistency.

Okay, now I'm tired of copyediting. I'm gonna go check Facebook.