Presented at the 31st annual Editors’ Association of Canada conference, Montréal, May 29, 2010
So OK. You look at the manuscript you’re editing, and you see… this:
Adding the ingredients in this order ensures failed chiffon cakes made at home is not an option.
OK, what’s the first thing you do? After sending a “seen in the wild” email to the EAC email list, I mean.
Well, yeah, you correct it, or humbly suggest a correction to the exalted author, depending on the project. But, ah, right then, what is going on here? And what if you make a correction and the author says, “No, it was fine the way I had it. It makes perfect sense to me, and it’s grammatical”?
Well… Continue reading