#0077 How Editors Approach Poetry Versus Prose, Part Two

So many rules (to break or not break)

Here’s how I defined the editorial role in Part One (#0074):

Editors want to help writers communicate their ideas to their readers with clarity and conciseness. Just like the physician’s oath, we try to do no harm; usually that means not rewriting but recommending. At the end of the project, the editorial hand should be invisible. Sometimes, even the writer doesn’t realize how the editor assisted in the crystallization of meaning.

It’s important to understand an editor’s goals when you receive their feedback. Otherwise, you might react by wanting to slug ’em (see #0012) rather than pause, reflect, and respond without getting all fight-y/flighty/freezy. (Yo, that’s a fancy reference to the Sympathetic Nervous System [#0009].)

BUT, if you get into a situation where an editor isn’t treating your work and you with respect by, say, rewriting what you’ve written without justification or imposing their take on your opinions… Welp, that one is impersonating an editor and is kinda being an ideot.¹

As the managing editor of a lit journal, I collaborate with lots of writers. Sometimes a conversation develops that extends beyond publication. I consider these continuing connections some of my publishing world friendships.

In the fall 2024 issue of Inlandia: A Literary Journey, Mike Sluchinski had three poems published. My friend Mike offered this idea for a future post: “i always wondered why the editors pretty sensitive to poetry and offer only light editing but for nonfiction and fiction i get cranked so bad the last piece of non fiction i submitted was deboned like chicken and edited a lot.”

I still haven’t taken a survey, so I still don’t feel competent to address how Editors in the Literary Journal Universe might explain/respond to his query. But I shared my take on how an editor approaches poetry (#0074).

Now for some of my thoughts on why Mike’s nonfiction submission (which was not submitted to Inlandia’s journal) might have been deboned like chicken² and edited a lot. Assuming Mike wasn’t dealing with an ideot, of course.

Editors (sometimes) know what they know

Editors come to prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) editing with many ideas they’ve gleaned from school, their family, books, other editors, the interwebs, their imaginations… Sometimes these sources are correct and sometimes, not really.

All these rules pile up, and it can be tricky to know which ones to apply when. Especially if the reasoning behind the rule is fuzzy.³

The dreaded typo

Dictionaries are not all the same. When I trained grad students on proofreading techniques, I used to joke that the American Heritage dictionary was good… as a doorstop. The dictionaries embedded in word processing programs for the spellcheck? They do a decent job of catching obvious typos, but they have misspellings. Which means they sometimes flag a properly spelled word as a typo. Plus some of them let users add words, and those additions might not be spelled correctly. Resulting in far more typos.

Most big American book publishers as well as academic publishers rely on the dictionary produced by Merriam-Webster, which is freely available on the web and also has a free app. Along with preferred and variant spellings, each entry includes pronunciation audio files, synonyms, etymology,⁴ examples of the word in sentences, and rhymes.

Note: For non-American publishers, the default dictionary won’t be Merriam-Webster. The guidelines might point to another reference to be sure to receive, say, grey colour spellings in submissions.

Errors in composition/grammar

Most US high schoolers learn about composition and grammar in a world language class rather than English class. Is that weird? Not really.

Native speakers know by osmosis how to string together words in such a way as to communicate competently. No need to label a pronoun or intransitive verb or modifier or predicate at the dinner table. What’s a gerund?⁵ Who cares!

People often cobble together bits and pieces of composition and rules of grammar as a sort of mashup. Are there resources? Sure thing. Strunk and White wrote a slim volume in 1935, which has been revised and reprinted ever since; MLA is typically the required reference for theses, dissertations, and other humanities academic writing with citations; textbook companies still produce composition e-books for the K–12 market.

Getting into the professional publishing realm, you’ve got the two biggies: Chicago Manual of Style and Associated Press stylebook. I’ve mentioned how they sometimes contradict each other (#0068). While writers should know about these reference works, they don’t need to read them cover to cover.⁶

My quick take on embedded grammar checks and grammar apps? They aren’t great. If your word processing program explains the why of something grammatical being flagged and you know enough grammar to debate with the explanation, wonderful. The grammar apps on the market with the “one click and all your grammar woes are fixed” sales pitch? No no no no no. You might save time, but you’re not saving your writerly reputation. Because these apps and checkers don’t know too much or when to break the rules.

What I know as an editor

Collaborating with the teen writers and editors on the all-teen spring issue of the journal (for 13–19 year olds) makes me nostalgic for my own teendom. Now for a couple paragraphs to torture you, dear reader, with memories from the previous century.

As a high schooler, I worked my way from a reporter to page editor to managing editor. I read news, features, opinions, and sports pieces written by other teens, looking for typos — I was a good speller thanks to good visual memory — and trying to figure out confusing sentences. For particularly puzzling lines, I read them out loud. Speaking the words slowed me down and helped me seek clarity via different word choice or syntax⁷ or breaking up one run-on sentence into two.

In college, I was a copyeditor on one of the school’s newspapers while working part-time as a copyeditor at an academic journal in my field of study. During the day, I learned from other copyeditors about the rules and regs of Chicago Manual of Style. The college newspaper got assembled in the evening, where I applied Associated Press style. My brain twitched switching between the two style guides.

During a stint at an editorial temp company,⁸ I tortured my little brain some more by taking on assignments that needed to align with GPO (Government Printing Office) style manual⁹ along with projects aligned with CMoS and AP styles. Not on the same assignment. Woof!

Cat on the hunt for typos and grammatical errors! (Photo by Jonatan Balderas Cabañas on Unsplash.)

As I moved up the career ladder, I began to be the teacher rather than student. To know how to teach the underlings, the grad students, the interns, the department volunteers, I educated myself about the finer aspects of style rules. I also refined my understanding of when to break the rules in my own prose.

Other editors and writers shared how to bring flexibility into my editorial work and how to nudge a reluctant recipient to see and maybe accept recommended consistency and clarity. And to recognize, at the end of the day, it’s the writer’s name, not mine, on the published prose.

Advice for prose writers

• Run the embedded spellcheck with the Merriam-Webster browser page or app open. Get curious why the spellchecker flagged a word, look it up, and puzzle through to an answer that satisfies your curiosity. You might just find a better word to get across your meaning. (Did I mention Merriam-Webster has links to its thesaurus built right in?)

• Read your writing out loud. S l o w l y. You’ll catch lots of the grammatical goofs without relying on AI grammar apps trained on narrow-focused and sometimes contradictory materials. As a bonus, you’ll feel if the emotions you’re aiming for in a passage hit the mark, especially if you speak in front of a friend or your pet.¹⁰

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Winter Speedrun Schedule

Create: February 2nd–15th
Revise: February 16th–March 1st
Submit: March 2nd–15th
Embrace the Rejection: March 16th–31st BEGIN THIS WEEK

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Next time: Something along the lines of embracing rejection

1. Not familiar with the term ideot? It’s the misspelled anagram of editor.👀

2. As a longtime vegetarian, I find this simile to be kinda gross, but I’ve gotta give snaps for the creativity!

3. Why did my paternal grandmother insist it should be “talk with” but “speak to” anyway? Don’t know.

4. The OED is great for etymology but not for American spelling.

5. Take a verb, say swim, and add the suffix “-ing” to turn it into a noun: swimming. That’s a gerund. (Let’s not get into the why of doubling the m when adding the “-ing” because, hey, I’m not writing a comp book without compensation.)

6. At more than 1,000 pages, CMoS is better than counting sheep. 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑

7. Syntax is the order or words or phrases in a sentence. Unless you’re talking about architecture. Or coding. Words are fun!

8. FYI, I just skipped some years of full-time editorial work and grad school (also with editorial work) to move things along.

9. At one point in the 1990s, the US government thought it’d be a space saver, that is, printing cost reducer to spell employee with two instead of three Es: employe. Urban legend or the truth? Don’t know.

10. I never said the feedback would be unbiased. >^. .^<