MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Why don't people use professional copy editors?

DavidRM · 10-21-2010, 05:58 PM

My first experience with a copy editor was a nightmare. I had a 400-ish page nonfiction book published in 2003. The copy editor went through the book and did something (usually pointless) to every sentence in the book. EVERY SENTENCE. And more than once she completely hammered paragraphs by rearranging sentences and making the text unreadable and meaningless. That week spent staring at bleeding red pages of MS Word "changes" is my single most unpleasant experience in writing. 7 years later, it STILL pisses me off just to think about it.

I'm not saying this will happen to anyone else. I'm sure mine was an isolated experience.

I did learn from the experience. I made sure on my next book that I wouldn't be assigned the same copy editor.

-David

10-21-2010, 05:58 PM	#91
DavidRM Addict Posts: 203 Karma: 1007768 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma Device: Kindle	My first experience with a copy editor was a nightmare. I had a 400-ish page nonfiction book published in 2003. The copy editor went through the book and did something (usually pointless) to every sentence in the book. EVERY SENTENCE. And more than once she completely hammered paragraphs by rearranging sentences and making the text unreadable and meaningless. That week spent staring at bleeding red pages of MS Word "changes" is my single most unpleasant experience in writing. 7 years later, it STILL pisses me off just to think about it. I'm not saying this will happen to anyone else. I'm sure mine was an isolated experience. I did learn from the experience. I made sure on my next book that I wouldn't be assigned the same copy editor. -David