Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidRM
My first experience with a 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 ... not saying this will happen to anyone else. I'm sure mine was an isolated experience.
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Think again. My first editor was the same. I felt like, "Hey, if you want to WRITE a book, write your own."
I don't mind lots of red marks that are errors or suggestions that I need to fix, but like you, David, and I imagine many others, I do not care for someone who simply changes things for the sake of changing things. And like your experience, the trash that was going to replace my apparently shaky prose (perhaps not stellar but at least comprehensible) was some kind of gibberish that made no sense at all. I'm not kidding. Sentences were like riddles, I guess that's "artistic." Some sort of flowery purple prose. YIKES! I was appalled.
I ditched that editor and soon found the jewel of an editor who I will use for the rest of my life. She's tough, and makes plenty of suggestions (usually good ones), but she keeps to writing her own books, not mine for me.