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Originally Posted by CRussel
As a writer, I've been guilty of not catching stuff on the first pass. I don't know a writer who hasn't. BUT, boys and girls, by the time it gets to Pages, you have two choices -- live with it, or make a very, very controlled change that does NOT WALK THE PAGES. This means you can add or remove text IF AND ONLY IF (logical IFF) you end up with the same number of characters on the page. Try re-writing step-by-step instructions without changing the word/character count sometime. It's a fun exercise, I assure you. And I ONLY did it because the mistake (mine and the TE for not catching it) was both egregious and would lead the user down a path that would have really bad results, not just a simple failure.
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A contact elsewhere was asking whether he should hire an editor for his manuscript. The forum where he asked was mostly populated by folks in publishing, and the answer was "Yes. You
cannot edit yourself. Been there, tried that, and failed. You need another pair of trained eyes."
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OTOH, I've also found errors introduced by the proofreader/copyeditor after I had last seen it, and been forced to insist on reverting to the correct content. This is rare with good publishing houses, but can happen, especially with technical content. (Microsoft Press used to be one of the very best, before they closed it, laid off all their editorial staff, and moved all content development to Pearson. On them I won't comment, except to say that I decided not to write any more books.)
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The late SF writer John Brunner told a story about a book he'd written where he used phrases he
knew a copy editor would try to "correct". It was the days when manuscripts were still shipped as hardcopy. So he printed out his submission draft, and went through the work, carefully circling all the "leave as is" bits, and writing STET! in large letters in the margin. Sure enough, he got the galley proofs, and every instance had been "corrected". I could only conclude no one in the process at the publisher knew what STET! meant.
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Dennis