Why don't people use professional copy editors?

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by WPotocki

Harry -

As would putting a comma outside quotation marks as you've done.

Physician heal thyself.

Seriously, I don't really proof my posts and you're being a doofus in commenting on my poor typing skills.

It's nice to see you got caught with your pants down as there should be a comma after the word 'post' also.

Sloppy.

The British system is for punctuation to be outside quote marks; the American system is for punctuation to be inside the quote marks. Harry's placement is correct unless he were writing in American English.

Similarly, the British have generally abandoned the serial comma, but Americans have not.

[Logseman]

Before we come to unsettling topics, the beginning of the article sent by Sparrow is VERY interesting .

Her reputation as one of the country’s greatest female authors may rest on her elegant writing style.

But Jane Austen could not spell or correctly use punctuation, and wrote in a ‘regional accent’, according to a study of her handwritten work.

Professor Kathryn Sutherland, an Oxford University academic, said that manuscripts showed that her finished work was corrected by an editor.

Not only did the editor manage to detect and correct her "regional writing" and transform it into formal English prose, but he (I assume it's a man) managed to do so while keeping her writing style, the strength of her messages and the wit of her prose. That's one hell of a great editor there.

[WPotocki]

Originally Posted by rhadin

The British system is for punctuation to be outside quote marks; the American system is for punctuation to be inside the quote marks. Harry's placement is correct unless he were writing in American English.

Similarly, the British have generally abandoned the serial comma, but Americans have not.

Egads! Is this what you got out of the conversation?

Luckily, I clicked on the links you're hawking and boom! Major grammatical errors!

quote
Since its founding, FES has witnessed a change in what editorial services are wanted and how they are provided - progressing from working on paper to working electronically, requiring skilled, technologically savvy editors; from working primarily in-house to outsourcing, from outsourcing locally to nationally to worldwide; and, as knowledge about our world has grown with daily innovations and discoveries, the growth of books from single-volume to multivolume treatises that require an ever-increasing amount of editorial collaboration.
unquote

What?

Could you have someone put that into English please?

Maybe Harry T can help you - not!

[WPotocki]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

What about Jane Austen?

She was practically illiterate.

Oh, yikes!

She was far from illiterate.

Here's a link to her manuscripts.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by WPotocki

And it doesn't explain the omission of a comma. It's wrong on all counts.

I'm afraid it's not wrong; it's yet another difference between British and American English. American English is a lot more liberal with the use of commas than is British English.

By the way, you are hijacking this thread with your incessant nitpicking

Highly apposite to a thread on copy editing, to my mind. You see, in these last few posts you've condemned as "wrong" things that are, in fact, simply differences in the use of punctuation between British and American English. Most people probably think of the two forms of English as differing only in spelling - eg "centre/center" - but it actually goes a lot deeper than that, and this is another area where a good copy editor can help.

[ThePage]

Originally Posted by ThePage

Wes - would like to try, if you like - I was pretty nearly force-fed the Webster's Unabridged while in school - every time I asked what does this word mean, I was told:

GO LOOK IT UP!

I can offer a sample of my efforts for your inspection if desired - it's an exhaustive proofreading, with minor corrections of a favorite by Porter (the author of Freckles)

I have before and after files on hand.

I wasn't sure of the book - Turned out to be Freckles by Gene Strattton Porter.

I started with a Gutenberg copy (which I don't seen any trace of, after all) -
I have a finished version in your choice of RTF or HTML, with a separate text file listing before and after version for each correction, listed by chapter.