If
you have ever read The Wall Street Journal, you might have observed that
individuals are referred to by their surnames and the title Mr., Mrs. or Ms. In
the case of someone with a title, such as president
Obama, they will refer to
him the first time in the article as President Obama. After that it is Mr.
Obama (I’m sure, however, that Queen Elizabeth is always referred to as the
Queen).
Welcome to the style police. Every magazine and publishing house has them. John McPhee writes in The New Yorker that Eleanor Gould, a famous copy editor at The New Yorker, was a stickler for the definite article. If a writer introduces a house, it is introduced as “a” house. Once it was a specific house, then it can be referred to as “the” house. Gould was legendary.
The main character in Bright Lights, Big City (a novel I have yet to read) works as a copy editor at a magazine loosely fashioned after The New Yorker. The movie version includes a scene in which the young copy editor has a discussion with his superior regarding the benefits of the most recent edition of Webster’s dictionary over an earlier version, and how the earlier version was “racier.”
Publishing houses are the same. They have a certain style. The style is not meant to affect the structure, meaning or thesis of the piece, but rather to ensure that the writer is as clear as possibly in what he or she wants to say.
The copy editor also catches big things. I read a self-published novel—a good one in terms of plot—in which there was a scene where the gun went from an automatic to a revolver. This is a big detail. A good copy editor would have caught it.
As a writer, I am not concerned with these niceties, especially in the first draft. I do find, however, that as I become aware of them, I begin to incorporate them, almost without becoming aware of it. It just sneaks into my writing.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Comments