Re: Editorial review board - when to edit?

[Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Bravo to Peter's suggestions.   > Chris

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 4:41 AM, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>wrote:

> Kieran Sullivan wrote:
> > My question then: where in the process would a
> > grammar/punctuation/omit-useless-words check be most useful?
>
> I see at least three times where editing could help, in three different
> ways.
>
> In general, it is difficult for reviewers who are aware of proper
> spelling and grammar to review a document that is full of errors that
> could have been corrected by light copy editing. They will tend to focus
> on doing copy editing instead of verifying facts, assuring logical flow,
> looking for unwarranted assumptions, discovering arguments that have
> been overlooked, and so forth.
>
> After the "final" version of the paper exists, supposedly ready for
> publication, it is appropriate to apply additional copy editing. At this
> stage you will be told that no editing is required because the MS Word
> spelling checker has found no problems. You will do the editing anyway,
> and discover that "unless" has been written as "useless" and at least a
> half dozen other errors of that kind. It does not hurt to have a
> mathematician (one from outside the project) proofread the mathematics,
> too.
>
> In between, when the "final" version is beginning to take shape, you
> could argue for a phase of stylistic editing. Some editors are better
> than others at deep editing, and some of them merely ruin copy and cause
> arguments. Some writers cannot take editing easily. Rostand's Bergerac
> was one: "My blood boils to think of altering a single comma!" I had the
> good fortune several years ago to work with an editor who could move my
> paragraphs about and suggest omission of needless words with the kind of
> skill normally associated with concert violinists or professional jugglers.
>
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