This makes me close the book.

Exactly. Same here. I sure as hell wouldn't write it, either.

Oh, and Amy, my alltime favourite bad CE? The lunatic at Piatkus who copy-edited the UK edition of Eyes in the Fire. In an example of wanting desperately to put her own imprint?

She tried to change "the complex network of ganglia at the base of her spine tightened to the edge of pain" to "she gasped, dizzy, almost swooning with fear."

I wrote a little note next that one - nice and simple. It said, "If you wish to write a bad bodice-ripper, feel free to do so. But hand my manuscript to a real copy editor on your way out."

"If you wish to write a bad bodice-ripper, feel free to do so. But hand my manuscript to a real copy editor on your way out."

Hee. That's what gets me, though -- could she not see that those two sentences are completely different creatures?

And the stuff you quoted about the UK use of "in hospital" and "at school" -- any CE worth her red pencil should know this. I knew this before I was a CE, or an editor, or a writer, for that matter. (Okay, I'll admit I love all things British, but still.) I once had a CE work on a Regency who clearly had no idea what any of the cant/slang meant, and changed it all. I nearly burst a blood vessel when production gave it back to me. (I sent them on to the authors myself, not production.)

Amy, please, ma'am, will you be my copy editor? For anything I write that isn't part of this series, I mean, because assuming my publisher findds the time to actually make the offer she has now twice told my editor she wants to make, I will have Ann for this particular series?

Another example from the Weaver nightmare, this one more subtle, and flatout deadly:

CE: "Change 'What a lot of noisy water Somerset's got' to "Somerset sure has a lot of noisy rain!'"

Note the differences in that one? Legion, they were. American phrasing, water to rain, exclamation point.

I think I said something unusually profane at that point, even for me. I do know I came into the thread to fume, while Ruth called this twit and told her, BAD editor! No biscuit.

You got it. I love to copyedit. As long as it's a halfway decent book, that is. (And we all know yours are wonderful.) I had to copyedit a novel recently (and I use the word loosely in this case) that actually had me cursing, throwing pencils, and shuddering. Suggesting that some things that get published these days really shouldn't be is an understatement in this case.

Back to writing. So very tired. And I took cough syrup with codeine to stop my springtime allergy hacking...

I thought copyeditors were a dying breed, are they really still commonly used? A couple of recent "Tips for revision" books I've bought pretty much say, "Your book won't ever see an editor, if they buy it it'll get sent straight to the press, so if you don't want to look like a dork you'll have to check this stuff yourself."

edit: such as my penchant for run-on sentences.

A cliche drabble:

The eyes start to look at me and slide away, like a car hitting an icy patch. They never recover from their skid. They can't quite look at me; they can't quite look away. People talk in the direction of my feet, talking to their own notion of the thing they glimpsed and turned away from. My head pounds and I want to scream across the crowded room, to listen to the echoes and the shocked silence. "I'm in here. I'm beautiful. Really. Things have just happened on the outside. It wasn't my fault."

Who ever sees beneath the skin?

Ginger, I love that one. It's just....wow.

That packs a punch, Ginger.

WRT copyediting, I'm now wondering if in some cases where I was annoyed by modernisms and/or Americanisms in a Regency I should be blaming a stupid CE rather than an incompetent author--maybe the author was too new and cowed to question the edits, or not all the "Stet, dammit, stet!" corrections went through.

Probably sometimes... Ginger, I liked that, but found relating to it painful. Does that make sense?

Ginger, do you ever want to flash people who do that? Just, to make them deal and get the hell over it?

I used to get really irritated with people who would do that "one fast stare, jerk head away" right after they rebuilt my hands, post car crash; the hands, back then, were essentially lumps of raw flesh, and unhealed skin grafts. I knew, even then, that the reactions they were having were essentially superstition, but it still annoyed the crap out of me. And I talk with my hands, but I made a point of waving them around, even when it hurt like blue stink to do it.