Hec gave me what I expect to always consider my best review. He called me "funnier than a monkey in a crack house, and twice as twisted." It's kinda ugly, but fitting.

Somebody brought up editors. I am currently reading "notes" from an editor on my thing, and wondering if they teach a different English to editors than what was taught me.

The vocabulary of editors is strange and off-putting.

The vocabulary of editors is strange and off-putting.

You should hear a bunch of us sitting around having a conversation. It's stetted hyphens everywhere.

t sticks a hyphenated tongue out at Steph and goes ...

phbbbttbttttt!

Yesterday I had to explain to a newly-promoted editor the difference between "stet" and "stat".

stetted hyphens?

Please to explain? Or is this mystic arcana best revealed under a full moon while seated around a smoky fire while the hooded priests chant?

(also sticks tongue out at Teppy)

Seriously. You may stet all the hyphens you wish, so long as you leave my characters' voices alone.

Have I posted my snarly back and forth from two days ago? (edit: nope...)

I got a forward from my editor's assistant, from the head copy editor for Cruel Sister. This person was whingeing because she couldn't find a source version of the song lyric that was a precise match for the sequential lyric I use for chapter headings. Here's what I wrote back:

"Toni,

The version I'm using is the Anglicised version of a traditional Scots ballad, "The Twa Sisters", which is Child Ballad #10, Volume 1.

This Anglicised version is the one played and sung by Pentangle (John Renbourne, Bert Jansch, Jacqui McShee). There are essentially two Anglicised versions of it: Pentangle's "Cruel Sister" and "The Boughs of London". The story and lyrics are nearly identical. Pentangle does the definitive version of "Cruel Sister" and they made it accessible to an English-speaking audience.

Since I wanted to set the story geographically in London while using a Scots family, a certain melding of the three versions - Child Ballad #10, which is largely unintelligible to a reader unfamiliar with the idioms of Scotland, Pentangle's version, and "The Boughs of London" - seemed applicable.

While I want as much authenticity as is humanly possible, the elements vital to the story should take a higher priority than trying for an exact match with one specific version of the song.

She should credit all three sources, then.

A stet is "someone marked this to be deleted/changed, but please don't implement that mark." Hyphens, commas, capitalizations, and nontraditional spellings are all common sites of copyeditor/author/editor disagreements of this type.

(Much moreso in fiction than in nonfiction, I'm happy to say.)

My blindingly-confusing editing vocab example is leading, pronounced "ledding," which is the word that describes how much space goes between one line of text and the next. I even know where it comes from -- the racks that held a line of letters used to be made of lead, so an extra (sized) lead rod provided whitespace between lines -- but it's still irritating and confusing. I am not a fan of homophones.

Tell someone you're anti-homophonic, and watch their brains blank out.

I edit nonfiction, and the arguments I get into over hyphens, commas, and the proper spelling/capitalization/punctuation of field-specific terms are epic and legendary, at least in my department.