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.

Nonfiction is an entirely different animal. I've also edited both, and the difference between the two seems to be using different parts of my brain.

She should credit all three sources, then

No. The source credit isn't the issue. I use the progression of verses from the ballad literally as chapter leads; they aren't in the body of the text. The problem with any version of a Child ballad lyric (or, in fact, of any collection of traditional music that's been largely passed down in the oral tradition, rather than the written) is the high likelihood of there being a multiplicity of versions.

Martin Carthy does the definitive version of Famous Flower of Serving Men. The way he does it, the single guitar sounds like ten guitars, there are virtually no sharps or flats, and the lyric concentrates on the murder, the ghost story, and the magic.

Martin says that when he first came across it, he came across the Scots version. That one is virtually unusable by modern singers singing to an English-speaking audience, and the music was completely pedestrian. He hunted out other versions, a couple in English, and fitted an updated version of a different chart for the music.

So the lyric he uses is from up to eight different versions. I used his version exclusively as chapter leads in the book.

And honestly, if anyone out there is picky or anal enough to want to know all of Martin's sources for the song, they're already likely to be traditional music geeks, because a casual reader is unlikely to even know another version exists.