An author emailed just to tell me, "The proof revisions are in proof-revision.pdf." NO! I would've never guessed!
Better than my author, who emailed to tell me the editing is "all wrong." (On an article that my coordinator gave me excellent feedback on. Embrace the irony.) He wants me to call him so "we can figure out why the editing is wrong." That is the most passive-aggressive thing I've ever read. (SPOILER: I am NOT calling him, because fuck him, that's why.)
He also said he wants to "start the process over," which I think means "I want you to take my unedited manuscript and re-edit it, but only in the way I deem acceptable." NOPE.
I am so tired of these bullshit special snowflake authors who are aggrieved that their precious baby words are edited. When their article is accepted, they are told it will be edited. (I know there are medical journals out there that publish without any editing happening whatsoever. Perhaps these authors have been published in such journals. But that's not how we roll.)
Fortunately, I'm allowed to ignore customers who email me directly instead of going through the support protocols. So many of them think I've suddenly become their free, personal IT person.
I inherited my grandmother's wedding china; it's not marked that I remember, but I believe (I've had it packed away for years) that it said either "Bavaria" or "Bohemia" on the bottom. I did snag some of the family silver and some of my mother's good glassware, which I love.
I think melamine dishes could probably go through an industrial car wash without damage. Or possibly a war zone.
Thanks, Gud! And Toddson!
Steph, I now have some "outside editors" who are giving the authors whatever they ask for in their corrections, requiring me to either change it back to style after the proofs are done, or have to leave it as-is because there's no more time. Authors don't get to decide where the hyphens go! and boy are some authors deeply invested in their hyphenation.
So, the classics librarian job wants me to come to campus for an all day interview despite what I felt was not the world's greatest skype interview. My emotions currently are basically "Yoicks".
Ooh, exciting flea! Where is this?
University of Cincinnati. Where I didn't finish my PhD 16 years ago.
I'ma stab this author, so you all need to provide an alibi. Thanks in advance.
(I am amazed at how many authors think that "editing" means "runs spellcheck and maybe changes minor things like changing numbers that are spelled out into numerals [i.e., "ten" to "10"] but otherwise leaving my precious baby words exactly as they came forth from my pen.")
(Again, to be clear about my rant, sometimes when we edit we do change the intended meaning, and obviously we want to know about that so we can change it back. I know my rants sound like I am the ultimate arbiter of people's words, and that's not true. We want the intended meaning to be clear, above all. But we also have a style that we adhere to, and everyone gets edited. Including Barack Obama. Who I'm SURE didn't throw a hissy fit about being edited.)
