Copy Editor's Creed: `God Is In The Details'

Talk about being humbled! Talk about being chastened! Tonight I am dining on breast of crow with a sauce of chagrin. It comes from getting a lesson from a pro.

The lesson is in the fine art of copy editing, a field in which I had claimed a modest expertise. No more. I'll never brag again.

First, a comment of general application. For anyone who writes for a living, or hopes to write for a living, or is applying for a job, careful copy editing is vital. Everything counts. The manuscript that is flawed by misspellings, or by errors in punctuation or syntax, is a manuscript headed for the round file. That is why I preach incessantly: Read your copy! Read your copy! Read it again!

Today I am preaching to myself. Not long ago I completed the 400-page manuscript of a book that Andrews & McMeel will publish in the early fall. It is another book on the writing art, tentatively entitled "Language Is for Lovers." In my bloated self-confidence, I thought the manuscript was whistle-clean.

Last week assistant editor Matt Lombardi returned the hefty package to me. He had a few little emendations to suggest. About 500 of them.

Who's that again? My tutor had caught me in three howling errors. In a commentary on "blond" and "blonde," I had referred to that well-known blond actor, Jack Redford. I would have taken oath that it is Katherine Hepburn. It's Katharine Hepburn. At one point I had carelessly misspelled the locale where I spent 25 years of my life. I mentioned "Capital Hill." O, sackcloth! O, ashes! It's Capitol Hill.

Did you know that "schoolchildren" is one word? I didn't know that. "Minefield" is one word. Surely, I thought, "rollcall" is one word. It's two. For some reason known only to lexicographers, "sportswriter" is one word. So is "screenwriter." But "man-hours" is two words, hyphenated.

I had mentioned a "ball park," which is OK, but "ballpark" is preferred. It's hardball, softball and longball. "Left-handed" takes a hyphen. I thought "face-lift" was one word. It, too, takes a hyphen.

A toolbox or a tool box? A worker carries a toolbox, not a tool box. I would have sworn that we cut grass with a one-word lawnmower. Nope. Two words. I wrote of an "absent-minded" professor. Wrong again. He's absentminded. Is the word "offputting"? No, the word is "off-putting." It's fingerprinting, finger-pointing and finger painting. Spell it "pork chop," not "porkchop."

Most of Mr. Lombardi's emendations were wholly stylistic, and on these matters reasonably minded editors will always disagree. Most newspapers follow The Associated Press Stylebook. It may be ordered from the AP Newsfeatures Department, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10020, for $9.75. Magazines have different rules. The New Yorker, for example, spells out just about everything. Book publishers rely upon the Chicago Manual of Style, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Rules that govern numbers seem to cause much trouble. Is it a crowd of 20,000 or a crowd of twenty thousand? Is a high school senior in grade 12 or grade twelve? What about hindsight? Is it 20-20 or twenty-twenty? I had spoken of 72-point type. Mr. Lombardi wants to make it seventy-two point type. Sixty cents or 60 cents? Eight o'clock or 8 o'clock?

"God is in the details," said Flaubert. Or was it Flaubert? Anyhow, the copyediting art lies in precisely such details. Consistency is the governing rule. If you write fifteenth century 3/8 on page 40, you had better not write 15th century on page 130. Do not speak of George Bush's Achilles heel and then discuss Bill Clinton's Achilles' heel. One or the other, with an apostrophe or without.

Minds like magpies: What does it take to become a great copyeditor (Random House) or a great copy editor (Webster's)? The first requirement, apart from a broad liberal education, is the mind of a magpie or a pack rat. The good editors fill their attics with all kinds of junk. It's Dolley Madison, not Dolly Madison; it's Carry Nation, not Carrie Nation. Ziegfeld, not Ziegfield. Averell Harriman, not Averill. General Lee's horse was a two-l Traveller. Rothschild has an "s" in the middle. The good editors look up everything. Everything!

Well, hi ho, my book manuscript is finished, and I'm not totally embarrassed. Mr. Lombardi had missed a "than" that should have been a "that." And you know what? When the book appears, I will savor that golden moment of publication, and I will leaf through the pages in rapture. Then my eye will fall upon Page 218 where I spoke of Webster's Tneth Edition. Nobody's perfect.

(Copyright 1993, Universal Press Syndicate)

The Writer's Art by James J. Kilpatrick appears Sunday in the Scene section.