Submission to the Scottish Parliament by Jonathan Edwards

OR, if the scales are tipping in our favour and PACE is retracted, they will beg you to come back...

I wouldn't take the comments/critiques on editoring personally. And I think that your 'messages/likes received-ratio' is a good indicator that people wouldn't like to see you leave.

 

Why are editors now being maligned as an entire category?

 

I've been working on a textbook, and have had a very positive experience with my editor. She's often able to spot ambiguities and opaque sentences that I never noticed. And she sometimes spots big things like non sequiturs and references to examples long since removed from the text.

The only drawback is that you can get lazy if you know there's always someone there to bail you out when you miss an error.

 

As someone with a deeply flawed understanding of all forms of grammar and spelling, I fear and resent the minds of editors.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1016224800510042112

https://twitter.com/user/status/1016226213352919040

Helmfrid tagging PACE means that Sharpe will probably see his tweet, since MS keeps an eye on the trial hashtag(s)

 

@Jonathan Edwards, would I be allowed to use this, amongst other things, before court (where reasonable)?

 

My world is fiction where 'writing in one's own style' is the whole point - ie narrative voice - and good editors are crucial for good novels, that is pretty much widely accepted. But a relationship based on mutual trust is also crucial. I am not a science writer but clarity of course is super important and as @Lucibee says elsewhere - while the writer always knows what s/he means the reader doesn't. If one has had consistently terrible experiences with editors that is another matter.

 

I think it's human nature not to want one's work changed and all writers are fiercely protective of their words! I've had tiny minor changes in short pieces where I have disagreed, but they have been minor and you don't always have a chance to discuss the changes. I was lucky to have v supportive (and non-invasive) editing for my novel. I guess is like everything in life - there are good editors and bad editors, but if you are writing for publication, you need an editor, you are too close to your own work to see its potential flaws.

 

Cardigan is in Wales. (Although the term originates in the Ancient Briton or Breton term cardigan blue being a garment worn by the leading member of an ox-cart race.

 

Yes, the days are gone. God knows what goes on now.
I wonder whether the house style was a good thing. An editor has to make sure the text is understandable but I gain a huge amount of information about the thought processes of authors if their own language remains. Sometimes it is painfully awkward but that may be no bad thing. I see it as a crucial part of science apart from anything because the likelihood of a body of data having been fiddled with has a lot to do with what people think they are trying to prove with it.

English literature academics make an important distinction between the unclear and what I think they call something like 'obscure'.

If something is unclear it is ambiguous or the meaning is just not apparent. That is always bad and needs editorial help.

If something is 'obscure' it is just a matter of the reader doing a bit of hard work. Thus in Poussin's painting 'et in arcadia ego' cannot mean 'and I am in Arcady, having a lovely time' because the Latin construction forbids that reading. It has to mean 'even (or also) in Arcady, am I' and since it is written on a sarcophagus there leader is expected to understand that it is death that is also in Arcady.

Leibniz was obscure but for good reasons and once one has worked out what he meant nothing could be more profound or relevant to hard science.

But yes, a good editor and author form a useful collaborative team.

 

Anyone can use my piece. It is public.

Because over the years I got so thoroughly pissed off with them. What really got my goat is that whenever I made a change I had to highlight it. When an editor made a change they did it without any indication. So I had to spend hours checking for all the daft things they put in.

The most laughable thing was that most journals, even when publishing a UK author from a UK office insisted on using USAEnglish rules about might and may and all sorts of such trivia when of course far more people speak EnglishEnglish.

I am sure there are other benign editors like me, but I don't remember about that.

 

Good, then I shall send it to my MP along with mine and my wife's congratulations to him on his new appointment as Health Secretary , as part of my ongoing endeavours to help him understand the fundamentals; I'll leave it to others for the more technical stuff. Following on from our meeting with Matt Hancock a short while back (see https://www.s4me.info/threads/uk-st...ut-pace-nice-and-a-parliamentary-debate.4832/), I would like to think he enters his new role a little better informed about ME than his predecessor, and maybe - just maybe - cares a little more. But time will tell - if this government actually has any time to spare.

 

I have had very little dealings with editors, but I once sent a letter to a magazine that was published, which included a gentle comment to a dealership I had used. The letter as published made it sound like an outright insult to them. I got them to then reprint my unedited letter in the next edition along with an apology.

I can see that editing is often necessary, but I rather think an editor has to be really good at what they do, or not do it at all.

 

Thanks .

When he was explaining to us why he could not get involved supporting Carol Monaghan's debate (because that would impinge on the Health Secretary's area of responsibility), I assumed it was just a passing comment when he said along the lines of "It would be different of course if I was the Health Secretary"; I'm wondering now if it was not such a passing comment after all. That comment of course does not say he would get involved, only that he would not be blocked from doing so ... but interesting.

 

I'm still here, guys. I can leave if you want me to...

 

No thanks you have to stay it’s what I want ..you would be letting me down if you did I’m afraid

 

Please stay @Lucibee