Submission to the Scottish Parliament by Jonathan Edwards

Lucibee said:
But those days are gone. I won't be able to work for The Lancet again, because of my involvement here.
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OR, if the scales are tipping in our favour and PACE is retracted, they will beg you to come back... :)

Lucibee said:
I guess that's why I would still like to be useful rather than derided. If I can't even offer that, then there's not much point in my being here.
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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. :hug:
 
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.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Having been an editor responsible for getting manuscripts up to scratch for the last five years or so, I am not sure. There is a lot to be said for allowing people to write in their own style. I hardly ever change sentences unless they actually don't make sense. You lose the life of the text. The alternative so often ends up with creating howlers that the author has to spend hours sifting out again. I learnt early on not to write for Springer, whose subeditors caused havoc with one of my books without even telling me they had made changes. In one case I was talking about joint symptoms and they made it sound as if I was talking about pregnancy.
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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.
 
Esther12 said:
As someone with a deeply flawed understanding of all forms of grammar and spelling, I fear and resent the minds of editors.
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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.
 
Luther Blissett said:
I wondered who that was sitting on my telly!

Good document @Jonathan Edwards , but i would have added something about your not wanting to harm the Scottish cardigan industry, which, I am sure, produce the highest quality blue knitwear in the land. ;)
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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.
 
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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.

Lucibee said:
But arguably, it is just as important in an opinion piece to be clear.
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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.
dave30th said:
Why are editors now being maligned as an entire category?
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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.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Anyone can use my piece. It is public.
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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.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
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.
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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.
 
Trish said:
So your efforts to educate him turned out to be more timely than we could have imagined! Well done, @Barry.
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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 used to think editors and critics were failed practitioners. But as I got older and more exposed to the wider world, I realised the good ones really do help understand and advance things. The key word here being 'good'. Lots of crap ones around.

Lucibee said:
I'm still here, guys. I can leave if you want me to...
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Permission denied. Stay on board, sailor. :thumbup:
 
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