Computer editing

(from Moon-Yun)

My friend plans to write a book about his crazy life. I am thinking about offering my editing services since taking this class. I'm afraid that if I do the proofreading markings, he's going to freak out. To be diplomatic, I was thinking of making the edits on the computer instead of marking it on the paper. What do you think?

Developed vs Have developed

On the second test, under library subscriptions, the sentence read, "We have developed a large list of libraries..."

Is there a preference for writing "We have developed..." over "We developed..."?

more dirty words

I was listening to NPR, and this story comes on about a controversial word written on the first page of a new children's book: scrotum. At first I thought this was a little over exaggerated because scrotum is the anatomically correct name for a male body part, but I am not the parent of a third grader. The book is this year's Newbery Medal winner The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (story link). The author explained that the word was crucial to the overall meaning of the rest of the story, and was not just used to push the envelope of what words are acceptable.

I imagine that the word scrotum was discussed by the author, copyeditors, and editors before publication since it is children’s literature. The story got me thinking, and it seems to relate to Sarah's Risky Business post from last week on the role of diction in writing. I think this is another good example of how changing just one word could have far reaching consequences, and not only in copyeditor—author correspondence. A single word can change the message or vitality of a work, or can upset and offend readers, and this word doesn’t even have to be a four letter word.

Blue Skies

I was reading a magazine the other day and found the phrase, "beautiful skies over Berlin." We say "beautiful skies" or "blue skies," but how can we pluralize the word "sky"? In my understanding of this universe, there is only one sky. How do you count skies?

I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts, but I feel that the English language is inconsistent when it comes to what can be counted and what cannot be counted (countable and uncountable nouns). For example, the word "advice" is uncountable, but the word "suggestion" is countable.

Ex.
That's good advice!
That's a good suggestion!

Is there a logic behind this categorization? To me, if "advice" is uncountable, "suggestion" should also be uncountable.

Colons and Caps

Is there a rule for capitalizing the first word after a colon? I see this around sometimes, for example in our text book on p. 161. At my internship last summer, if I used a colon, my boss would always edit the sentence to capitalize the first word after the colon. Is this correct? When is this appropriate?

Images, Charts, Graphs

I just finished reading a book that featured numerous image figures. How do copy editors usually handle figures, charts, diagrams, illustrations, etc.? Is this normally a text editor's responsibility? Or do images fall in the bailiwick of the layout artist or graphic designer?

By-the-by

So I was wondering, is this a wrong sentence: "You may earn extra credit by writing a report or by submitting a completed reading list." In other words, is the second "by" unnecessary?

Also, is it okay to put a comma between "report" and "or?" I notice some documents have this? (Or is it "do this?")

Anyway, thanks for your help!