The grind

So as Monday morning came, I felt as though I was headed off to the typical – but actually one-week-long – grind that was my workweek. A coworker and I had started editing a 50 page agenda for an upcoming conference in ED regarding alcohol, drugs and violence. Through editing this, I really came to see not only how far off some academics and school administrators are from understanding the college partying scene, but also how influential capitalism has had in every aspect of life, even at the department.

To preface, this agenda is a culmination of schedules, speaker biographies and abstracts for each of the presentations. And each of these parts has been written by an educated professional, and probably has been edited and looked-over even before coming to us.

So as we sat down to each go over and correct our half of the agenda, we, or I, came to find out just how specialized the task of editing had become.

Prior to this, I had thought that editing was common sense. I don’t exactly remember taking grammar classes in school, but I just figured that any mistake could be found by asking myself, “does this sound right?” As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I’ve already written on how astounded I was to find out that what I thought were archaic ways of abbreviating the states are actually the AP way, but there’s also the fact that website is not web site, nor is it Web site, Website, or Web cite; the Web is not the web; that hyphens are used when you’re trying to use two or more words to describe a concept when they precede a noun, like a bluish-green eye, but not when you’re saying that the eye was bluish green; that, in the same fashion, when a title precedes a name it is capitalized, but when it follows, or is not connected directly to a name, it remains small; and the list goes on…

Needless to say, there were, and still are, many subtleties that elude me.

Each of us took two days making corrections to our half of the document. This is not to say that the people that had worked on it before weren’t smart – they were, many of them had a Ph.D. or some variation. No, rather that editing professionally has become specialized. To the untrained eye, one might catch a mistake because it sounds wrong or it seems inconsistent. But to the well-established editor, even the finer mistakes stand out like mismatched socks.

And if not, there’s always a citation in the AP Stylebook.

So in thinking about senior year, I just might buy the 2011 stylebook to use for the Gadfly – that way we have an official editing style with which to adhere.