I tried hard to explain to the authors I have been working with that they have to be consistent in their editorial choices. In some cases, this works, but more often than not, I end up having to re-do all on my own. And, in fact, one does have the right to ignore editorial rules and to focus instead on her research's contents. (Incidentally, this is why I am not completely convinced by D. Wujastyk's appealing arguments about the fact that one no longer needs publishing houses).
After having discussed for months with every author I have been working with, I decided I will no longer try to do all. My time is valuable and I prefer to spend money, than to employ it to correct commas.
Concretely, I will delegate (to the author, if she can handle them, or to someone else if she just cannot) the following tasks:
Anything else one might delegate? What consumes your time while correcting a text?
After having discussed for months with every author I have been working with, I decided I will no longer try to do all. My time is valuable and I prefer to spend money, than to employ it to correct commas.
Concretely, I will delegate (to the author, if she can handle them, or to someone else if she just cannot) the following tasks:
- —check of bibliographical entries and of references within the text (you can use the style you prefer, but be consistent, don't use "Gadamer 1980: 6" and then "Gadamer 1980, p. 7", followed by "Gadamer, op. cit., p. 8" and by "Gadamer, ibid.")
- —check of footnote numbers (are they always before or always after punctuation?)
- —footnote content (don't use footnotes for short bibliographical references which could be added in brackets after the quoted text, e.g., "Gadamer spoke of Horizontverschmelzung (1980: 6)")
- —check of n-slashes, m-slashes and the like (- within composiste words, e.g., post-mortem; – within numbers' intervals, e.g., 2–4; — for parenthetic sentences such as "If you want —and I assume you do— please come")
- —check of quotation marks and punctuation (is the punctuation always before or always after the punctuation mark?)
- —check of the spaces after punctuation
- —check of the full stops at the end of items in a list (must be either always present or never), titles (always absent) and footnotes (always present)
- —check of italics for foreign words (all of them should be in italics, apart from the final -s of the English plural, e.g., "the dharmas of a student include: studying, serving one's teacher…")
- —check of the use of "we" (I would only use in case of more than one author, but more important is that one does not mix its referents: it cannot be used once to denote the author ("Our case-study indicates…"), then to indicate "whoever" ("After this passage, we read…") and next to indicate the author+his or her readers ("We have now seen that…")
- —check of the English form (this I have always delegated, to be honest)
- —check of Sanskrit punctuation (see this post)
Anything else one might delegate? What consumes your time while correcting a text?
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