THE LIGHTER SIDE: Quotes To Edit By
Words of wisdom on our art
Like every field of work, editing has its wise sayings, its handy mottos, its respected gurus, its inspirational words, and its penetrating insights. Below are a half-hundred or so gems of editing wisdom, collected over the years from various sources (and often amended to make them funnier or more applicable).
Many were penned by my fellow members of the Editors’ Association of Canada, so I’d like to offer an all-round “thank you” to the witty colleagues I’ve quoted here.
On knowing one thing from another
“A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As [an editor], you’re expected to know the difference.”
– collected online; attribution uncertain
On all great artistry being invisible
“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its editing.”– Mark Twain, amended by Antonia Morton
On why copy editors really do rule
“Copy editors are the secret scourge and saviors of the publishing world, insane sticklers who make your life miserable and your prose sing. Good ones are hard to find, and harder to love: punctilious, detail-oriented people, they think commas have consequence, facts can never be fiction, and every sentence is capable of improvement.”
– Ruth Reichl, Gourmet magazine
On not charging in like a bull at a gate
“[An editor] can do no worse disservice to the text before [her] – and thus to the writer, the reader, and the newspaper – than to impose her own preferences for words, for the shape of sentences and how they link, and for a pedantic insistence on [grammar] as it used to be taught in school… In the process [she destroys] nuances, and possibly even the flow of a piece.”
– Michael McNay, The Guardian Style Guide
On the virtue of simplicity
“Short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all.”
– Winston Churchill
On the parallel virtue of minimalism
“[The editor] knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
– Adapted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French author, aviator, and adventurer
On walking that fine stupid line
“Editors are paid indirectly by readers to do the best possible job on their behalf. That’s why we have to be simultaneously the most stupid reader (because anything that CAN be misunderstood, WILL be misunderstood by someone), and the most intelligent reader (who will find a flaw if there’s one to find).”
– Jim Taylor, author of Eight-Step Editing
On language Nazism
“First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.”
– Peter Ellis
On the difference between a colon and a semicolon
“A semicolon is like a guy standing on a tightrope: he has to have things of equal weight on either side – that is, syntactically independent units. A colon, on the other hand, is like a pair of eyes looking expectantly: what’s on one side depends on what’s on the other side.”
– James Harbeck, EAC
On never being properly appreciated
“Editors, like hit men, translators and puppeteers, generally cloak their work in anonymity.”
– Adapted from the words of Matt Radz, Montreal Gazette
On moving with the times
“The growing acceptance of the split infinitive, or of the preposition at the end of a sentence, proves that formal syntax can’t hold the fort forever against a speaker’s more comfortable way of getting the same thing said – and it shouldn’t.”
– William Zinsser, On Writing Well
On who’s the boss here
“Readers are served best when the editor preserves the author’s strengths, and eliminates only the weaknesses in communication.”
– Arthur Plotnik, The Elements of Editing
On realizing that we editors really are in charge
“Inattention to the proper use of punctuation can inconspicuously help to undermine a civilization, because it weakens the mortar – language – that holds that civilization together.”
– Paul Wilson, The Walrus
On not making people giggle
“The SQ – Snicker Quotient – is more usable as justification than the ILF Rule (It Looks Funny). The possibility of humorous misreading always trumps questions of grammar; and the threat of derision has swayed a great many people.”
– James Harbeck, EAC
On the editor as God
“I have a notion of editors in days of yore being straight-backed and terrifying, all integrity and no bullshit, responding to a vocational calling and above all driven by a love of the word – brave enough not only to champion the best, but also to tell their authors whatever might be needed to improve the work. And that now such personalities are [distant myths in publishing; now that] sharp-dressed corporate beasts run the show, reluctant to make decisions of their own, and ill-equipped to challenge those who rule a star-led system – so that everyone from J.K. Rowling to David Eggers suffers from the lack of scissors that might have been to their benefit.”
– Anonymous writer, quoted in a Guardian article by Blake Morrison
On editors as infestation
“[Some editors] cannot leave a text intact; they eat through it leaf and branch like tent caterpillars, leaving everywhere their mark.”
– New Yorker writer Renata Adler
On not being too ellipsis-happy
“It’s silly to indicate omission at the beginning or end of a quote – since virtually all quotes are from people who have spoken before in their lives, and will do so again.”
– Bill Walsh, The Slot
On the hard truth editors wish more fiction writers were aware of
“What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.”
– Thomas Wolfe
On wilful stupidity as a professional tool
“Editors are paid to misunderstand. Even if the meaning of a passage is perfectly clear to the client – if I can possibly misunderstand it, I will.”
– Rosemary Tanner, EAC
On being eccentric, and proud of it
“The preference for ‘first’ over ‘firstly’ in formal enumerations is one of the harmless pedantries in which those who like oddities because they are odd are free to indulge, provided that they abstain from censuring those who do not share the liking.”
– Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words
On politics, and the fuzzification that editors fight against
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
– Gore Vidal, U.S. writer, intellectual and sometime politician
On trusting your own judgment
“I keep a whole shelf full of reference books, so I can always find one that agrees with what I know to be true anyway.”
– Greg Ioannou, EAC
On not all burning passions being good
“An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do, but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.”
– E.B. White (of Strunk & White fame)
On lazy editors and lazy prose
“Some editors are content to just tidy up spelling and punctuation, but make little attempt to enhance the readability of the text. They let sentences wander, logic limp, and style lie down and take a nap.”
– Jim Taylor, EAC
On advising writers to stifle that purple urge
“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and then delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
– Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing
On keeping a sense of proportion while editing
“If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.”
– The Oxford University Press stylebook
On saving the best for last
“Writers and editors often make the mistake of thinking [that] earlier is better when it comes to getting something important into a sentence. But the end is often the most powerful place.”
– Bill Walsh, The Elephants of Style
On being old-fashioned, and proud of it
“Any struggle against the abuse of language is viewed as a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes.”
– George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
On editorial inventiveness
“The only predictable element in editing is that the next problem to come along will not yield to any of the thousands of solutions developed in tackling previous problems.”
– Arthur Plotnik, The Elements of Editing
On exercising professional caution
“We must not let our zeal to erase passives and other no-no’s distort, however subtly, an author’s meaning. Passives, copulas, run-on sentences and all the other bugbears do, sometimes, have their place.”
– EAC (anon.)
On more virtues of minimalism
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, or a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a machine should have no unnecessary parts. Every word should tell.”
– E.B.White, introduction to Strunk’s The Elements of Style
On editors as small-souled people
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.... With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, with whom most editors instinctively disagree
On not being a language snob
“Do not draw attention to a colloquialism by enclosing it in quotation marks. To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.”
– William Strunk, The Elements of Style
On the perfect professional qualifications
“The best editors have the eye of an eagle, the touch of a butterfly, and are completely without ego. There aren’t many of them around.”
– Anonymous
On taking the time to do the job right
“It takes time to make sure that a document being edited ends up with only the right words in it. Hence the old saying: ‘The mot juste, the less speed.’”
– Antonia Morton, with apologies to American poet Ogden Nash
On the divine omniscience of the editor
“[Editors] should be like God – everywhere present, but nowhere seen.”
– Adapted from a quote by Gustav Flaubert
On not being too sprinkle-happy
“The preferred tool for placement of commas is a pair of tweezers, not a salt shaker.”
– Audrey Dorsch, EAC
On why editors don’t always trust dictionaries
“It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature.”
– Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to El Otro, El Mismo
On editors’ tendency to lead on the dance floor
“Like couples performing a complex tango, writers and editors can either mesh with each other harmoniously – or else tangle disastrously.”
– Beatrice Baker, EAC
On defending English purity
“The problem with defending the 'purity' of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
– James D. Nicoll
On repeating the same thing twice
“Quality” means fineness, merit, excellence – so you only have to qualify quality when it’s poor. Other redundant expressions include personal opinion (opinions are always personal); short in length; invited guests; joined together; combine into one; commute back and forth; basic fundamentals; still remains; different varieties; plan in advance; and irresistible temptation.
– Traci Williams, EAC
On first doing no harm (1)
“[I try] to fuss as little as possible, so that what I do only enhances what the author is trying to say. The copyeditor who copyedits least, copyedits best.”
– Dorian Hastings, veteran U.S. copy editor
On doing no harm (2)
“Ideally, when confronted with a piece of writing that does not need their input, [editors] should recognize it as such, and leave it alone.”
– Jude Grant, another veteran U.S. copy editor
On the beauties of punctuation
“The art of punctuation is of infinite consequence in writing, as it contributes to the perspicuity, and consequently to the beauty, of every composition.”
– Joseph Robertson, essay on punctuation, 1785 (England)
On an irrational dislike of semi-colons
“[Semi-colons] place two clauses in some kind of relation to one another, but relieve the writer of [the task of] saying just what that relation is.”
– Paul Robinson, essay on punctuation, 2002 (America)
On artistry and craftsmanship
“Editing is both an art and a craft, calling for much patience, an infinite capacity for detail, and even some inspiration. And because editors serve several masters – the publisher, the writer, and the document itself – the task demands a nice balance of self-confidence and humility.”
–Author unknown
On praying to God for editing help
“Grant me the ability to improve the prose that needs it; the wisdom to know when to leave well enough alone; and the serenity to accept that I don't need to edit every word I read.”
– Anonymous adaptation
On the editor’s primal urges
“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.”
– H.G. Wells
On revealing the writer’s genius
An author's greatest fear is to appear, as a result of revision, less than brilliant. The good editor convinces authors that without revision their genius will be obscured.
– Anonymous
On de-obscuring the light
“We edit to let the fire show through the smoke.”
– Arthur Plotnick, The Elements of Editing
On excavating meaning
“An editor’s eye sees what’s there all along, but needs to be brought to the surface for others to see.”
– Adapted from Wayson Choy, The Jade Peony
On compressing genius
“There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are still there. Only you don't see them.”
– U.S. novelist Willa Cather
On seeing oursel’s as others see us
“If everyone who wrote would put himself in his reader's shoes, at least for a time, then we'd all write a little better and walk a little easier. Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer.”
– Samuel Johnson
On the virtue of toiling in obscurity
“Good editing (like good makeup) should always be invisible.”
– Antonia Morton
On editors being jacks of all trades, masters of one
“Editors are craftsmen, ghosts, psychiatrists, bullies, sparring partners, experts, enablers, ignoramuses, translators, writers, goalies, friends, foremen, wimps, ditch diggers, mind readers, coaches, bomb throwers, muses and spittoons—sometimes all while working on the same piece.”
– Gary Kamiya, Salon
On the genealogy of our language
“English grammar is ‘common-law,’ not constitutional—it’s a veritable hackle-schmackle of dribs and drabs.”
– James Harbeck, EAC
On not allowing yourself to get flustered
“Clients often mistake 'closeness of deadline' for 'readiness of text.'’”
– Andy Carroll, EAC
On not indulging fancy corporate names
“If you’re going to forsake journalism in favour of logo replication, I hear Kinko’s is hiring.”
– Bill Walsh, The Slot
On acknowledging readers’ brains
“Nothing so plainly shows respect for your reader as good, clean text. Respecting the intelligence of your audience is never a misplaced courtesy.”
–Antonia Morton, editrix extraordinaire
