The nit-picking glory of The New Yorker's Comma Queen

I've spent the past 38 years
trying to be invisible.

I'm a copyeditor.

I work at The New Yorker,

and copyediting for The New Yorker

is like playing shortstop
for a major league baseball team;

every little movement gets picked over
by the critics,

God forbid you should commit an error.

Just to clarify, copyeditors don't choose
what goes into the magazine.

We work at the level of the sentence,

maybe the paragraph,

the words, the punctuation.

Our business is in the details.

We put the diaeresis,
the double dot,

over the "i" in "naïve".

We impose house style.

Every publication has a hosue style.

The New Yorker's is particularly
distinctive.

We sometimes get teased
for our style.

Imagine, we still spell
"teen-ager" with a hyphen,

as if that word had just been coined.

But you see that hyphen
in "teen-age"

and that diaeresis over
"coöperate",

and you know you're reading
The New Yorker.

Copyediting at The New Yorker
is a mechainical process.

There is a related role called
quarry proofreading,

or page-okaying.

Whereas copyediting is mechainical,

quarry proofreading
is interpretive.

We make suggestions to the author
through the editor

to improve the emphasis
of a sentence

or point out unintentional repititions

and supply compelling alternatives.

Our purpose is to make
the author look good.

Note that we give our proofs
not directly to the author,

but to the editor.

This often creates a "Good Cop,
Bad Cop" dynamic,

in which the copyeditor,

I'll use that as an umbrella term,

is in invariably the bad cop.

If we do our job well, we're invisible,

but as soon as we make a mistake,

we copyeditors become
glaringly visible.

Here is the most recent mistake
that was laid at my door.

"Last Tuesday, Sarah Palin,
the pre-Trump embodiment

of populist no-nothingism in
the Republican Party, endorsed Trump."

"Where were The New Yorker's
fabled copyeditors?",

a reader wrote.

"Didn't the writer mean
"know-nothingism?"

Ouch.

There's no excuse for this mistake.

But I like it: no-nothingism.

It might be American vernacular
for nihilism.

(Laughter)

Here, another read quotes
a passage from the magazine.

"Ruby was seventy-six, but she retained
her authoritative bearing;

only her unsteady gaint belied her age."

He added, "Surely someone at
The New Yorker

knows the meaning of 'belied'

and that it is the opposite
of how it is used in this sentence.

Come on! Get it together."

Belie: to give a false impression.

It should have been "betrayed".

E.B. White once wrote
of commas in The New Yorker,

"They fall with the precision of knives
outlining a body."

(Laughter)

And it's true, we get a lot
of complaints about commas.

Are there really two commas in
Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard?

There may not be on the sign,

but yes, that is New Yorker-style
for "jr".

One wag wrote, "Please, could you expel,
or, at lease, restrain,

the comma-maniac, on your
editorial staff?"

(Laughter)

In his case, those commas
are well-placed,

except that there
should not be one

between "maniac" and "on".

(Laughter)

Also, if we must has commas
around "at least",

we might change it up
by using dashes aroudn that phrase,

or, at least, "restrain".

Perfect.

(Applause)

Then, there's this:

"Love you, love your magzine,

but can you please stop writing
massive numbers as text?"

No.

(Laughter)

One last ? from a spelling-stickler:

"Those long stringy things
are vocal cords, not chords."

The outraged reader added,

"I'm sure I'm not the first to write

regarding this egregious
proof-reading error.

But I'm equally sure I won't
be the last."

?

I used to like getting mail.

There is a pact between
writers and editors.

The editor never sells out
the writer,

never goes public about
bad jokes that had to be cut,

or stories that went on
too long.

A great editor saves a writer
from her excessiveness.

Copyeditors, too, have a code;

we don't advertise our oversights.

I feel disloyal divulging them here,

so let's have look at what we do right.

Somehow, I've gotten a reputation
for sterness,

but I work with writers who know
how to have their way with me.

I've known Ian Frazier,
or Sandy,

since the early 80s

and he's one of my favorites,

even though he sometimes
writes a sentence

that gives a copyeditor pause.

Here is one from a story about
Staten Island

after Hurricane Sandy.

"A dock that had been broken in the middle
and lost its other half

sloped down toward the water,

its support popes and wires
leaning forward

like when you open a box
of linguine and it slides out."

This would never have gotten past
the grammarian in the days of yore.

But what could I do?

Technically, the "like"
should be an "as",

but it sounds ridiculous,

as if the author were about to embark

on an extended Homeric simile,

"as when you open a box of linguine."

(Laughter)

I decided that the hurricane
conferred poetic justice on Sandy

and let the sentence stand.

Generally, if I think something is wrong,

I quarry it three times.

I told Sandy that not long ago
in a moment of indiscretion he said,

"Only three?"

So, he has learned to hold out.

Recently, he wrote a story
for "Talk of the Town",

that's the section for the magazine
with short pieces on subjects

ranging from Ricky Jay's exhibit
at the Metropolitan Museum,

to the introduction
of doggy bags in France.

Sandy's story was about the return
to the Bronx

of Supreme Court Justice
Sonia Sotomayor.

There were three things
in it that I had to challenge.

First, a grammar quarry.

The justice ws wearing black
and Sandy wrote,

"Her face and hands stood out
like in an old, mostly dark painting."

Now, unlike with the hurricane,

with this "like", the author didn't have
the excuse of having hurricane damage.

"Like" in this sense is a preposition
and a preposition takes an object,

which is a noun.

This "like" had to be an "as".

"As in an old, mostly dark painting."

Second, a spelling issue.

The author was quoting someone
who was assisting the justice,

"It will be just a minute,

we are getting the justice mic'ed."

Mic'ed?

The music industry spells it "mic"

because that's how it's spelled
on the equipment.

I'd never seen it used as a verb
with this spelling

and I was distrught
to think that "mic'ed"

would get into the magazine
on my watch.

(Laughter)

New Yorker style for microphone
in its abbrevaited form is "mike".

Finally, there was sticky grammar
and usage issue

in which the pronoun has to have
the same grmmatical number

as its antecedent.

"Everyone in the vicinity
held their breath."

"Their" is plural and "everyone",
its antecedent, is singular.

You would never say,
"everyone were there."

"Everyone was there,
everyone is here."

But people say things like,
"Everyone held their breath" all the time.

To give it legitimacy,

copyeditors call it
"the singular their",

as if calling it singular
makes it no longer plural.

(Laughter)

It is my job when I see it in print
to do my best to eliminate it.

I couldn't make it, "everyone held
her breath"

or "everyone held his breath",

or "everyone held his or her breath".

Whatever I suggested had
to blend in.

I asked through the editor
if the author would consider

changing it to "all in the vicinity
held their breath"

because "all" is plural.

Nope.

I tried again.

"All those present held their breath"?

I thought this sounded
vaguely judicial.

But the editor pointed out

that we could not have "present"
and "presence"

in the same sentence.

When the final proof came back,

the author had accepted "as" for "like"

and "miked" for "mic'ed".

But on "everyone held their breath",
he stood his ground.

Two out of three isn't bad.

In that same issue
on that piece on doggy bags in France,

there was the gratuitous use
of the "F" world by a frenchman.

I wonder, when the mail comes in,

which would have offended
the readers more.

(Laughter)

Thank you.

(Applause)