Customer Reviews

Two Dozen Lessons From An Editor

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My knowledge of English grammar is limited to the distinction between dependent and independent causes. I learned nothing in school about grammar because you only had to go up and diagram sentences on the board if you go them wrong and I did not get them wrong because I was reading at a third grade level in kindergarten and picked up the rules of the English language by osmosis from reading a whole lot of books. I could write a correct sentence and I could turn an incorrect sentence into a correct one, but I could not explain to you the whys and wherefores with regards to parts of sentences, rules of punctuation, or anything else.

But now I am thinking of actually publishing a book and since I teach composition the idea of being caught in public with some sort of mistake of grammar, punctuation, or anything else would be rather embarrassing. So it was serendipity that I was sent a copy of "Two Dozen Lessons from an Editor" by Jim Woods because this is exactly the sort of book somebody like me needs written exactly in the manner that I want such a book to be written, which is to say, direct and to the point. Woods learned the value of concise advice from Pearlman and Pearlman's "Guide to Rapid Revision" and, of course, Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style."

"Two Dozen Lessons From An Editor" is written specifically to provide advice to writers so that when they send a manuscript to a book publishing house or a literary agent that they do not fall prey to the Ziegfeld Rule. Now, this is a rule that I made up, so I get the credit, that says: "People who are evaluating a lot of things will take the first opportunity to vote 'no' on you so they can move on to the next evaluation." The title comes from all those bits you have seen where people are auditioning and after two notes they are told "Thank you!" (There is a good example of this in film version of "The Producers"). I always think of it being Florence Ziegfeld out there in the audience pulling the plug.

Wood makes a point in his "Introduction to the Real World of Publishing" that if you do not know the basic rules of the game that you are going to be hammered with the dreaded "summary rejection." The second half of the intro is written by Eric Bollinger, a literary agent, who lays out most of those basic rules for submitting a manuscript. Then Wood gets to his two-dozen lessons and takes just under 100 pages to get them across. The topics consist of abbreviations, capitalization, clarity, continuity, dialogue, homonyms, italics, languages, me/myself/I, modifiers, narrative, political correctness, prepositions, punctuation, sentence length, states right, verb agreement, who and whom, widows, editing language, and editors.

True, that did not add up to twenty-four, but there are a lot of types of punctuation and it is not like there is only one lesson per chapter. For each Woods explains the principle, provides a variety of examples, and reinforces the point with some final "Rules to Remember." Once you have read the book going back to look over those rules is a nice and easy way of reinforcing the lessons. It is not like most of these lessons are going to be news to anyone, even if you have not thought about them in just these terms. But the whole point here is to remind you of the right way of doing these things because if you are trying to get a manuscript published they are going to be way more important than they ever were standing in front of a blackboard (remember those?) back in grade school.

This little reference book is all you need to have next to your computer during your next writing project to help you get it right. It's not at all complicated, but simple and to the point. Very useful tool and I highly recommend.

A likely more fruitful use of your money and time is "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White.

This is really a wonderful book...a learning tool, but a fun read as well. How oftern do you find that?