The copy-edits are done. Ahead of time.
In the end, there wasn’t much to sweat about.
Turns out that the copy editor doesn’t like sentence fragments. Like this. I don’t over use them. But I do use them. From time to time. For effect. I do other things copy editors don’t like. Knowing they won’t like them. But doing them all the same.
Ungrammatical sentences.
Repetition. For rhetorical effect. I don’t subscribe to the view that all repetition is bad. Always. Sometimes it’s good. Just sometimes.
What else?
Sometimes my punctuation, or sentence structure, is dictated by the rules of emotion, rather than the rules of grammar.
Sometimes I make howling, embarrassing, mortifying mistakes. These are picked up by the copy editor. For which I am grateful. Eternally so. Or at least very.
I stayed calm. I considered every comment. Sometimes I was forced to reconsider what I had written. And I came up with something better.
All good. It’s all good.
This all seems very familiar, except for the sentence fragments. Mine tend to go on and on, becoming increasingly complex, as though one sentence could contain everything, as this one in fact threatens to do, against all odds and stylistic good sense, until copy-editors run their hands, which have known little manual labour, through their hair, what hair they have, unless of course they’re women, as is often the case, or younger than I am, which is invariably the case… Now where was I?
I am often confused, by the comma. I could, probably, use your copy editor’s help from time to time.
Thanks for commenting, Charles and debra. I think copy editors do a great job, by the way. And I am getting far more relaxed about the process. I don’t take it personally any more!