The second type of common correction that I frequently need to make in all the texts I edit, even scholarly manuscripts, are dangling and misplaced modifiers. Problem modifiers can be embarrassing mistakes, as they can change the meaning of sentences drastically, sometimes comically.

A dangling modifier is a phrase or clause that can’t logically modify the subject of a sentence. This problem crops up particularly when authors are discussing the scope of their books or chapters. Often an expletive construction (it is, there is) begins the main clause; to fix this problem, writers should place the true subject immediately after the modifier:

• Dangling: To understand the impact of this law, it is important to review the history of women’s education. [It can’t understand.]

• To understand the impact of this law, we must first review the history of women’s education. [We can understand.]

Sometimes it’s possible to change either the main clause or the modifier to allow the sentence to make sense:

• Dangling: Before turning to Chapter 3, there are three terms to clarify ...

• Before we turn to Chapter 3, there are three terms it is important to clarify …

• Before turning to Chapter 3, we should clarify three terms …

Even without expletive constructions, dangling modifiers can make their way into sentences that describe the author’s intentions for the book as a whole:

• Dangling: Unlike other studies on this subject, you will not find us seeking to place blame for the current situation. [Unlike other studies modifies you in this sentence, which doesn’t make sense. We might expect the reader to be like or unlike other people; we wouldn’t expect them to be like or unlike other studies.]

• Unlike other studies on this subject, this book will not place blame for the current situation. [Unlike other studies clearly modifies this book.]

A misplaced modifier is one that is placed within the sentence in such a way that it is ambiguous (“squinting”) or that it modifies the wrong word. Misplaced modifiers can sound silly or actually skew the author’s intended meaning. Here’s an example of a silly-sounding modifier:

• Misplaced: Cats reward humans with dead mice. [When with dead mice appears after humans, it sounds as if the humans already possess dead mice, and for that reason the cats decide to reward them.]

Rewording the phrasing works best here:

• To reward their human owners, cats give them dead mice.

Here’s a misplaced modifier that is not silly but that alters the author’s intended meaning:

• Misplaced: The athlete almost sprinted one hundred yards before spraining his ankle. [The athlete ran at a pace just under that of a sprint.]

• The athlete sprinted almost one hundred yards before spraining his ankle. [The athlete sprinted, but the distance he ran was not quite one hundred yards.]

Here’s another misplaced adverb:

• Misplaced: From the time their children are born, parents play crucial roles in how successful their children will be cross-culturally. [The children will achieve success across several cultures.]

• From the time their children are born, parents cross-culturally play crucial roles in their how successful their children will be as adults. [Parents across several cultures all play important roles in their children’s success.]

A squinting modifier is placed so that readers are uncertain which word it is supposed to modify. The reader may not arrive at a wrong interpretation so much as be uncertain about which meaning the writer intended.

• Squinting: Writers who proofread often improve the quality of their work. [Do the writers often proofread and in that way improve their work? Do writers who proofread improve their work often? Which is happening often: the proofreading or the improving?]

Moving the adverb closer to the idea it’s meant to modify solves this problem:

• Writers who often proofread improve the quality of their work.

• Writers who proofread improve the quality of their work often.

Imagine these kinds of modifier problems in passages of text describing research methodology: if a whole argument is based on the soundness of the methods used, the author will want to be sure that modifiers aren’t introducing ambiguity or outright mistakes into descriptions of the process. Beyond methodology, scholarly writers base discussions on fine distinctions of meaning and interpretation. It’s the copy editor’s job to make sure that modifier problems don’t muddy those distinctions.

Image: stock.xchng

When I first read text formatted in Times, I had a visceral reaction against this font. Times, to my eye, was tiny and hard to read; it was fussy. It brought to my mind the image of long, gray columns of thickly set (and dry) facts. I much preferred another serif font, Palatino, which seemed much more readable and elegant. In fact, I still like Palatino for my own writing and correspondence.

But I’ve learned to love Times and Times New Roman, especially for editing. Once I either increase the point size to 14 or zoom higher than 100 percent, Times offers many advantages. For one thing, the hyphen, the en dash, and the em dash are truly different in size. There’s no way I could accidentally let an en dash stand for an em dash to set off a phrase in a sentence. Nor would I ever let an em dash instead of an en dash separate spans of numbers. With Times, I can quickly catch any en dash trying to impersonate a hyphen in compound phrases like small-business owners.

In addition, the punctuation in Times is distinctly shaped, very curvy, especially commas and quotation marks. Opening quotation marks look like 66; closing ones look like 99. It’s easy to make sure a single opening quotation mark (shaped like a 6) doesn’t try to play the role of an apostrophe (shaped like a 9).

In Times, italicized commas and semicolons are also clearly different from their roman counterparts. In other fonts, I often have to check the toolbar in Word to see if the mark has been formatted as italic.

Even now that I do most of my editing in tracked changes right on the computer, I still prefer to use Times or Times New Roman, despite early (now questioned) studies claiming that sans serif fonts, like Helvetica or Lucida Grande, are easier to read on a computer monitor. The distinct shapes of Times punctuation are just easier for me to see and correct as needed. Times helps me be more efficient, and that can only help my clients.

What if my client hates the look of Times? Once my editing is complete, it takes only a moment to reformat the text in a different font.

Image: stock.xchng

The first of the “top five” problems I see in all the texts I edit is unclear pronoun reference. Scholars certainly avoid basic “me and him went to the store” errors. But even a scholarly writer can lose track of antecedents, with confusing results.

The noun that immediately precedes a pronoun is generally the antecedent (what the pronoun is meant to represent). When other nouns appear between the pronoun and the antecedent, the writer can accidentally sound silly:

• In 1986 Jones wrote an extensive essay on Darwin and his father, but he left it on the boat.
  

Strictly speaking, he refers back to Darwin’s father, who certainly is not the person who lost the essay. Readers may understand the author’s intended meaning, but that accidental meaning lingers behind, serving as a distraction or weakening the reader’s trust in the author’s abilities.

Another kind of pronoun problem I often see in scholarly texts is the use of a possessive rather than a noun for an antecedent. A pronoun needs a noun, not a word or phrase that describes the noun, as its antecedent:

• In Darwin’s treatise, he presented ideas that challenged traditional religion.
  

Darwin’s acts as an adjective here. The only noun before he is treatise. This kind of sentence is easy to recast:

• In his treatise, Darwin presented ideas that challenged traditional religion.
  

Sometimes a pronoun could refer to two different nouns equally well:

• The rest of this poem is an extended metaphor for the life cycle. It begins with sprouting, then blooming, and eventually releasing seeds.
  

Here, the noun immediately before it is life cycle, but the reader may wonder if the author really intended it to refer to extended metaphor. The phrase “sprouting, then blooming, and eventually releasing seeds” could logically describe either life cycle or the particular metaphor under discussion. The content gives no hints to the reader about the author’s intentions. (Compare this sentence with the first example, in which the phrase in 1986 makes Darwin’s father an unacceptable antecedent for “he.”) Especially if this discussion of the metaphor is meant to introduce a long or complicated analysis, even one pronoun problem can seriously undercut what the writer is trying to say for paragraphs to come.

Pronoun reference is especially problematic when a pronoun like it is used syntactically in two different ways:

• Mrs. Smith has refused to return my phone calls, despite the intervention of one of her colleagues. This occurred two weeks ago. Her reluctance to discuss the billing problem may represent school policy. Surely the committee will agree that only if we address it and how it affects the budget will it be possible to make it better.
  

What is the it that needs to be discussed in the final sentence? The school policy? The billing problem? Does the final it (what could be made better) refer to the same noun as the first it? In terms of syntax, these its are meant to substitute for specific nouns acting as subjects (it affects) or objects (make it better, of it). But the it in will it be possible is a different kind of syntactical structure: an expletive, or a kind of “place holder” in a clause. The true subject or object of the clause appears later in these kinds of sentences; we see this use of it in sentences like “It will take six weeks to fix this problem” (for “Fixing this problem will take six weeks”) or “Make it more obvious what your purpose is” (for “Make your purpose more obvious”). Expletives are acceptable in scholarly prose, but when it has already appeared in reference to specific nouns, an expletive can make a passage confusing. Even if the reader takes only a moment to figure out the syntax, for that moment he or she is not paying attention to the ideas of the writer. Even a momentary lapse in attention can hurt the persuasiveness of the text’s overall argument.

For this paragraph, repeating nouns rather than using pronouns makes the content more clear:

• Mrs. Smith has refused to return my phone calls, despite the intervention of one of her colleagues. This intervention occurred two weeks ago. Smith’s reluctance to discuss the billing problem may represent school policy. Surely the committee will agree that only if we address the billing error and how it affects the budget will we be able to make the official policy better.
  

Note that other pronoun problems needed to be addressed also. This happened six weeks ago could have referred to the billing problem or the intervention of the colleague. Her syntactically referred to colleague rather than Smith, so repeating Smith’s name makes sure the reader understands the author’s intended meaning.

It’s easy to lose track of pronouns when writing the kind of sophisticated analyses that appear in scholarly texts. Often scholars are so immersed in building an argument that they don’t pick up on ambiguities in the prose. Editors and proofreaders have the training—and the objectivity—to catch these kinds of errors. The resulting improvement in clarity helps readers follow the scholar’s train of thought.

Image: stock.xchng

When I started copyediting scholarly books several years ago, I was astonished by the kinds of corrections I needed to make most frequently. For very different reasons, the scholarly authors whose work I was editing made the same kinds of errors my freshmen students had made during the eight years I taught composition.

Students make these errors either because they haven't mastered writing skills yet or because they don't put time into revising their work. The scholars make these errors because they're writing longer, more complicated sentences and, I'm assuming, having insights during the writing process itself. If a scholar realizes another brilliant point that can be made halfway through a sentence, the syntax sometimes can't keep up with the brain, and errors find their way into the text.

What are these five most common mistakes? They'll sound familiar to you:

1. Problems with pronoun reference
2. Dangling or misplaced modifiers
3. Problems with parallel structure
4. Wordiness
5. Problems distinguishing between (and therefore punctuating) restrictive and nonrestrictive elements

Only this last problem is difficult for many people, even seasoned writers, to grasp. To give each of these problems the attention they deserve, I'll be writing about them one by one in upcoming posts.

Image: stock.xchng

Friends who teach on the college level sometimes ask me if I have to "correct" a lot of "mistakes" in scholarly texts. Certainly I do correct any errors that have slipped into the text, but much of what I do as a copy editor has nothing to do with mistakes. It's more a question of "translating" the text from one set of conventions to another.

For example, a scholar in the humanities would probably follow MLA style in preparing a dissertation. Once the dissertation is rewritten as a book and accepted for publication, the manuscript will very likely need to follow a different style guide. Even if the scholar makes a good attempt to reformat documentation into the endnote style that the Chicago Manual of Style, for example, suggests, a few remnants of the original MLA style will probably remain. It's not that the MLA style is "wrong." It's simply not the style that the publisher follows.

I don't think, "Ah-ha! Another mistake!" I'm more likely to think, as I reformat the documentation, "Oh, another one slipped through. Glad I caught it." To be absolutely honest, I'm thinking something along the lines of "Change period to comma; insert parentheses." If I stopped to congratulate myself every time I make the text consistent, the editing process would take much too long.

This kind of reformatting was especially important when I edited a collection of essays by several authors. Experts in a variety of fields submitted chapters to the book; the disciplines represented included urban planning, journalism, psychology, communications, and literature. The scholars had formatted their original articles according to the conventions of their different disciplines. Some had used endnotes, some had used footnotes, and some had used parenthetical citations within the text. But retaining all those styles within one book would have been distracting at best and confusing at worst. So I "translated" documentation according to one system, in this case, parenthetic citations. None of these changes were "corrections" of "mistakes."

The result of the editing is a text that is consistent throughout so that readers can concentrate on the research and insights of the authors.

Image: stock.xchng

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Occasionally, an author will notice discrepancies in the editing choices of different books on a subject. Which one is right? Which example should the manuscript I'm now editing follow? If the author as an expert in the field doesn't have a clear preference and if either option is acceptable according to the style guide we're using, I usually reply, "Don't worry. As long as your text is consistent, you'll be OK."

Why this emphasis on consistency? When something is consistent, it becomes invisible. If a phrase (editor in chief? editor-in-chief?) is hyphenated or not all the way through a text, the reader picks on what, not how: readers focus on the concept of the phrase and not on the way it's been edited. The editing becomes a distraction only when the same phrase appears in different ways throughout the book.

Copyediting often reminds me of housekeeping. When it's done well, it's invisible. When a house has been beautifully cleaned, guests notice the decor or the view from the window or the other guests invited to the party. Only when housekeeping has not been done well do visitors think about it, noticing the unswept floor or the piles of unfolded laundry. In the same way, when all the "little stuff" of a manuscript is consistent, readers pay attention to what is being said rather than how it appears on the page.

My husband tells me that this principle applies also the the role of the umpire at a baseball game. When the ump makes a good call, it's just part of the flow of the game. If he makes a bad call, the fans boo. The manager and ump may get in a shouting match. If the ump makes a really bad call, a brawl may break out.

Bad editing rarely results in punches being thrown. But my goal, ultimately, is to be a good editor: I want to make my work invisible — so that the ideas and voice of the author are the only things capturing the reader's attention.

Image: stock.xchng

I don’t remember if it was in my freshman or my sophomore year of college, but I do remember how emphatically Dr. Mahaffey forbade his students from writing more than one modifying element between the subject and main verb of a sentence: “Don’t do that.”

At the time, I assumed he was laying down an ironclad rule. From that point on, I followed his advice and allowed only one such modifier, if any, to follow the subject.

• OK: “Hawthorne, who was born in Salem, distanced himself from his ancestor’s role in the witch trials, an event in American history in which innocent people were executed.”

• Not OK: “Hawthorne, who was born in Salem, tracing his ancestors back to one of the judges of the witch trials, in which innocent people were executed, distanced himself from his family’s role in this part of American history.”

Since my college days, I’ve learned that no rule forbids long strings of what are called nonrestrictive elements to come between subject and predicate. In fact, in my editing work I often see multiple phrases and clauses used this way. But I still think it’s a really bad idea.

Why? Clarity.

By the time your readers have read two, three, or more modifying elements and finally arrived at the main verb, they may need to retrace their steps to remember the subject of the sentence:

Popular in New Hampshire, Pierce, who was nominated in 1852 as the Democrat candidate for the presidency, largely in response to his support of the Compromise of 1850, which made federal laws stricter in regard to runaway slaves, adding to the strife between North and South during the years when the nation was heading toward the Civil War, was responsible for the disastrous inclusion of several factions of the Democratic Party in the cabinet.

If readers are forced to retrace their steps to remember the subject of your sentence, they have left the flow of your thoughts, which you’ve otherwise carefully arranged to lead up to your conclusions. If sentence after sentence contains multiple “interrupters,” you’re seriously slowing down your readers’ progress through your text. This is especially true if your subject matter is theoretical or abstract.

Here’s the sentence recast:

Popularity at home in New Hampshire was no guarantee of success in the Oval Office. Nominated as the Democratic candidate in 1852, Pierce was controversial not only for his support of the Compromise of 1850 and its stricter federal laws regarding runaway slaves but also for his disastrous inclusion of several factions of the Democratic Party in his cabinet, a decision causing even more political strife as the nation was heading toward the Civil War.

I’ve moved the interrupting modifiers to positions before the subject and after the main verb. Yes, I’ve also split the original sentence in two.

Look what breaking up the sentence has forced me to do: to develop the seed of an idea. In the earlier version, I simply state that Pierce was popular in New Hampshire. (So what?) In the second version, I comment on how that popularity failed to serve Pierce in office, and trouble succeeding politically is the main point here. Even more important, the core idea of the longer sentence is now more emphatic: Pierce was controversial. Everything that comes before and after the subject-verb pair builds upon that clearly expressed idea.

If you decide to practice recasting strings of interrupting modifiers in your own sentences, note that you can often simply move modifiers to the beginning or end of the sentence, as in my recast version.

Scholarly writing deals with complicated and often abstract concepts. Why make absorbing your ideas even more complicated for your readers? Rather than forcing them to retrace their steps, keep them following your line of thought.

Why would a scholar, especially a professor of English, need a copy editor? People with PhDs generally teach, research, read, and write most of the time. Surely a scholar is a good writer.

I suggest that all writers who are about to be published need a copy editor. It’s a question of focus.

A scholar has “big picture” focus. He or she spends months, even years, doing research to develop an argument that adds to the literature on a particular subject. Caught in the exciting but lengthy process of presenting this argument, the scholar is probably not going to notice whether a phrase is consistently hyphenated throughout all chapters. But readers will expect the scholar to be an expert in the field and may even turn to the book to confirm how a term should be written: if the published text is inconsistent, the scholar looks indecisive or uninformed.

As a copy editor, I have “little picture” focus. My job isn’t to present a scholarly argument. It’s to make sure, among other things,

• that no spelling or grammatical errors have slipped into the text while the author had eyes focused on the big picture;
• that the table of contents accurately reflects the titles as they appear at the beginning of the chapters;
• that titles of subsections within a chapter have parallel structure (why is one subheading a verb phrase when all other subheadings are noun phrases?);
• that information given in notes matches that given in the bibliography (is the cited author’s name Anne Smith or Ann Smithe?);
• that notes or in-text citations are punctuated correctly and consistently;
• that no other errors and inconsistencies have crept into the book.

In terms of “other errors,” it’s not my job as copy editor to analyze the soundness of the book’s argument; but it certainly is my job to flag the author’s attention about obvious factual mistakes (Bucharest is not the capital of Hungary) or problems with logic. I’m an attentive reader. If I become confused or distracted, probably other readers will too.

A copy editor is also well versed in publishing conventions. In an article edited according to the MLA Manual of Style, a percentage appears as a number and symbol: 5%. But in a book edited according to the Chicago Manual of Style, the bible of most publishers of scholarly books, the word rather than the symbol is used: 5 percent. For newspaper articles and news releases following AP style, titles of books appear in quotation marks. A scholarly book would set the same titles in italics. If inappropriate conventions are used for a particular publication, it won’t look professional, even if readers can’t figure out exactly why. Both author and publisher will look less than first-rate.

The good news is that the scholar doesn’t need to be distracted with this kind of “little picture” detail. That’s the job of the copy editor.

image: stock.xchng

This will be a place where I can share my experiences as an editor, with the hope that these experiences can serve writers being published -- or seeking to be published.