by Jamie Chavez | Apr 23, 2018 | Your Editor Says …
A friend of mine posted a series of four photos on Facebook the other day, showing pages in a book she’d checked out from the library. (The book was Sue Grafton’s N Is for Noose, which I haven’t read.) Someone who’d read the book previously had taken it upon her- or...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 19, 2018 | The Book Biz
I might not have been blogging last year but boy, have I been editing—content, line, copy, you name it. Fiction and nonfiction, too, which is what we’ll discuss here.* I love it all, and I’ve been very busy. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend: I’ve received several...
by Jamie Chavez | May 15, 2017 | Your Editor Says …
Yes, I am trying to hold back a flood. And I’m a little annoyed with the AP Stylebook. As the Washington Post says: The barbarians have done it, finally infiltrated a remaining bastion of order in a linguistic wasteland. They had already taken the Oxford English...
by Jamie Chavez | May 1, 2017 | Words & Language
It’s not very often I’m stumped by which word to use—and frankly I kinda enjoy it when I am—but I came across a sentence in a manuscript the other day and had a little lexicological tizzy. Here’s what I read. It was a story about an old man telling the events of his...
by Jamie Chavez | Jun 9, 2016 | Your Editor Says …
“Reading other people’s raw copy is like looking at your grandmother naked.” When veteran reporter Rafael Alvarez was temporarily assigned to the metro desk, this was his verdict after his first week’s experience, and from this observation several conclusions can be...