Editing Aficionado Gifts

''It was the best of times, it was the somewhat less offensive of times.' We gotta tighten this intro up.'

Hey, calm down --- Now, what did you say again?

Campaign for Plain English

"Meet The Author"

'And this year's 'Inquisitive Learner Award' goes to...'

Punctuation Police

A Copy Editor and His Dog

"Your hunch was right, Officer Garcia. We'll need a good editor to clean up this manuscript and bring his unfinished novel to a satisfying conclusion."

"O.K., O.K., people - we're not workshopping these, they're already set in stone."

"Your usually vicious sarcasm is weak. Go pump some irony."

"It's about sex and revenge, except for a short chapter on the Continental Congress."

Personnel - "This letter of recommendation is full of misspellings!"

"Baxter...about this report...your punctuation, spelling and grammar are perfect. No one can understand it!"

Keeping all the balls in the air - skills

Contemporary English Lesson: The Cat was Sat on the Mat.

"It's about the murder of an editor who refuses to publish a writer's work..."

"Still suffering from writer's block?"

With the popularity of spell-checkers, many people are turning to the new speech-checkers.

"No—You're thinking dog years—Editor years are twice as many."

"Various entrances to the gates of Hell."

Günter Grass

"What your memoir really needs is an addiction."

"If I Can Make One Critic Smile..."

Your resume begins Once Upon A Time...I like that!

'I can hold a match to his notebook.'

"Confounded spell checker... never catches anything."

Ironing Punctuation

"Moby Richard by Herman Melville" "Wonderful! Not sure about the title—let's discuss editor."

Tesseract of the D'Urbervilles.

"Commandments aren't really selling these days. However, we're willing to consider self-help tips or personal improvement ideas."

One of the failed candidates for the copyrighters job wants to know 'wat was rong with his applicashun'.

'The grammar's awful and the spelling's atrocious - otherwise it's an impressive CV.'

Editor.

THE REPORT: Some of this is brilliant, but that can be fixed.

"Your appendix is fine. It's your glossary I'm worried about."