WRITING MISCONCEPTIONS: The Myth of the "Perfect" Edit

I'm sure you've all heard the phrase "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." In the writing world this adage applies to the famed Perfect Edit™.

I'll be blunt right off the bat: the Perfect Edit is like a unicorn in that it doesn't exist. In fact, if anyone promises you a perfect job for your book, they're lying, because no one can promise perfection. Nor should they.

Often, new authors seek out a copyeditor and don't have a clear idea of the scope of the job. Sometimes they just don't know that it's common practice to hire a proofreader after edits are complete and the book is typeset. Whatever the case, there is sometimes a "situation" at the job's completion where an author is dissatisfied because they've found an error or two in the MS. Sometimes, they even demand money back in compensation.

Here are the facts:

1. Guaranteed perfection is an impossibility. Impossible for humans, impossible for grammar-checking software.
2. An editor is not suddenly an amateur or a hack just because something got missed. There should be no accusations of "You call yourself a professional?" bandied about.
3. The industry standard for error rate is 5%. This applies to Big Five publishers and everyone else, all the way down to the freelancer. Most editors, including myself, consider that more than fair, and in fact have error rates much lower, closer to 1% or so. The basic idea is that if there are 100 errors in the MS, an editor should be expected to catch 95 of them. When a manuscript has 2000 revisions, missing 100 of them is not likely to happen. Missing 5? Maybe. And we're talking actual errors, not style choices. What about those heavy line edits that end up with 13,000 revisions? If I've even missed up to ten things, I'd still be counting myself a success because of the job's scope of work, since—by the book—I could have over 600 misses and still get a 95% catch rate.

I suppose the biggest hurdle to overcome when dealing with an author who expects perfection boils down to asking a few specific questions:

1. What is an error? Often, a client will see what they think is an editorial mistake that is in fact correct usage. Real-life example: did you know that the process of rummaging through someone's belongings or the quick turning of pages in a book is called riffling? That's right, it's not a typo. There is an extra letter in that word and it's correct. But we've heard it called rifling, we've said the word with the long "i" sound, and we've spelled it with a single "f" without a thought. And why do I know this odd fact? Because I missed it on an editing test six-plus years ago. If I'd seen "riffling" in a book, I would have thought it was a misspelling and that the editor missed something.
2. Is it a rule or a style? This goes along with with the "what is an error?" question. A while back, I did an entire series on "The Rules" and showed how zombie rules are simply styles or tradition, but not genuine grammar or usage rules. (If you ever want to know more about zombie rules, all you have to do is visit any forum where grammar trolls abound, quoting . . . from somewhere other than their mouth, of course . . . what they think they know.) An author I worked with once got a scathing comment from someone on Amazon who told him he needed to learn what the word "decimated" meant. In the context of that book, the word was used to describe a city's destruction after a bombing. Historically (almost archaically) the word has meant "to select by lot and kill every tenth man" or "to exact a tax of 10 percent from," but the usage in my author's book was correct, drawing from the additional definition, "to cause great destruction or harm to." That's all according to Merriam-Webster and completely legit. But the commenter on Amazon was so intent on proving how much smarter he was that he ignored the changing language and its usage.
3.  Are we, as editors, somehow promoting the impossible when we point out trivial editorial glitches in published work? After all, we can't say perfection is impossible (beyond the occasional one-pagers) and then point out the missing punctuation we would have caught if we were the editors for a particular bestseller.

Really, how do we present the concept of "acceptable error rates" to a client without sounding like we're making excuses ahead of time for what we're going to miss? All I can tell people is that I do my very best to make sure their work is as error-free as I'm able to get it, and if they have questions about errors or perceived errors, I'm always open to take a look and discuss them.

Errors happen. We don't want them to, but they do.

It's considered a courtesy for an author to send their editor a complimentary copy of the book they've worked on. Probably half the authors I've edited for have sent me their signed, completed books, and I'm thrilled to have them on my bookshelves. But here's the weird thing: I am usually hesitant to open them, other than to read whatever personal message they've added. Why? Almost every week, an editor in one of my groups talks about making the mistake of opening the thank-you book and immediately finding an error they missed. This happened to me a few years ago, when I worked on a series of books that that author sent me as a set. The first book was misprinted, and started on page 30. When I opened it up to look for the acknowledgment, all I saw was a glaring error on that first page of narrative: Bob side. Not Bob sighed, as it was meant to be. Who even misses something that obvious? I was appalled. Thankfully, when I pointed it out to the author, he was gracious and said, "You went over that text and I rewrote things so many times. At some point, we have to call it 'done.' So let's call it done and don't worry about it."

Sometimes, you just have to let go and call it done.

And besides, we all know the best way to find those lingering errors is to hit "send." Right?