Edit

“ I can just see the last flap o' that boy-editor's shirt tail as he legs it for the woods, while Rebecky settles down in his revolvin' cheer! I 'm puzzled as to what kind of a job editin' is, exactly; but she 'll find out, Rebecky will. An' she 'll just edit for all she 's worth! ”

“ A pendant to the social position of the editor is the very considerable number of editors who have been imprisoned - usually for debt, libel, or blasphemy—and have continued to edit their papers from behind prison bars. ”

“ Several of them, moreover, have been very inadequately edited, or not at all, which is perhaps better; and it is no useless discipline of the wits, no unworthy exercise of the mind, to do our own editing as we go along, winning back to its cradle the right word for the changeling the printers have left in his stead, making the lame verses find their feet again, and rescuing those that have been tumbled higgledy-piggledy into a mire of prose. ”

“ Many men had his respect, even his homage, but as an editor—and I never knew him as anything else—he would allow no man to dictate to him; he served only the Public and ‘those few great principles.’ ‘An editor,’ he would say, tapping a sheet of paper with his glasses, ‘is the servant of the Public although his duty is to educate it.’ And his innocent vanity would swell out into such monstrous proportions, would bud and blossom into such foolish phrases, that his hearer would wonder if he had suddenly strayed into the rigid world of the third-rate comic novel. ”

“ With an editor ever alive to the new message, the new note, the fresh way of saying a thing, the new angle on a current subject, whether in article or story—since fiction is really to-day only a reflection of modern thought—the foolish notion that an editor must be approached through “influence,” by a letter of introduction from some friend or other author, falls of itself. There is no more powerful lever to open the modern magazine door than a postage-stamp on an envelope containing a manuscript that says something. ”

“ For which reason I would derive the name editor not so much from edo, to publish, as from edo, to eat, that being the peculiar profession to which he esteems himself called. He blows up the flames of political discord for no other occasion than that he may thereby handily boil his own pot. ”

“ A modern editor—of whom I will not use the expressions which occur to me—finding the 'we' a redundant syllable in the iambic line, prints 'we're.' It is a little thing—but I do not recollect, in the forty years of my literary experience, any piece of editor's retouch quite so base. ”

“ Blog sets off edit war, gets itself protected By Michael Snow, 10 January 2005 Law professor Glenn Reynolds, who writes the Instapundit blog, triggered an edit war last week over the article about his blog. ”

“ For a long twelvemonth after that I never dreamed of putting pen to paper. I had given myself up, as it were. I was the most modest of children, and fully decided within myself that a man so clever as a real live editor must needs be could not have been mistaken. ”

“ How in—nature—is a young writer to forecast the demands of current editors? If an editor is worth his salt—his Attic salt—he does not know himself what he wants, except by the eternal yearning of the editorial soul for something new and good. ”

“ In examining these little books, carefully treasured to-day in their bank-vault, one realizes how laborious must have been the editing by Mr. Blake, carried on with earnest, devoted enthusiasm, which transformed the difficulties into labors of love. ”

“ If he errs seriously, and regards an agitation as trivial which is really momentous, then his journal receives a blow which may cripple its influence during months. One great paper was ruined some twenty years ago by a blunder, and about one hundred thousand pounds were deliberately thrown away through obstinate folly. The perfect editor, like the great general, seizes every clue that can guide him, and makes his final movement with alert decision. No wonder that the work of editing wears men out early. ”

“ I know that, so far as I was concerned, the success of a young contributor was as precious as if I had myself written his paper or poem, and I doubt if it gave him more pleasure. The editor is, in fact, a sort of second self for the contributor, equally eager that he should stand well with the public, and able to promote his triumphs without egotism and share them without vanity. ”

“ Everything, indeed, in a work of art should be unedited,—and even the words, by the manner of grouping them, of shaping them to new meanings,—and one often regrets having an alphabet familiar to too many half-lettered persons. ”

“ For the verses you send me, I will not say they are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show promise. I am not an editor, but I know the standard of some editors. You must not expect to “leap with a single bound” into the society of those whom it is not flattery to call your betters. ”

“ Indeed, when a different Reading gives us a different Sense, or a new Elegance in an Author, the Editor does very well in taking Notice of it; but when he only entertains us with the several ways of spelling the same Word, and gathers together the various Blunders and Mistakes of twenty or thirty different Transcribers, they only take up the Time of the learned Reader, and puzzle the Minds of the Ignorant. ”

“ And then again, there are editors, who, in spite of the burden they carry, are not always too busy to send, with a rejected manuscript, a line or two of welcome advice to a young author whom they see to be stumbling needlessly—or a few words of equally valued praise to the beginner whose first work shows, through all its crudeness, the unmistakable gleam of the Inborn Talent. ”

“ To recur to its ancient as well as its modern phases, to re-awaken some of its historic memories, to dwell briefly upon its poetic enchantments, to show its employment in the drama and in fiction, in metaphor and in anecdote, to exhibit its humorous side and its sorrowful side, to unveil the strength of its sincerity and the peril of its treachery, is the purpose of the editor. ”

“ It might just spoil its chances of being accepted: editors were such clever men. But, to rewrite the sentence was a grind, and he was so tired and sleepy. After all, what did it matter? People who were clever would force a meaning into it; people who were not clever would pretend—he knew of no other classes of readers. ”

“ The primary requirements which tend to make up the composition of an editor are good health, an impenetrably thick skin, and the best of humour. Secondly, he must be able to command experience, a thirst for work, and the power of application ”

“ The editor wishes to sincerely apologize.
It is true, finally, that authors owe their wildest thoughts, the most extraordinary expressions, to their kind typesetters, through whose impulses they become the principal sponsors of ideas from so-called typographical errors. For example, the editor spoke, in the second part of his "Night Pieces" (Pag. 326) , of spacious groves that float in a garden. The typesetter was not genial enough, for he set the word groves to be instead graves. ”

“ It can hardly be necessary for them to add, what the name of Editor implies, that while they, of course, concur in his sentiments as a whole, they are not to be understood as rendering themselves responsible for every shade of opinion or expression. ”

“ All the games, tricks, puzzles, and rainy-day and social-evening diversions have been practised by the editor; many are original with him, and many that are of course not original have been greatly improved by his intelligence. ”

“ The editor of the journal, who is naturally pleased to secure copy on such easy terms, adroitly stirs up slumbering sentiment; and time, temper, and ink are wasted without stint by people who are the only converts of their own eloquence. ”

“ When, therefore, we know that, by his own statement, his wife not only edited his works but edited him, we feel slightly annoyed with Mr. ”

“ In regard to a small piece an editor, when moved that way, can afford to be good-natured. He can give to it the hour or so of his own work which it may require. And if after all it be nothing—or, as will happen sometimes, much worse than nothing,—the evil is of short duration. In admitting such a thing he has done an injury,—but the injury is small. It passes in the crowd, and is forgotten. The best Homer that ever edited must sometimes nod. But a whole novel! ”

“ You must have scope."
"He's in Europe. At Carlsbad, or somewhere. He never comes near the paper. He just sits tight and draws the profits. He lets the editor look after things. Just at present I'm acting as editor." ”

“ Magazine editing is so largely a question of method and system—so far as I can learn—that I fancy you will eventually find it possible to claim a few hours every day for yourself;—and such systematic work as you must take hold of, will not, like journalistic routine, deaden aspiration. ”

“ Yet the editor managed to get a good deal of variety into its pages. Besides cautionary stories, there were instructive articles on natural history, nonsense stories, true tales of heroism and animal intelligence, verse of various kinds, puzzles, and letters to the editor, together with many prize competitions. One must not compare the illustrations of the 'seventies with those of to-day, or one will fail to realize the inexhaustible delight which the pictures in the early numbers of Little Folks gave to less sophisticated children of fifty years ago. ”

“ It's only his whiskers that make him look old. One can easily detect a sentimental vein in his composition.”
“That accounts for his fits of abstraction, too. So he's found favour in some fair one's eyes. I wonder what she's like.”
“Young and pretty, I'll bet,” said the exchange editor. “He's impressed her by his dignified aspect. No doubt she thinks he's nothing less than an editor-in-chief.” ”

“ How would you recreate, for example: reproduced more for being "pretty" than for a challenge. Which is maybe why I feel this sort of syntactic change might be resisted in the current push for a visual editing approach. ”

“ You're listed as an associate editor in the two Eaton-Lathrup magazines which use the most interior art work—as a rule, anyway—and the girl at the desk told me you can recommend art work sometimes, even though you don't do any actual buying. I know even assistant editors can do that—put in a strong plug for a drawing. What I'm really trying to say is—you look at most of the work when it first comes in, and when you need a particular kind of illustration for a story you've been editing your recommendation almost always means that the drawing will be bought. ”

“ The contributor may be the man or the woman of one story, one poem, one sketch, for there are such; but the editor will wait the evidence of indefinite failure to this effect. His hope always is that he or she is the man or the woman of many stories, many poems, many sketches, all as good as the first. ”

“ As I cannot suppose that so peculiar a psychological revelation will enjoy a wide popularity, I think it a duty to the editor to assure him that there are persons in the world whose souls respond, in the depths of their inmost nature, to the cry of anguish which makes itself heard in the pages of these remarkable confessions. ”

“ The absolute modesty and freedom from self-consciousness of the author—the editor, he calls himself—in telling a tale of which for a number of years he formed a part, is as striking as it is rare. He is one of the actors in a great drama ”

“ Ethics were individual things entirely, much beneath the consideration of free artists. And what was an editor compared with one who wrote literature? Less than the dust!
However, the suggestion that it was the editor who wrote the checks, proved to be sobering—amazingly sobering.
The days wore breezily on, with much writing and earnest endeavor, and much discussion of why no man in the writing game today deserved the place he held; that is, no man at the top. One or two had some facility; a little plot, perhaps, a gift of words, a lilt to paragraphs—but this was "all they had." ”

“ No editor can afford to nod for so long a period.
But then this tale, this novel of “Not so Black as he’s Painted,” this story of a human devil, for whose crimes no doubt some Byronic apology was made with great elaboration by the sensational Josephine, was not exactly bad. Our editor had wept over it. Some tender-hearted Medora, who on behalf of her hyena-in-love had gone through miseries enough to kill half a regiment of heroines, had dimmed the judge’s eyes with tears. What stronger proof of excellence can an editor have? ”

“ A collection of essays that treat practical aspects of editing Middle English manuscripts. Although addressed to the neophyte, few experienced editors will fail to benefit from the discussions of such topics as editing methods, parallel texts, using sources, annotating a text, preparing a glossary, electronic editions, and editing kinds of literary and nonliterary manuscripts. Of particular importance for both students and aspiring editors is the admirably straightforward “Practical Guide to Working with Middle English Manuscripts.” ”

“ Those who would raise any objection to these re-editions—as a few have raised them—are asked to consider the absurdity and injustice of debarring a large number of readers from the enjoyment of an old author, because a living editor has once printed his works, when the feeling of the editor himself is well expressed in the words of one of the class, ‘You are heartily welcome to all I have ever done. ”

“ Perhaps someone who really cares would fix the deviations, but it would suck up a huge amount of time from an experienced editor. I say, keep it simple, and in the general case, use the method that an uninformed new editor can get right on the first go. There is enough to learn around here without weird rules for where the colons go. If a work does have a good reason to deviate, then the style should be very clearly stated on the talk page, and any mistaken edits should be gently corrected. ”