Tuesday, April 03, 2007

It feels like a workout but I'm not losing any weight

I'm editing a informational manual about the city of Santa Fe. It's part of a project one of the newspapers there does annually and the editor hired me as an additional copy editor. This is, by far, the most copy editing I've done in one sitting. I never really realized that copy editing could be full-time work, heck, a full-time workout. I'm used to copy editing being part of a larger job — smashed between fishing wire copy and laying out a newspaper page. But boy, by noon the words were beginning to blur together and there was no end in sight. By 2 p.m., I was stumped. Was it pickup, pick-up or pick up? Well, process of elimination. Pick up is the verb. So is it a pickup game or a pick-up game? Well, according to the publication's style it's pickup, one word. And this was hours after I realized one of the writers had a habit of capitalizing the word "city" when referring to the city of Santa Fe and the two other writers did not. Which was the correct style? Well, apparantly not capitalizing. Even though "legislature" retains its capitalization even after you drop the state's name.

I think I made the mistake of saving the government section, by far the most tedious section, for last. By the time I got around to it, my blood sugar level was low and I had to make a quick iced latte break. Unfortunately the only iced latte joint within walking distance was overpriced and the latte was watered down.

Random Santa Fe thought: Why does everything look the same in the City Different?