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Consistency in Editorial Services: Facing the Hobgoblin

  

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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

Okay, let's get this straight: The quotation is from Ralph Waldo Emerson's magisterial essay "Self-Reliance." It was neither a thrown-off quip by Oscar Wilde nor a Thoreauvian pronouncement; and if those words ever passed the lips of Harriet Beecher Stowe, it was in an act of quotation, not origination.

But the most frequently made and crucial mistake concerning this misunderstood nugget is the common elision of the second word: foolish. I've heard Emerson's statement sans modifier used to excuse all sorts of doubtful decisions and bad behavior—much of them within the realms of publishing. With that noted, I would like to utter a hearty "hear-hear" to his proposition, especially as it relates to the editorial process.

I must 'fess up to something that arises from my being an editor of a certain age. I have my own personal set of bugaboos—generally accepted writing practices and conventions that set my teeth on edge. Split infinitives just sound wrong to me. Most nouns, when transmogrified into verbs, make me want to sob. (You won't catch me journaling anytime soon.) And for some unknowable reason that probably reaches into my genetic composition, the word towards hurts my eyes and I always knock it down to its simpler sibling toward. (Full disclosure: I consistently change such things when editing.)

Like any editor, I've had my share of contretemps over those and other Fowlerian quibbles, but the one agreement that always results from such arguments is the necessity for factual and editorial consistency within any given project. It is dismaying, then, to read contemporary nonfiction (and even some fiction) that has been published without a "disinterested" and trained third party's review.

The need for factual consistency is self-evident. All it really means is that the author owes it to his readers to get his facts right and cite them consistently. Just recently, for example, in editing a scholar's essay, I came across a passage she quoted from a recent university press book. Within the space of approximately 120 words, the date for the same event was given as 1876 and 1867. Thinking my author was responsible for a simple typo, rather than doing the fact checking, I asked her to verify the source's wording and fix the wrong date. She discovered, however, that her transcription of the passage was 100 percent accurate. After discussing possible solutions—simply correcting the errant year; editing out both dates with ellipses—we settled on the old (and old-fashioned) standby "[sic]."

Any editor worth her salt recognizes the importance of editorial consistency, even if it isn't immediately apparent to the layperson. Lapses are the readerly equivalent of speed bumps: while they don't keep you from reaching your destination, they certainly slow you down and can cause problematic breaks in attention and concentration.

If you want readers to trust what you write, it must make sense to them. Material handled inconsistently can cause doubts about veracity as well as literary worth. As a freelance proofreader, I once called an author's attention to a pivotal character's hair color, which went from blonde (chapter 1) to brunette (chapter 7) to red (chapter 8) with no mention of how or why. Reportedly the writer was hugely startled and very appreciative. Had the character's multicolor coifs gone uncorrected, the entire reason for the murders she witnessed became moot.

But how can the editor maintain such consistency? A certain kind of nit-picky mind and attention to detail help, as does a well-trained memory. Before I had much experience, I was blithely unaware of the editorial booby traps that surely must have been present when I read. By the time I had developed my word-worker's chops, however, I had also relinquished my former reader's innocence. Now I am blessed and cursed with the kind of critical eye and facility that bring me to a full stop when I encounter inconsistent spelling or word usage.

There is also a tool that I consider a crucial element of good editing: a well-designed, carefully maintained style sheet. While I require one for every Vern Associates project, many of the editors with whom I've worked over the past ten or so years have had no idea what it is and asked me to define the term. Of those who relied on such guides, however, a couple used their own templates, which were better than nothing but ran aground in cases where tricky style issues didn't fit neatly into theie predefined format.

A useful style sheet—even for a multiauthor book—is not that difficult to develop or keep current, and using and updating it quickly become second nature. When your recognize how far toward assuring consistency this tool can take you, the small amount of extra effort doesn't seem foolish in the least.