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I have spent the past 38 years
trying to be invisible.

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I'm a copy editor.

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I work at The New Yorker,

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and copyediting for The New Yorker
is like playing shortstop

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for a Major League Baseball team:

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every little movement
gets picked over by the critics --

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God forbid you should commit an error.

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Just to clarify: copy editors don't choose
what goes into the magazine.

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We work at the level of the sentence,

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maybe the paragraph,

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the words, the punctuation.

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Our business is in the details.

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We put the diaeresis, the double dot,
over the "i" in "naïve."

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We impose house style.

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Every publication has a house style.

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The New Yorker's
is particularly distinctive.

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We sometimes get teased for our style.

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Imagine -- we still spell
"teen-ager" with a hyphen,

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as if that word had just been coined.

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But you see that hyphen in "teen-age"

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and that diaeresis over "coöperate,"

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and you know you're reading
The New Yorker.

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Copyediting at The New Yorker
is a mechanical process.

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There is a related role called
query proofreading,

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or page-OK'ing.

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Whereas copyediting is mechanical,

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query proofreading is interpretive.

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We make suggestions to the author
through the editor

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to improve the emphasis of a sentence

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or point out unintentional repetitions

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and supply compelling alternatives.

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Our purpose is to make
the author look good.

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Note that we give our proofs
not directly to the author,

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but to the editor.

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This often creates
a good cop/bad cop dynamic

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in which the copy editor -- I'll use that
as an umbrella term --

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is invariably the bad cop.

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If we do our job well, we're invisible,

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but as soon as we make a mistake,

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we copy editors become glaringly visible.

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Here is the most recent mistake
that was laid at my door.

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[Last Tuesday, Sarah Palin,
the pre-Trump embodiment

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of populist no-nothingism
in the Republican Party,

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endorsed Trump.]

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"Where were The New Yorker's fabled
copy editors?" a reader wrote.

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"Didn't the writer mean
'know-nothingism'?"

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Ouch.

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There's no excuse for this mistake.

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But I like it: "no-nothingism."

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It might be American
vernacular for "nihilism."

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(Laughter)

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Here, another reader quotes
a passage from the magazine:

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[Ruby was seventy-six, but she retained
her authoritative bearing;

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only her unsteady gait belied her age.]

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He added:

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"Surely, someone at The New Yorker
knows the meaning of 'belied,'

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and that it is the opposite
of how it is used in this sentence.

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Come on! Get it together."

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Belie: to give a false impression.

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It should have been "betrayed."

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E.B. White once wrote
of commas in The New Yorker:

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"They fall with the precision
of knives outlining a body."

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(Laughter)

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And it's true -- we get a lot
of complaints about commas.

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"Are there really two commas
in 'Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard'?"

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There may not be on the sign, but yes,
that is New Yorker style for "Jr."

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One wag wrote:

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["Please, could you expel,
or, at least, restrain,

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the comma-maniac,
on your editorial staff?"]

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(Laughter)

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Ah, well.

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In this case, those commas
are well-placed,

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except that there should not be one

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between "maniac" and "on."

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(Laughter)

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Also, if we must have commas
around "at least,"

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we might change it up
by using dashes around that phrase:

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"... -- or, at least, restrain --"

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Perfect.

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(Applause)

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Then there's this:

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"Love you, love your magazine,

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but can you please stop writing
massive numbers as text?"

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[two and a half million ...]

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No.

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(Laughter)

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One last cri de coeur
from a spelling stickler:

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["Those long stringy things
are vocal cords, not chords."]

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The outraged reader added,

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"I'm sure I'm not the first to write

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regarding this egregious
proofreading error,

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but I'm equally sure I won't be the last.

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Fie!"

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(Laughter)

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I used to like getting mail.

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There is a pact
between writers and editors.

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The editor never sells out the writer,

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never goes public about bad jokes
that had to be cut

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or stories that went on too long.

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A great editor saves a writer
from her excesses.

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Copy editors, too, have a code;

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we don't advertise our oversights.

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I feel disloyal divulging them here,

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so let's have look at what we do right.

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Somehow, I've gotten
a reputation for sternness.

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But I work with writers who know
how to have their way with me.

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I've known Ian Frazier, or "Sandy,"
since the early 80s.

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And he's one of my favorites,

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even though he sometimes writes a sentence

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that gives a copy editor pause.

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Here is one from a story
about Staten Island

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after Hurricane Sandy:

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[A dock that had been broken
in the middle and lost its other half

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sloped down toward the water,

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its support pipes and wires
leaning forward

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like when you open a box
of linguine and it slides out.]

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(Laughter)

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This would never have got past
the grammarian in the days of yore.

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But what could I do?

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Technically, the "like" should be an "as,"

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but it sounds ridiculous,

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as if the author were about to embark
on an extended Homeric simile --

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"as when you open a box of linguine."

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(Laughter)

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I decided that the hurricane
conferred poetic justice on Sandy

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and let the sentence stand.

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(Laughter)

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Generally, if I think something is wrong,

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I query it three times.

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I told Sandy that not long ago
in a moment of indiscretion and he said,

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"Only three?"

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So, he has learned to hold out.

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Recently, he wrote a story
for "Talk of the Town,"

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that's the section
at the front of the magazine

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with short pieces on subjects
ranging from Ricky Jay's exhibit

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at the Metropolitan Museum

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to the introduction
of doggie bags in France.

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Sandy's story was about
the return to the Bronx

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of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

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There were three things
in it that I had to challenge.

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First, a grammar query.

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The justice was wearing black
and Sandy wrote,

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[Her face and hands stood out
like in an old, mostly dark painting.]

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Now, unlike with the hurricane,

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with this "like," the author
didn't have the excuse

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of describing hurricane damage.

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"Like" in this sense is a preposition,
and a preposition takes an object,

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which is a noun.

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This "like" had to be an "as."

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"As in an old, mostly dark painting."

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Second, a spelling issue.

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The author was quoting someone
who was assisting the justice:

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["It will be just a minute.

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We are getting the justice mic'ed,"]

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Mic'ed?

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The music industry spells it "mic"

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because that's how it's spelled
on the equipment.

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I'd never seen it used
as a verb with this spelling,

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and I was distraught
to think that "mic'ed"

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would get into the magazine on my watch.

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(Laughter)

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New Yorker style for "microphone"
in its abbreviated form is "mike."

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Finally, there was a sticky
grammar and usage issue

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in which the pronoun has to have
the same grammatical number

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as its antecedent.

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[everyone in the vicinity
held their breath]

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"Their" is plural and "everyone,"
its antecedent, is singular.

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You would never say,
"Everyone were there."

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Everyone was there. Everyone is here.

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But people say things like,
"Everyone held their breath" all the time.

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To give it legitimacy,

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copy editors call it
"the singular 'their,'"

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as if calling it singular
makes it no longer plural.

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(Laughter)

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It is my job when I see it in print
to do my best to eliminate it.

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I couldn't make it,
"Everyone held her breath,"

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or "Everyone held his breath,"

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or "Everyone held his or her breath."

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Whatever I suggested had to blend in.

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I asked, through the editor,

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if the author would consider changing it

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to "All in the vicinity
held their breath,"

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because "all" is plural.

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Nope.

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I tried again: "All those present
held their breath?"

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I thought this sounded vaguely judicial.

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But the editor pointed out

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that we could not have "present"
and "presence"

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in the same sentence.

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When the final proof came back,

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the author had accepted "as" for "like,"

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and "miked" for "mic'ed."

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But on "Everyone held their breath,"
he stood his ground.

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Two out of three isn't bad.

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In the same issue,

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in that piece on doggie bags in France,

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there was the gratuitous use
of the f-word by a Frenchman.

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I wonder, when the mail comes in,

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which will have offended the readers more.

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(Laughter)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)