From: Norma Jean Sawicki <nsawicki_at_nyc.rr.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:19:57 -0500

;

Nancy...

Marc's experience is close to mine and is best illustrated by a terrific story....a writer was single minded about wanting a particular copyeditor to copyedit his work of historical fiction. When her work was done, he sang her praises and said that among the queries she sent his way was one that pointed out marguerites had not

been invented, and suggested other cocktails/drinks that would be accurate. She checked everything which was also true of the copyeditors with whom we worked. Norma Jean

On Nov 16, 2009, at 2:03 PM, nancy reynolds wrote:

Marc, I think much of what you call fact checking here is not what I meant by the term. I’ve worked extensively as both a proofreader

and a copy editor. I wouldn’t count those jobs as fact checking, for several reasons. In my experience, publishers would be delighted if we took on the job of fact checking in addition to our

other duties, but certainly would not build in extra time for it. And schedules are tight as it is. Few of us doing those jobs have expertise in the subject or as researchers required to be efficient

fact checkers.

Most fact-checking copy editors and proofreaders do involves making

the text internally consistent. Our task is to notice that on page 26 the writer says an event occurred in 1993 and on page 241 says the same event occurred in 1988. If the event were easily verified,

we were likely to do so. One doesn’t want to hound the author with

constant unnecessary queries. However, unless the inconsistency is easily verified by the editor, someone who is not an expert in the field, what usually happens is that the author is queried and has the last word.

I know as both author and editor that many errors can be caught by simply checking for internal consistency. However, others can’t. And unless the factual accuracy of the text is reviewed by someone whose job description includes doing so, errors will get through. I

don’t buy the suggestion that these are exceptional only because we

are all human and prone to occasional error. We are in no position to know whether that statement is true, since we have no system of fact checking in books for general readers to which we can compare the status quo.

In critiquing books that touch on subjects I have expertise in, I’ve found errors that could only have been caught by someone with

expertise in the field. Once such books are published, other writers draw on them as secondary sources, and the problem is compounded. These errors often cluster around controversial events and matter that may be viewed differently by different cultures and

interest groups. (I don’t mean opinions, here, but facts—such as

the fact that a particular person masquerading as an American Indian has been proven to be white, say.)

Having said this, I don’t lay the blame on editors or anyone tasked

with trying to coax a profit out of book publishing honorably. Fact

checking is expensive and time consuming. I also believe it is more

important to do it now than ever before.

Nancy

From: bookmarch_at_aol.com
 Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 10:10 AM To: ntreynolds_at_comcast.net; ccbc-net@ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re:
 reviews and reviewing, anonymous and otherwise

“I can assure you, Nancy, that fact checking in children's nonfiction is not a "thing of the past." We do not have the fact checking departments that, say, The New Yorker uses. But the books I know of are read by an editor, a copy editor and a proof reader, as well -- often -- by one or more experts in the field. Some errors slip through all of those careful reads -- but not because we neglect our responsibility to look for them.

Marc Aronson”

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Received on Mon 16 Nov 2009 02:19:57 PM CST