Maybe you could approach the writer in a passive agressive manner along the lines of "look, i´m really trying my best here, it would be nice of you to do the same!"
Did some volunteer spell checking for two student friends, first was ever so booooring (new age media), the second one i actually liked (destruction of carthage), in the end i learned something from both essays along the way (e.g. the required data rates for 8k television are batshit insane).
What i´ll probably never be doing again is translations! At least not without a paycheck :D
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I would just give it back to her and tell her it's not good enough to be published, and you aren't doing it. Or just go no contact if that's easier. Remember next time not to offer your skilled services for free unless it is something you care about and you have seen whatever it is you're supposed to edit.
I did an unpaid editing internship for a small publisher (all online) after college, and I understand your frustration. But there's no point in you stressing over doing a good job for someone who is doing a crappy job. That gets you nothing but wasted time, since she won't be able to do anything with it no matter how well you edit it.
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Best to isolate the reasons for your lack of ability to land jobs than to do more of it.
I was in a similar situation with a family member wanting me to edit a story. I had to tell them what was wrong. The first response is always being upset, but taking the advice led to seriously better material because my feedback/skills were respected. Your clients also need to respect you. Your craft is your art and you're not just a rote grammar amelioration machine. You want each job to be an achievement demonstrating your abilities to the next clients.
You should know this already but it never hurts to hear it again. Good luck out there.
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careful with free jobs!
i once did a job for free and the client ended up permabanned on steamgifts ;_;
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That's me in a nutshell. Writing properly with great vocabulary is just magic. I've accepted that long ago.
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Always be watchful with free jobs. Also be sure to set boundaries. If it indeed is too much work, just be honest. Honesty is usually best. Another thing you could do is send what you did so far, then ask the writer to review your changes and ask to first edit the rest of their own work like you've done with the other part. This way they can learn more about editing themselves and it is a joined effort.
Also by showing them what you've done so far you can test the water if you are on the right track. This way you are sure your hard work is appreciated. I've done free work where in the end they asked for hours and hours more corrections... Once bitten, twice shy.
p.s. How's my punctuation? >< :D
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Make a nice cup of tea, relax and find a strategy. You should only do the things you love in life, because it is too short. Especially wasting time reading dribble ;). Just be honest especially when the writer is upset it is taking long, that is ridiculous and ungrateful imo.
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I don't think you owe them/her anything when you aren't being paid; a review of what you've already read should be appreciated. And, if the errors at the beginning are so noteworthy, you can be pretty sure they permeate the rest of the work.
I'd expect that your notes could be enough for her to re-write/correct the later parts without needing further input.
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This drivel is putting me to sleep. The writer has no concept of what a COMA is.
There, fixed it for ya! :P
Jokes aside, even bad ones, I am sorry to hear you have such trouble with that book. I hate it the most when I offer to help and I end up doing much much more than I thought I would xD Even worse when it ends up not being appreciated xD
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I see...
And the writer is upset about how long it's taking.
Well, this is something that is not nice to do, kids. I understand someone being impatient - that is perfectly normal - but I would never go to the extent of pressuring people, or letting them know that I am impatient, for that matter, because I find it rather rude.
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Wow, so not only is she not compensating you for your work in any way, but she also nags about you not being quick enough?
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I am glad you decided to end the annoyance of having to deal with that project, since it's without compensation and I assume isn't for a friend than it's just not worth bothering with from my perspective.
If I were you I'd give up from it too and tell her something among the lines of: "Hey, I'm sorry but the project is much larger than I thought it'll be and I simply don't have enough time to spend volunteering on projects of this size / with so many issues."
Anyway cheer up and good luck finding work!
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I'm so glad you decided this! Your own behalf should be your main concern in this kind of matter. At least, you learnt a valuable lesson about appreciating your skills, craft and hard work. Hope you'll be easy on my English as it is not my mother tongue. :)
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You can leave it at anytime, if you consider the job is beyond what you thought that has to be done. Doesn't worth it, but put your notes for them.
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Feeling bad is just temporary, but you shouldn't, you must put the true value on your job
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You're doing it for free, you're not on a contract. Tell the writer that she has to improve on her work. It's better to tell her the truth, so she can get better at it. Don't finish it and send it back until it's updated, if you still want to do it, or you can tell her that your focus is on finding a job and that's why you can't continue with it.
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I never do work for free. However, I have been known to donate my services and when I do that, I make sure that they understand that it is a donation and the actual value of what I'm giving them.
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I hear you. I often edit/correct/translate texts and I do format revision for a journal. It can be interesting work but, when something is truly bad, it is worse than grindy.
Maybe make some general suggestions/corrections, highlighting the aspects that need to be addressed, and offer to revise the book more extensively after it is at least readable? Good luck!
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If you were getting money for this, you could always decide that the job is not worth the money and walk away as politely as possible. Your situation is not really any different.
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Been there, done that. Fortunately it was only short blog posts, not a whole e-book. Aaaand I was paid for that but it didn't help much :P
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As a fellow editor, I feel your pain.
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The split infinitive in your image is really bugging me.
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This made me cry. Maybe 40% of these I have always considered errors, although some perhaps only in written English.
It's unclear to me how much of this is his opinion, versus some actually widely accepted fact.
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Most of them are the consensus of modern English descriptivists. I only chose this particular list because I had recently read it and thought it was concise. There are some places where I wish there was more detail about why they aren't actually errors, but overall, it matches what I learned in my editing classes. Also, people sometimes say grammar, when what they really are talking about is usage or style, which can vary regionally or between publications, respectively.
A good rule of thumb might be that if a strict teacher pounded it into your head in grade school, but no one seems to do it in real life, even in professional settings, your teacher was probably wrong (but go double-check just in case).
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Yeah, basically descriptivist vs. prescriptivist...same old battles. :p
I am probably 65/35 on the prescriptivist side of things. I understand that some "rules" are left over from bespectacled school marms with nothing better to worry about, and serve no actual utility, but on the other hand, I don't believe that just because most people say something a particular way, that it should eventually be considered correct. Otherwise pretty soon irregardless will be considered correct because it describes how many people talk. Where do you draw the line? Why reward mistakes?
There are a handful of examples in the list that I simply disagree with...but most of them I'm fine with, or have never even heard of.
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Honestly, I'm right there with you on that 65/35 split, and basically all your points. It's just that research into the history of some of the rules shows that they have little basis in linguistics. For example, the one that sparked this thread, the "split infinitive" was pulled out of thin air by people who were trying to Latinize English. You can't split a single word like "facere" in Latin (or the modern Italian "fare" and Spanish "hacer"), so you shouldn't be able to do it in English, with "to do," they arbitrarily decided. This is preposterous, as the roots of English grammar are Germanic, and our infinitives are, unlike the Romance infinitives, obviously two words. Let's not reward mistakes, but let's also not let a small group's stylistic preferences calcify into rules that everyone else has to follow. If someone wants to write a book without splitting their infinitives, they are free to do so, but if I choose to boldly go, I'm sure not going to let someone tell me that I can't.
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Yeah, I've heard about the infinitive story you recount, and I agree it was probably done for "the wrong reasons." That said, I think adding a bunch of adverbs between the "to" and its infinitive can add (slightly) to the cognitive load as you await what verb in the sentence. But for emphasis, I think it's probably a good tool.
Unfortunately it was so drilled into me that it makes me wince badly when I hear it-- even if it does sound and read better when used in certain ways for emphasis.
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I don't believe that just because most people say something a particular way, that it should eventually be considered correct.
Agree 100%. Just had this conversation with my sister, she said that a lot of people pronounce Jaguar as "jag-wire" so it's an acceptable pronunciation now. I don't care if every single person on earth pronounces it "jag-wire", it's still wrong. There's no "i" in the word so it can't be "jag-wire."
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I definitely prefer "jag-wahr", but I'm generally okay with the British "jag-you-are." At least it makes some sense based on the letters in the word.
"Jag-wire" drives me insane. :)
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Most Americans don't say "Jag-wire," for what it's worth. And as canis39 says, the British say "jag-you-are."
I'm not sure if it's accurate, but I think of "jag-wire" as a southern and/or rural US pronunciation. Which is why I say "jag-wahr." ;-)
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Hey -- at least you tried. I know how hard it can be to try to do something new when you're stuck in a rut.
I've seen so many poorly-written e-books and self-published books, your experience doesn't really surprise me. The fact that they attempted to have someone edit their book at all probably puts them in the 99th percentile already... :P
Hopefully the next time won't be so bad. Good luck. ;)
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We make mistakes to learn.
Else we'd all be perfect.
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Jim, you're missing a riveting discussion on English grammar rules and regional pronunciations that your post gave rise to to which your post gave rise.
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