Tuesday 23 November 2010

Mark Twain on proofreaders

It has been fascinating looking at the publishing business from, as it were, the other side of the fence.

Mark Twain

Writing being such a personal business, I'm aware that writers' attitudes to copy-editors and proofreaders are often ambivalent. Mark Twain was downright hostile – the Giles Coren of the nineteenth century – and in a letter from 1889 he had this to say:

'Yesterday Mr. Hall wrote that the printer's proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me, & I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray.'

This is a passage from a letter he wrote in July 1897 to his publisher, Chatto & Windus:


'This latest batch, beginning with page 145 and running to page 192, starts out like all that went before it – with my punctuation ignored and their insanities substituted for it. I have read two pages of it – I can't stand any more ...'

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