publishing: new frustrations

Music: Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)

I have spent the last three days reviewing the proofs of two, separate journal articles slated for publication this fall. Both essays are with different journals at different publishing houses. Both essays are co-authored. I am frustrated with these publishers. Somehow, between the last, revised MSWord edition I submitted and the typeset version, an incompetent person---or gremlin---decided to do a little editing.

I am angry. It has taken me almost a decade to learn how to write competently. Lord knows "Sloppy" should be my middle name, as I am always making mistakes (and fortunately, increasingly better at catching them). I am uncertain if the improvement in my own writing has caused me to notice errors more, or rather, if it is the case that publishers are hiring people to typeset and proofread that are increasingly incompetent (and have you looked at the abstracts of our work on EBSCO? Who writes those? Eighth graders?). Regardless, I resent the fact my co-authors and I slaved over our final drafts, only to have a host of new errors and mistakes to correct---costing me, thus far, a full day's work (eight hours). By the time I'm finished making corrections, I suspect I'll have lost most of my weekend. How do these mistakes happen? Why so many? How come our discipline's publishers make the most inane/idiotic author queries? Here's a sampling of what I'm correcting today:

• Both articles have co-authors. Both sets of proofs are missing co-author contact information, even though I sent it. One proof is missing the co-author entirely; on that same proof, my name is listed as "Gunn Joshua."
• In one proof, someone rewrote our abstract. The sentences do not make grammatical sense. For example, some well-meaning editor wrote: "And idealist understanding of agency in which a subject can fulfill needs and desires . . . ." My co-author and I did have a verb, and did not start a sentence this way.
• "Almost a decade ago anthropologies Jean and John L. Comaroff & Comaroff (1999) advanced the . . . . " Uh, what? We didn’t write this.
• ". . . proper manipulation of thoughts and symbols (i.e. language)." Um, my co-author and I had written "(e.g., language)." The difference is important. "i.e." means "that is," such that the line would make symbols and language synonymous. They're not, which is why we went for "e.g." This kind of editorializing is infuriating.
• All our numbers, written in word if below 20, were changed to numerals—but inconsistently. So, for example, "two" appears as "2," but "three" remains "three."
• "For simplicity, we can reduce these characteristics to three interrelated components: (1) wish fulfillment . . . ; (2) social constructivism; and (4) radical individualism." Um, shouldn't that be "(3)" . . . yes, or maybe the press prefers "(three)."
• One author's query: "Divya, make this consistent." Who is Divya?
• One author's query: "Paolo Virno, 2008 has not been included in Reference List, please supply publication details." Um, no. Why? Because Virno is referenced in someone else's piece from 2008. Do the proofreaders actually READ the essay they're typesetting?
• Numerous author's queries state that we have not cited such-and-so and author in the text, when we clearly have. Apparently they don't have a "find" feature on their typesetting software.

Oh, I could go on with my complaining, but I think readers get the drift at this point. Correcting errors my co-authors and I did not make is very tiresome and should not happen. Unfortunately, increasingly, it seems par for the course in this gig. Worse: they always say you have to return corrections in three days. Just this last December 23rd I had a publisher do this to me. I didn't send it back in three days; a fat man in a red suit got in my way.