Because I haven’t done a copyediting-focused post for a while—and I’ve got some new material—I’m going to point out some errors I found in the Signet Classic paperback edition of the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis and some inconsistencies in caption-placement descriptions in the latest issue of Food & Wine magazine. As always, I’m not doing this in a spirit of know-it-all-ness or so I can smugly say “Gotcha.” I’m just trying to demonstrate that copyediting is among my best word-related talents.
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I really enjoyed Babbitt, a satire of a crooked, social-climbing, middle-aged real estate agent who thoughtlessly conforms with the political, social, and religious views of his fellow businessmen in the midwestern city of Zenith until he begins to doubt whether he’s truly living.
There were quite a few mistakes toward the end of the book, which was published in 1998, as if the final proofreader ran out of time to do the job. On page 309, there’s a misplaced dash in a quote from Tanis Judique—Lewis came up with the best character names—a client whom Babbitt has an affair with:
“Oh, do! And shall I call you George? Don’t you think it’s awfully nice when two people have so—much what shall I call it?—so much analysis that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the night?”
The first dash should come after the first “much,” so that “what shall I call it?” is set off by the dashes. “Much what shall I call it?” doesn’t make sense as a separate clause.
And on page 327, the colon and the space after it in this quote from coal dealer Vergil Gunch must have been accidentally input:
“You know during the war we had the Undesirable Element, the Reds and walking delegates and just the plain common grouches, dead to rights, and so did we for quite a while after the war, but folks forget about the danger and that gives these cranks a chance to begin working under: ground again, especially a lot of these parlor socialists.”
There’s a “then” instead of a “they” four pages later in a quoted internal monologue in which Babbitt tries to justify dumping his lover without even a telephone call:
“Oh, damn these women and the way then get you all tied up in complications!”
Four pages after that, “Georgie” is misspelled as “Gerogie.” And on page 343, the name of a client of Babbitt’s goes from “Lyte” to “Lyre” and back to “Lyte.” And finally, before this exercise gets tedious (too late? 😁), there’s a nonsense sentence on page 352 in a quote from Colonel Rutherford Snow, a newspaper publisher who’s trying to strong-arm Babbitt into joining the Good Citizens’ League:
“I’m not sure, my boy, but what if you put if off it’ll be too late.”
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In the May 2020 issue of Food & Wine, one of the few paper magazines I still subscribe to, the captions for the beautiful opening photos of a story about Adelaide, Australia, appear on the next page, …
… no doubt to leave these two pages, with all of their purposeful white space, as uncluttered as possible:
The intro to the captions should really say “PREVIOUS SPREAD” or “PREVIOUS PAGES” instead of the singular “PREVIOUS PAGE.”
In an article about new styles of sake, the intro to the caption for the opening spread that is found on the next page says just “PREVIOUS”:
And for the last opening spread in the issue, which leads readers into a story about Italy’s Friuli region, the intro to the caption on the next page says “PREVIOUS SPREAD”:
