On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 2:36 PM, James Adcock <jimad@msn.com> wrote:
There is a general problem in DP that proofers introduce a check-hyphen when they mean “I really don’t like the fact that the original book had a hyphen there.”
And you know this HOW? What the asterisk means is, "I don't know how the author usually spells this, whether closed (schoolteacher) or hyphenated (school-teacher). This hyphen comes at the end of a line, so I don't know whether to drop it or keep it. I'll put an asterisk there, so the PPer can check the usage in the rest of the text. to see what spelling the author usually uses, hyphenated or closed." That's ALL it means. Uncertainty about the author's preferred spelling. I know, as a professional copyeditor, that the open/hyphenated/closed continuum is extremely mutable, that words have changed over time (to-day becomes today), and that at any one time, different authors and different publishing houses may make different choices. (Copyeditor or copy-editor is just one example; you'll find it both ways.) Sometimes newbie proofers over-asterisk. The same word may occur on the same page with the author's preferred spelling prominently on display. But the newbie is afraid of making a judgment call and asterisks anyway. No big deal. Better to be too careful than to drop the hyphen and rejoin words that should be hyphenated rather than closed up. At times this list seems to function just as Encyclopedia Dramatica does for Wikipedia; all the malcontents gather and mutter about THEM over THERE doing it WRONG and THEY didn't listen to ME. -- Karen Lofstrom