I’ve been called a lot of things in my 15 years as an editor: gatekeeper, defender, style guru, person you should avoid if you want to use a serial comma, nerd, expert, has-to-be-right-all-the-timer …
I mean, they aren’t all wrong. But earlier this year, I had the chance to spend a few days with 600 other editors at The Society for Editing’s annual conference. And there, I was called something new: a gardener.
James Harbeck, “a professional word taster and sentence sommelier”—things I will never be called, but wow, I want to be—had a lot to say about editors’ roles. Not just how they study the language of today, but how they help shape it going forward. And that’s key: forward motion. Editors as gardeners, not defenders.
It’s true that part of our job will always be pulling language into existing rules, but much more so, our job is to help English—and copy—get where it’s going. To watch as it evolves, decide what to let through the gate, and help build a body of work that lexicographers will use when choosing what to record to reflect usage. It’s how things like face-palm and side-eye made their way into Merriam-Webster. Over time, editors saw value in those words and phrases, leaving them in edited copy and marking their place in English’s history. So when it came time for the dictionary to roll out a new batch of definitions, those words made the cut—editors had given them the OK to make their mark on the language.
It was inspiring to see how many hands shot up when Harbeck asked a room full of editors whether they’d allow some unconventional uses into copy. Things like singular they, impact, nauseous, hopefully and other old-school editing taboos overwhelmingly passed the 2017 editing test. (But sorry, irregardless, “my head literally exploded” and “very unique” are still right out.)
Does that mean editors can’t have their rules and pet-peeves? Of course not. I hold rigidly tight to the differences between last and past, which and that, awhile and a while, because all editing leans on a degree of personal style. Those preferences are how I’m choosing to tend to my little plot of the English language. They’re how I’m influencing and tending to an ever-growing body of work.
English evolves, it changes, it expands, and someone has to help it get where it’s going. For me to dig in my heels, stick to a set of rules that were set decades ago and neglect my role as a gardener would be a disservice to my gatekeeper, defender, style guru, person you should avoid if you want to use a serial comma, nerd, expert, has-to-be-right-all-the-timer reputation—and to this mess of a language I love so much.
Plus, it’s always fun to go along for a good ride. As Harbeck so rightly said, “The entire English language is a slippery slope. We are all tumbling down it faster than we realize.”
Senior Copy Editor Jen Moritz pulls the weeds out of our writing on an e’ry day basis, and somehow does it without making you feel like dirt.
