By Anita Garner
Reverend Raymond Jones, pastoring.
New church going up – Bogalusa, Louisiana, 1955
I just pushed send on my final manuscript edits to the publisher. This is the exciting part where I get to see the other pages, Dedication, Contents, Acknowledgements and such take their place next to the story in The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life.
Now it becomes the work of designers, copy editors, proofreaders and a whole publishing team. During every stage I argue with my Word program, which doesn’t accept the way my people talk. Every time I type “pastoring” I get the squiggly red lines under it, or the highlight over the word insisting I correct it. But pastoring is an accurate verb in my life. Pastoring is what our family often did for a living.
Sometimes I dictate to “Hey Siri” when I’m out and send emails to myself, but when I get to my computer and receive them, Mister British Siri (my favorite) has decided what my family says in a Southern accent is wrong. I would think he’d recognize we don’t all talk alike.
It’s not just the one word, it’s phrases, sentences, paragraphs. I expressed concern to my editor, wondering whether copy editors and proofreaders will understand. I got this back from him.
… I also want to be sure we don’t institute any sweeping edits that undo your preferences. If there are any particular usages, or passages with a lot of dialect that you are concerned about, I can discuss them in advance with our production editor (a native Southerner), to rough out a plan for how to treat important “isms.”
Bless his heart. They’re protecting the isms. Now I have to make final photo choices, write the captions that marry them to the story and send them off. Stuff’s getting serious out there on the dining table.
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