When I was a copy editor it used to make me nuts when my editor would swoop in at the last minute, reread some story and rip it apart. I guess my choice of words here makes that apparent. But this would be after five or six people had looked at the copy, it was laid out, captioned and proofed. Then the editor would find a moment to concentrate on the story, find a flaw and go to town. When this happened, I'd try to go with the flow myself, but especially when I managed other copy editors I got to see the size of the rage that flares up. Not only is their own work denigrated, negated, but they also have to deal with running their whole process on it again. And they'd ask me to put a stop to these changes. It wasn't that there physically was no time to do this stuff, though it was a huge inconvenience. It was more that it was off-system.

Now that I am a big cheese I do the exact same thing that used to drive me and my staff up the wall. Now, the editors under me offer reasoned arguments to persuade me not to make changes at late stages. There's a system, there's a time to do this stuff. We have built in this time here, here and here for exactly that. But it's my job, now, not to be locked into the system. There's a time in your publishing career when you must be a believer in the system and know it and enforce it and defend your patch against the forces of anarchy. And be humorless and uncool about any kind of effort, no matter how creative, to get past the system.

Education of the doomed is a theme of "Never Let Me Go." In two senses: educating people who aren't necessarily going to use a good grade-school education in the traditional way, by going on to college and a professional career; and the doomed-ness of any brand-new kind of school, how hard it is to keep it going and how it feels when it's eventually destroyed. I'm not sure if I'm reading into this because of my own experiences, or whether there is a nontraditional school in the author's background that helped him understand how it felt. I wonder what a charter student today would make of this book. It must be a somewhat similar experience to my own late-70s experimental school. The process of running the school is so much more apparent; the students are aware that they are taking part in a school built expressly for them; and the physical plant is in bad shape and the supplies are crappy.

My own nontraditional school, where half the student body was not college-bound, was closed after I went there two years, when I was in 6th grade. Our 7th and 8th grade teachers used to comment that the students who had attended this school were noticeably brighter than the other students. Then at 9th grade, we half that had college and career in our futures split off from the half that probably didn't. I realized a couple years ago that I assume all those other students are dead. My sister called me on this once; she sees people from school around town, and they're just regular people, not doomed geniuses.

Dear Sirs,
I'd appreciate more clarification on the May Q&A re Section 8.167 (3). This answer (pasted below) leaves two copyeditors with different ears no clear way to resolve a disagreement. For instance, the examples given below may seem correct to your ear, but to mine they are both off. Were we working on the same busy copy desk, you and I would have no other rule to help us resolve this -- and our co-workers would watch with growing amusement as we muttered "ALL About EVE!" "No, All ABOUT Eve!" for hours at one another. Can you give us a few tips for resolving "ear" conflicts by rule?


Q. Section 8.167 (3) of the 15th Manual of Style says that, when applying headline style, a preposition should be capitalized if it is stressed (A River Runs Through It). Please clarify what is meant by “stressed.” Furthermore, how would you capitalize “One Nation under God”? Thank you.

A. We are talking about how it sounds to the ear—admittedly, a somewhat murky rule. A river runs through it? A river runs through it? No—a river runs through it. Your “under” is likewise a good candidate for capping, for the same reason. Other examples:

A Man about the House vs. All About Eve

Desire under the Elms vs. One Nation Under God

Once again the June Q&As on the Chicago Manual of Style web site are just wrong and weird. The editors have directed this poor person (below) to lowercase a proper name in a title, just because the proper name is composed of common nouns. It's a glib response that hinges on a stupid comment one of the editors wanted to make ("lowercase the livestock"). I've been in this position where people are asking you all kinds of dumb questions and you just want to answer them any way you can and get on with your life. But this could have taken a bit more consideration.

On a related note, my next public art project will be to stand at the ticket counter of AirTran airlines the next time they cancel a flight out of Philadelphia and listen to people try to reason their way onto a plane that doesn't even exist anymore. We were on such a flight last weekend and accepted our fate, but the guy next to us, who'd read the ticket counter man's name off his badge, wouldn't let up. He kept saying, "Hey, Chris Brophy! What about if the plane is delayed until tomorrow, is that still the same flight? Chris Brophy, what about if I take another plane there and want to take this flight back?"

Q. I understand the general rules about titles (academic, civic, etc.), but I am working on a project that has quite a few instances of the following: “We are pleased to have the Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Livestock here with us today. . . . We appreciate the support of the Prime Minister of India.” I would lowercase “prime minister of India,” but what to do about the minister of food, agriculture, and livestock? Should it be the minister of Food, Agriculture, and Livestock, all lowercase, or title case? Thanks for your help.

A. It wouldn’t seem right to lowercase the prime minister and uppercase the livestock. Chicago style would lowercase everything in your titles (except India).