Jill Murray

A couple of weeks ago, I received the copy edit for Break On Through. Thanks to the strength of soy lattes, the absence of rappers around the home, and the availability of fresh vegan eats at Aux Vivres, I was able to push through all 240 pages of the thing in a single weekend, before returning it to my editor with three spreadsheets of comments, clarifications, acceptances and arguments.

For anyone interested, a copy edit deals with continuity, grammar, spelling, pacing and plausibility, all on a line-edit basis. By this point, there are no more re-writes or grand thematic changes. It’s all little niggling things that only a copy editor could notice, bless the copy editor’s precise, nitpicky soul. To the writer, it represents one last chance to feel like punching things, before finally settling into a near-comatose state of gratitude and detail-overload.

One really becomes aware, while reading over one’s copy editor’s notes, how little attention one must have been paying all along. I might have thought I was keeping an eye out for word over-use, grammatical tics and the general making of sense all along, but that was before the copy edit, when I thought a lot of things. Let’s just say that having been reassured several times that the copy edit would “probably” be “pretty light” I was not exactly shocked, but more, let’s say impressed by how heavy lightness could be. (Kundera: 1, Jill: 0)

It wasn’t all work. I got to debate whether a character would have said “graffiti” or “tagging” or “graf” or would have simply dropped the discussion and “bombed” a bus shelter. I got to explain the origins and uses of “ish.” And it took a 20 minute call the Rapper to eke out a reasonable explanation of the casual use of the word “tip” in everyday hip hop vernacular.

By far my favourite aspect of the copy edit was the two-page style sheet that came attached to it. Stylesheets outline in general terms how certain elements of grammar and style will be dealt with throughout the manuscript. Will we or won’t we be using the Oxford comma? How will elipses be spaced? Stylesheets also itemize how specific words, especially technical jargon and slang particular to the manuscript will be spelled.

This was the really fun part for me because it unrolled like a mini-summary of the whole book, one keyword at a time, and also because it provided hard evidence that someone had sat down and put a fair deal of research and consideration into such linguistic issues as the non-hyphenation of “wristguard” and “toprock,” and the correct and consistent spelling of “dumbass” and “ew.”

Right there, that should tell you everything you need know about the book and how hard it’s going to kickass kick ass. But also, I always get a little thrill out of the formalization of hip hop, and of youth culture. As fun as it all is, it’s healthy to take it seriously once in a while. And every time someone debates the capitalization of “Brooklyn Rock”, a b-girl gets her wings.