Out of step

Generally, as a freelance, you'd consider it important to have your name on the books you edit. You want the evidence that you worked on the book, particularly if you think it's a good product. (Which some of the things I work on are.) It's rare not to want credit. But my name won't be appearing on this information systems book. Not that I haven't done a good job.

Here's the thing. The author is discussing the interaction of hardware and software. You know how it is. Hardware is made faster and more complex, and software is upgraded to match. The two end up in an endless cycle of improvement, each driving the other on. So the author calls this a "step-lock loop".

Erm, you what? This is the kind of term that jumps out at an editor. It just sounds wrong. Surely the author meant "lockstep loop"? That would be a bit odd but it would just about work. So I google the term. Nothing. Nada. This post will in time be a googlewhack for "step-lock loop". So I queried it. Unfortunately, I have to go through the publishing editor, a sales-oriented type who lacks the desire most editors have to get things right.

The author writes back that it is widely used in his experience; that it's not like a lockstep because the step comes before the lock and that it wasn't queried in the first two editions.

OMFG. So I tell the PE that it's so little used that Google doesn't turn up even a single hit (and, remember, this is a computing term; the Web, being what it is, doesn't lack pages about computing). "Step-lock cycle" brings up three hits. One is the previous edition of the book; the second is a lecture by the coauthor of the book and the third, hilariously, is some guy on a discussion board asking what the fuck it means.

I also tell her that he clearly doesn't understand what "lockstep" is. There are no lock and step. There are steps that are locked. It's exactly what he is describing: two processes that move in close sync. He is thinking that "lockstep" is like "cause-effect" and that what he's describing is "effect-cause", so "step-lock". Erm no. I have to point out that someone whose grasp of the metaphor is this poor should not be allowed their own way over usage.

I note too that no one's noticing it was wrong for the first two editions is not a good reason to leave it in the third. Hello? That's the point of a third edition, at least in part. I corrected lots of other (more minor) stuff from the other editions. Should I have left all that too? (I do know that one should restrict second-guessing in followup editions, and I very rarely take issue with previous editing in this way. But you know, "step-lock cycle" is so rank that you have to say something; otherwise, what integrity can you claim to have as an editor?)

Of course, I realise that the PE doesn't want to piss off the author. Neither do I. I'm good at communicating with authors -- or was when I was allowed to do it at this company. But if I have to go to the mat for a usage, I go there. I don't just fold at the first hint of resistance.

So the PE says she takes my point but wants to leave it as it is. She takes my point? In what way? My point was, after all:

I am confident the phrase is entirely the author's own invention, has no currency and, worst of all, is nonsense.

It's typical of the rudeness of people in publishing to do this. They're horribly passive-aggressive. They do not say "I disagree with you", because they know you will disagree back. They say they take your point but tough shit. It's a way to dismiss you and belittle your view without actually having the balls to do that. I'd have more respect for the PE if she had written "No one cares what you think. Just put what the author wants" because that is what she means.

So this is one book that I won't be credited for. I shudder at the idea that someone somewhere will pick it up, laugh their head off at the nonsense term and wonder why the editor didn't notice it was transparently bollocks.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:11 pm