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Copy copy

Only a month ago I was reading through a copy edit of Ecologic - now I've the copy edited manuscript of the subsequent masterpiece, due out in May 2009 from my American publisher, Before the Big Bang.

Rather daringly, to my mind, the publisher has sent the original, in all it's colour markup glory, across the Atlantic for me to peruse and add yet another coloured set of comments. (Traditionally these are in red, but the copy editor has already used this, and there were also pencil and blue pen markings. As black doesn't show up well, after a hurried search of the house for a different coloured pen I have had to resort to green, trying to ignore all the implications of writing in green ink.)

The copy editor has commented how much she enjoyed reading the book - my estimation of these wonderful people goes up even more. Partly because she liked my book, partly because they can work at such detailed level of checking, yet still be able to read the thing and take it in as well.

Now all I have to do is get the now rather dog-eared pile of pages back to them undamaged, without resorting to the extortionate courier charges they must incur getting it over here.

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