An irritating copy editor at a journal changed all my instances of “for example” to “e.g.” Because, y’know, so many more people read Latin than English. Ugh! I used ot go and change all these back, but I’m just too lazy now; I only do it with my books and don’t bother with the articles.
Just so you know: if you ever see “e.g.” or “i.e.” in something I write: no, it’s not me, it’s the copy editor. Can’t these people serve society in some useful way, maybe get jobs as spammers or debt collectors?
Ain't it nice to have tenure, to openly complain about the little things that need addressing…
Ugh! I used ot go and change all these back
I forget the name of the universal law that this is an instantiation of.
Copy editors in general should be conservative; if something is equally, or even nearly equally, as good either way, and is largely a matter of style, let the writer have his voice. Fix bad parallelism, but even the Oxford comma should be a decision of the writer — provided the decision is adhered to consistently.
:D
Glad to see that your blog is back online. It was not accessible for quite a few hours!
Kieran: I have no problem with copy editors fixing typos. I just don't like them translating English expressions into Latin abbreviations.
AT: I complained about this before I had tenure too! Luckily for me, that was before blogs existed.
>> I forget the name of the universal law that this is an instantiation of.
It goes by several names, but the most common is Muphry's Law
I agree with you and dWj that the author should have his or her way, barring actual error or ambiguity, so, OK, I'm irritated on your behalf.
That said, I like "e.g." and "i.e." because of their brevity. For what it's worth, I also like "etc.," although I frequently use "and so on" in its stead. All of these are convenient, very short ways of saying things that sometimes need saying. Sure, if there were a short English word for "for example," I'd use it..but I guess that's my point, for practical purposes, in written technical English "e.g." is a short English word for "for example."
The fact that these abbreviation are from a foreign language seems like a red herring. You would have no objection, I presume, to writing "baguette," and I know you have used "mot juste," and "c'est la vie." Perhaps even "Eureka." Don't become the English language purity police, is all I'm saying.
So, I agree with you, No to the tyranny of the editor over the writer, if the writer hasn't actually made a mistake. So I agree, changing your i.e.'s to "in other words" is a waste of time that does nothing for clarity. I stand with you on that principle. But if your principle is that "i.e." and "e.g." shouldn't be used by anyone, well, sir, I cannot agree.
Phil:
I personally don't like i.e. or e.g.–I don't even like etc. very much–but I realize this is a matter of taste.
And, yes, I've been non-English expressions all the time recently!
At least you have some negotiating power. Where I work it says this about eg (and note it's not e.g. here)
"The following abbreviations cause confusion to the reader who doesn't know what they mean, and constitute a shorthand language that amounts to jargon. … use an English phrase for these expressions."
So there you are, e.g. is jargon.
Phil has I think made the most telling points here.
Copy editors would be needed less if everyone wrote as well as Andrew Gelman, but they don't. English language journals get many submissions in half-broken English from non-native speakers, for example. (It's also very often true that many of those write extremely well in English.) Even many native speakers don't write as well as they think they do, just as most drivers judge themselves well above average. (Yes, I do know that is possible.)
Often the job of copy editors is done most effectively when authors don't notice, but their prose has been simplified and cleaned up of obvious minor inconsistencies and blemishes. Although you're an excellent writer, Andrew, you're not in the same league as a proof-reader, and a good copy-editor will quietly fix your most blatant small errors without negotiation. The world wouldn't be a better place if some of your talents were diverted to pedantry, however.
You could have picked a more convincing example than e.g. Although I doubt that many readers of your papers could say that it stands for exempli gratia — and it takes a former Latin student or a language maven to know that — any of them who don't understand what e.g. means are probably not well educated enough to understand your papers in the first place. That's not meant to sound snobbish, just true. And no one is insisting that you say exempli gratia.
Would you object to et al. if that was house style and want an alternative?
Nick:
For some reason, I have no problem with et al. Go figure. And yes, proofreaders and copy editors have helped me, but I typically have to spend a lot of time going back and undoing many of their bad decisions.
My objection to "i.e." and "e.g." are not that they are too obscure. My objection is that they break up the flow and make the article harder to read.
In most of my books I've gone even further and put references at the end of the chapters or the end of the book, again because it can break up the flow to see "(Smith, 1993)" or whatever at the end of a sentence. Also, I think that referencing can often be a way of dodging responsibility. I want to stand behind everything I write in a book, without hiding behind Smith (1993), Jones (2000), and all the rest.
For my most recent book (A Quantitative Tour of the Social Sciences), though, I just decided to forget about it and accept all the editors' changes without looking. I also put together the entire book in Word. It felt good, to give up that level of control over the little details.