Copyediting sample 28:
Four stories

An editor needs to keep track of details, such as the narrator’s hotel room being four stories up in one place but five stories up several pages later.

Note that the author preferred to italicize many words and phrases I would have left without italics (for example, “final stretch”); he insisted this was his stylistic choice, reminiscent of the works of authors Michel Houellebecq and Thomas Bernhard. Naturally, I deferred to his firm preference. The author also employed a number of creative coinages (for example, “decrepitating”), which I commented on but let stand.

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This sample is presented here with the author’s permission.

Original
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Oldport, the town where Dresden’s mother was to be buried, and perhaps the town where she had lived her life—or the last part of it, the final stretch, as it were—lay on the southeastern shore. First trees, then the ocean: What a shock to remember that the natural world is a fundamentally beautiful place. I took a room in a hotel on the waterfront, a historical colonial building of some kind which had been recommended to me by a tourism brochure at the car rental agency. The hotel was undergoing renovations and was eerily empty, a labyrinth of white halls like beacons to the spirits of dead sailors and whores; the whole place was essentially bait for a nice, dignified haunting. The air resonated dimly with the far-off sound of noncommittal construction, although I never saw anyone working. I got the impression that I was the first guest they’d had in weeks. My room was on the top floor, four stories up, overlooking the docks. Its prize features included a twin bed and a bathroom the size of a broom closet. It smelled like an ashtray, as if some decrepitating soul had spent its final years locked inside, smoking with the window closed. four chapters (39 pages) later I don’t know what I would have done if Vanessa hadn’t called me that afternoon. What I mean is: I don’t know how I would have stopped myself from opening the window, lifting the laptop containing everything I had ever written, and hurling it into the winter light, watching with exhilaration as it plummeted five stories and exploded on the frozen pavement below. I’d spent most of the day lying down, starving myself again.

Markup
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Oldport, the town where Dresden’s mother was to be buried, and perhaps the town where she had lived her life—or the last part of it, the final stretch, as it were—lay on the southeastern shore. First trees, then the ocean: What a shock to remember that the natural world is a fundamentally beautiful place. I took a room in a hotel on the waterfront, a historical colonial historical Colonial building of some kind which kind, which had been recommended to me by a tourism brochure at the car rental agency. The hotel was undergoing renovations and was eerily empty, a labyrinth of white halls like beacons to the spirits of dead sailors and whores; the whole place was essentially bait for a nice, dignified haunting. The air resonated dimly with the far-off sound of noncommittal construction, although I never saw anyone working. I got the impression that I was the first guest they’d had in weeks. My room was on the top floor, four stories up, overlooking the docks. Its prize features included a twin bed and a bathroom the size of a broom closet. It smelled like an ashtray, as if some decrepitating [the only definitions I find of “decrepitating” refer to a chemical (or mineralogical) process of cracking and breaking up of lumps of limestone when heated; you are apparently making it a coinage to mean making something decrepit—that is, wasted and infirm, worn out, fallen into ruin or disrepair] soul had spent its final years locked inside, smoking with the window closed. four chapters (39 pages) later I don’t know what I would have done if Vanessa hadn’t called me that afternoon. What I mean is: I don’t know how I would have stopped myself from opening the window, lifting the laptop containing everything I had ever written, and hurling it into the winter light, watching with exhilaration as it plummeted five stories plummeted four stories [from chapter 2 of Part Two: “My room was on the top floor, four stories up, overlooking the docks” (alternatively, let me know if in the second pass you want me to change “four stories up” in chapter 2 to “five stories up”)] and exploded on the frozen pavement below. I’d spent most of the day lying down, starving myself again.

Result
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Oldport, the town where Dresden’s mother was to be buried, and perhaps the town where she had lived her life—or the last part of it, the final stretch, as it were—lay on the southeastern shore. First trees, then the ocean: What a shock to remember that the natural world is a fundamentally beautiful place. I took a room in a hotel on the waterfront, a historical Colonial building of some kind, which had been recommended to me by a tourism brochure at the car rental agency. The hotel was undergoing renovations and was eerily empty, a labyrinth of white halls like beacons to the spirits of dead sailors and whores; the whole place was essentially bait for a nice, dignified haunting. The air resonated dimly with the far-off sound of noncommittal construction, although I never saw anyone working. I got the impression that I was the first guest they’d had in weeks. My room was on the top floor, four stories up, overlooking the docks. Its prize features included a twin bed and a bathroom the size of a broom closet. It smelled like an ashtray, as if some decrepitating soul had spent its final years locked inside, smoking with the window closed. four chapters (39 pages) later I don’t know what I would have done if Vanessa hadn’t called me that afternoon. What I mean is: I don’t know how I would have stopped myself from opening the window, lifting the laptop containing everything I had ever written, and hurling it into the winter light, watching with exhilaration as it plummeted four stories and exploded on the frozen pavement below. I’d spent most of the day lying down, starving myself again.