Substantive editing sample 54:
My father

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Like my mother, my father came from a family of immigrants. His grandparents, Jews from Latvia and the Ukraine, immigrated to Canada sometime around the end of the 19th century. Sometime after my father was born, my grandfather moved his family from the Manitoba province of Canada to Chicago where they lived for a while before moving to Buffalo, New York. I learned this information as an adult, from a distant relative doing research on the Luria family. My father never spoke of his family to me and, except for my father’s sister, Ruthie, none of them were ever part of our lives. According to my mother, my father’s brother and older sister tried to prevent their marriage, even offering him a trip around the world if he’d call it off. The same cousin, researching her family by marriage, sent me photographs of that first generation of North American Lurias – my father’s father and his brothers and sisters. Despite the formality of the picture – everyone dressed in their Sabbath best – I could see in each of these faces an intelligence and strength of character that interested me. Examining these black and white images taken sometime around the turn of the century, I am mesmerized by the full, handsome faces of my Jewish great aunts and uncles, and the face of my less robust looking grandfather who wore spectacles and seemed a more nervous and introspective type than his brothers and sisters. I dwell on the details of their eyes and noses, the cast of the mouth, decisive or irresolute; I even examine the body language beneath heavy, Victorian costumes, relentlessly questioning each shred of physical evidence. It’s not that I doubt our connection; I know from resemblances to a later picture that my parents kept in the apartment, that this nervous, bespectacled young man is my future grandfather. Still, it’s not clear to me in what way I am actually his granddaughter, in what way any of these people are really my family. I find their lives hard to imagine; I know nothing first-hand of the foods they ate, the languages they spoke (Yiddish? Russian?), the stories they told their children as they tucked them in bed at night and, most importantly, I know nothing of the stories they told themselves about who they would become in their new country. I never met my Jewish grandparents; my grandfather died before I was born and my grandmother, living in comfortable seclusion, was kept, by her children, uninformed of the changing world around her including the event of my father’s second marriage and the arrival of a new grandchild. If my father had lived longer, I would have asked many questions like why couldn’t I meet my other grandmother, and who exactly were these people he came from? But his death, when I was eight, was as unexpected as his life had been. Shades of Contrast My father, like many others, was drawn to the beauty that my mother and Ellen conjured around themselves through dance. The world outside Ellen’s studio was filled with flat and simple contrasts; the red-greens of street lights, the black-browns and white of faces. Outside Ellen’s studio, my mother became my mother again, no longer a whirling oracle, simply a beautiful, brown-skinned woman in an Anne Klein suit. This is how I thought of my mother, brown-skinned and beautiful. I understood this in contrast to my father who was not brown-skinned but a complexion referred to as white, though closer inspection revealed subtle planes of peach, red and white with small patches of bluish gray under the delicate skin of the eyes. The color difference between my parents held little value in my imagination; it was a simple fact that mommy was brown and daddy was not. I learned a lot of things from my parents but it was the world that taught me the meaning of color. My father didn’t think about color the way my mother did; we never spoke of blackness or whiteness, of history or injustice. I was never my father’s half-black daughter the way I was my mother’s light-skinned child. But I learned, observing the hostility that often greeted my mother in the stores and restaurants she dared patronize, that being white was different than being black. It was easier. Being Jewish was another matter. From the few shreds of information I have about my grandfather, I know that he was an ambitious and impatient man eager to succeed in his new country. In early photographs, he has the gentle, inquisitive look of a scholar or seminarian but in the later photograph that sat in our living room, he has the cold, settled look of a man who’d spent his life measuring margins of success and failure. In Chicago and later in Buffalo, New York, where my father grew up, my grandfather, Mandel, dealt in real estate, first as a manager and later as the co-owner with his brother Louis, of the prestigious Park Lane Hotel. The Park Lane was an upscale residence for Jews modeled on the idea of the WASP country club. Since Jews were routinely excluded from these clubs, my grandfather found a ready market among the well-to-do Jews of Buffalo. Growing up in this environment, my father and his siblings learned more about tennis, golf and dry martinis than they did of their Jewish heritage. Saul Bellow, another son of Jewish immigrants who came to this country in the teens or twenties, writes of the “great sense of release” of his father’s generation “from the tsarist officialdom, not merely oppressive but downright crazy.” Bellow’s father believed that the US “offered Jews unheard of opportunities for development – the first rational government in history.” I know, from a small stack of my grandfather’s letters, written to my father while he was struggling through law school against his wishes, that my grandfather too, held this immigrant’s dream of success and happiness for the taking. “If you have any grit, guts, backbone or determination,” my grandfather wrote to my father in 1936, “you will find a way.” In four letters written between 1935 and 1936, my grandfather argues with my father to stick to his course in law school promising that “for every hour of grinding you do now, you may be repaid ten thousand times in your later life.” “Don’t start out in life defeated,” my grandfather says in another letter, articulating his own and my father’s greatest fear. Saul Bellow writing of his Uncle Willie described him as a “very gentle and depressed man,” who had “disappointed his father” in some way Bellow doesn’t mention and, in retaliation, the father, Bellow’s grandfather, apprenticed Willie to a brushmaker. “This apprenticeship contained a hidden disgrace,” Bellow writes, “because as a brush maker he would have to deal with hog’s bristles.” In Bellow’s Uncle Willie, I recognize something of my father. Not every immigrant was destined for great material success, and the pressure to live up to this dream was for some, like my father, oppressive.

Markup
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Like my mother, my father came [here is a proper place to give your father a name... with the last sentence just before the subheading "Carnegie Hall" in the preceding chapter, I proposed that you give him his full name; here, at the second instance, his first name would be sufficient: "Like my mother, my father, name, came from ..."] from a family of immigrants. His grandparents, Jews grandparents, my great-grandparents, [insertion OK? just to keep the reader staying with your point of view--especially because you have "my grandfather" (rather than "his father") in the next sentence] Jews from Latvia and the Ukraine, immigrated to Canada sometime around the end of the 19th century the nineteenth century. Sometime after my father was born, my grandfather moved grandfather, Mandel, [OK? you give us his name a little later, but here is the place to do it; consider giving his whole name, Mandel Luria] moved his family from the Manitoba province of Canada to from Manitoba [Manitoba being a Canadian province is common knowledge; stating it would be like saying "from the Midwest state of Iowa"] to Chicago where Chicago, where they lived for a while before moving to Buffalo, New York. I learned this information as an adult, from a distant relative doing research on the Luria family. My father never spoke of his family to me and, except me, and except for my father’s sister, Ruthie father’s younger sister, my Aunt Ruthie, [we need to distinguish Ruthie from that bad older sister of the next sentence; also identifying her as your aunt keeps the reader in your point of view] none of them were ever part of our lives. According to my mother, my father’s brother and older sister tried to prevent their marriage, even offering him a trip around the world if he’d call it off. The same cousin, researching The same distant relative, [let's stay consistent with what you called the researcher in the preceding paragraph; anyway, since the Lurias are her family "by marriage," she's a cousin-in-law, not a cousin] researching her family by marriage, sent me photographs of that first generation of North American Lurias – my father’s father and Lurias: my paternal grandfather and his ["paternal grandfather" OK? otherwise, you can't tell who the "his" refers to, your father or your grandfather... I'm assuming your grandfather, because you said first generation of North American Lurias--and later you say "great aunts and uncles"] brothers and sisters. Despite the formality of the picture – everyone picture—everyone dressed in their Sabbath best – I best—I could see in each of these faces an intelligence and strength of character that interested me. Examining these black and white images these black-and-white images taken sometime around the turn of the century the last century, [nowadays "turn of the century" can refer to 2001] I am mesmerized by the full, handsome faces of my Jewish great aunts and uncles, and the face of my less robust looking my less-robust-looking grandfather who grandfather, who wore spectacles and seemed a more nervous and introspective type than his brothers and sisters. I dwell on the details of their eyes and noses, the cast of the mouth, decisive or irresolute; I even examine the body language beneath heavy, Victorian costumes beneath heavy Victorian [per Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) 5.90 and 6.33: these are not coordinate adjectives; you wouldn't put the conjunction and between "heavy" and "Victorian"--so no comma] costumes, relentlessly questioning each shred of physical evidence. [paragraph break here, for eye relief... you just discussed examining the details in the photos; what follows is about your questioning] It’s not that I doubt our connection; I know from resemblances to a later picture that my parents kept in the apartment, that this nervous, bespectacled young man is my future grandfather. Still, it’s not clear to me in what way I am actually his granddaughter, in what way any of these people are really my family. I find their lives hard to imagine; I know nothing first-hand of nothing firsthand of the foods they ate, the languages they spoke (Yiddish? Russian?), the Russian? Lett?), [OK? you mentioned that some of your ancestors came from Latvia] the stories they told their children as they tucked them in bed them into bed at night and, most importantly night. Most importantly, I know nothing of the stories they told themselves about who they would become in their new country. I never met my Jewish grandparents; my grandfather died before I was born and born, and my grandmother, living in comfortable seclusion, was kept, by her children, uninformed of the changing world around her including her, including the event of my father’s second marriage and the arrival of a new grandchild. [You could, if you wanted to, highlight the apparent racism of most of your father's family this way: "... including the event of my father's no-doubt scandalous second marriage and the arrival of a new mixed-race grandchild, me." That would go far in revealing why you know so little about that side of the family. (What you have written does reveal it, but it's kind of subtle.) Let me know if you want me to revise the preceding sentence.] If my father had lived longer, I would have asked many questions like why questions, such as why couldn’t I meet my other grandmother, and who exactly were these people he came from? But his death, when I was eight, was as unexpected as his life had been. Shades of Contrast [a level-2 heading called for here] Shades of Contrast My father, like many others, was drawn to the beauty that my mother and Ellen conjured around themselves through dance. The world outside Ellen’s studio was filled with flat and simple contrasts; the contrasts: the red-greens of street lights, the black-browns and white of faces. Outside Ellen’s studio, my mother became my mother again, no longer a whirling oracle, simply a beautiful, brown-skinned woman in an Anne Klein suit. This is how I thought of my mother, brown-skinned and beautiful. I understood this in contrast to my father who father, who was not brown-skinned but a complexion referred to as white, though closer inspection revealed subtle planes of peach, red and red, and white with white, with small patches of bluish gray under the delicate skin of the eyes. [what is "skin of the eyes"? do you mean "bluish gray of the delicate skin under the eyes"?] The color difference between my parents held little value in my imagination; it was a simple fact that mommy was brown and daddy was that Mommy was brown and Daddy was not. I learned a lot of things from my parents but parents, but it was the world that taught me the meaning of color. My father didn’t think about color the way my mother did; we never spoke of blackness or whiteness, of history or injustice. I was never my father’s half-black daughter the way I was my mother’s light-skinned child. But I learned, observing the hostility that often greeted my mother in the stores and restaurants she dared patronize dared to patronize, that being white was different than being different from being black. It was easier. Being Jewish was another matter. From the few shreds of information I have about my grandfather, I know that he was an ambitious and impatient man eager man, eager to succeed in his new country. In early photographs, he has the gentle, inquisitive look of a scholar or seminarian but seminarian, but in the later photograph that sat in our living room, he has the cold, settled look of a man who’d spent his life measuring margins of success and failure. In Chicago and later in Buffalo, New York, where Buffalo, [you only need to mention NY with Buffalo once, and you did it earlier] where my father grew up, my grandfather, Mandel, [it's OK to repeat his name here (first name only this time), because you mention brother Louis in the same sentence] dealt in real estate, first as a manager and later as the co-owner with his brother Louis, of Louis of the prestigious Park Lane Hotel. The Park Lane was an upscale residence for Jews modeled Jews, modeled on the idea of the on the WASP country club. Since Jews were routinely excluded from these clubs from those clubs, my grandfather found a ready market among the well-to-do Jews of Buffalo. Growing up in this environment, my father and his siblings learned siblings had learned more about tennis, golf and golf, and dry martinis than they did of they had of their Jewish heritage. [paragraph break here, for eye relief] Saul Bellow, another son of Jewish immigrants who came to this country in the teens or twenties, writes the 1910s or 1920s, [this is definitely the style you should use, because "teens" can be confused with the current 2010s] writes of the “great sense of release” of his father’s generation “from the tsarist officialdom, not merely oppressive but downright crazy.” Bellow’s father believed that the US “offered the U.S. “offered Jews unheard of opportunities for development – the development—the first rational government in history.” [I could not find these quotes in the Web. You need a footnote, citing these Bellow quotes, similar to the ones in your Introduction--title, publisher, city, year, page reference--and verify every single word in the quote] I know, from know—from a small stack of my grandfather’s letters, written to my father while he was struggling through law school against his wishes, that wishes—that my grandfather too grandfather, too, held this immigrant’s dream of success and happiness for the taking. “If you have any grit, guts, backbone or determination,” my grandfather wrote to my father in 1936, “you will find a way.” In four letters written between 1935 and 1936, my grandfather argues with my 1936, Mandel exhorts [or "urges" or "pressures" or "importunes"?? ("argues with" has a different connotation)] my father to stick to his course in law school promising school, promising that “for every hour of grinding you do now, you may be repaid ten thousand times in your later life.” “Don’t start out in life defeated,” my grandfather says defeated,” Mandel says in another letter, articulating his own and my father’s greatest fear. Saul Bellow writing Bellow, writing of his Uncle Willie described Willie, described him as a “very gentle and depressed man,” who had “disappointed his father” in some way Bellow doesn’t mention and, in mention, and in retaliation, the father, Bellow’s grandfather, apprenticed Willie to a brushmaker. “This a brush maker. “This apprenticeship contained a hidden disgrace,” Bellow writes, “because as a brush maker he would have to deal with hog’s bristles.” [again, you need a complete citation here of the Bellow quotes (or is it "Ibid."?)] In Bellow’s Uncle Willie, I recognize something of my father. Not every immigrant was destined for great material success, and the pressure to live up to this dream was for some, like my father, oppressive.

Result
The author provided her father's name and clarified who were the Jewish immigrants (her paternal grandparents, not her great-grandparents); she also provided the source for the Saul Bellow quote.
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Like my mother, my father, George William Luria, came from a family of immigrants. His parents, my grandparents, Jews from Latvia and the Ukraine, immigrated to Canada sometime around the end of the nineteenth century. Sometime after my father was born, my grandfather, Mandel Luria, moved his family from Manitoba to Chicago, where they lived for a while before moving to Buffalo, New York. I learned this information as an adult, from a distant relative doing research on the Luria family. My father never spoke of his family to me, and except for my father’s younger sister, my Aunt Ruthie, none of them were ever part of our lives. According to my mother, my father’s brother and older sister tried to prevent their marriage, even offering him a trip around the world if he’d call it off. The same distant relative, researching her family by marriage, sent me photographs of that first generation of North American Lurias: my paternal grandfather and his brothers and sisters. Despite the formality of the picture—everyone dressed in their Sabbath best—I could see in each of these faces an intelligence and strength of character that interested me. Examining these black-and-white images taken sometime around the turn of the last century, I am mesmerized by the full, handsome faces of my Jewish great aunts and uncles, and the face of my less-robust-looking grandfather, who wore spectacles and seemed a more nervous and introspective type than his brothers and sisters. I dwell on the details of their eyes and noses, the cast of the mouth, decisive or irresolute; I even examine the body language beneath heavy Victorian costumes, relentlessly questioning each shred of physical evidence. It’s not that I doubt our connection; I know from resemblances to a later picture that my parents kept in the apartment, that this nervous, bespectacled young man is my future grandfather. Still, it’s not clear to me in what way I am actually his granddaughter, in what way any of these people are really my family. I find their lives hard to imagine; I know nothing firsthand of the foods they ate, the languages they spoke (Yiddish? Russian? Lett?), the stories they told their children as they tucked them into bed at night. Most importantly, I know nothing of the stories they told themselves about who they would become in their new country. I never met my Jewish grandparents; my grandfather died before I was born, and my grandmother, living in comfortable seclusion, was kept, by her children, uninformed of the changing world around her, including the event of my father’s no-doubt scandalous second marriage and the arrival of a new mixed-race grandchild, me. If my father had lived longer, I would have asked many questions, such as why couldn’t I meet my other grandmother, and who exactly were these people he came from? But his death, when I was eight, was as unexpected as his life had been. Shades of Contrast My father, like many others, was drawn to the beauty that my mother and Ellen conjured around themselves through dance. The world outside Ellen’s studio was filled with flat and simple contrasts: the red-greens of street lights, the black-browns and white of faces. Outside Ellen’s studio, my mother became my mother again, no longer a whirling oracle, simply a beautiful, brown-skinned woman in an Anne Klein suit. This is how I thought of my mother, brown-skinned and beautiful. I understood this in contrast to my father, who was not brown-skinned but a complexion referred to as white, though closer inspection revealed subtle planes of peach, red, and white, with small patches of bluish gray for the delicate skin under the eyes. The color difference between my parents held little value in my imagination; it was a simple fact that Mommy was brown and Daddy was not. I learned a lot of things from my parents, but it was the world that taught me the meaning of color. My father didn’t think about color the way my mother did; we never spoke of blackness or whiteness, of history or injustice. I was never my father’s half-black daughter the way I was my mother’s light-skinned child. But I learned, observing the hostility that often greeted my mother in the stores and restaurants she dared to patronize, that being white was different from being black. It was easier. Being Jewish was another matter. From the few shreds of information I have about my grandfather, I know that he was an ambitious and impatient man, eager to succeed in his new country. In early photographs, he has the gentle, inquisitive look of a scholar or seminarian, but in the later photograph that sat in our living room, he has the cold, settled look of a man who’d spent his life measuring margins of success and failure. In Chicago and later in Buffalo, where my father grew up, my grandfather, Mandel, dealt in real estate, first as a manager and later as the co-owner with his brother Louis of the prestigious Park Lane Hotel. The Park Lane was an upscale residence for Jews, modeled on the WASP country club. Since Jews were routinely excluded from those clubs, my grandfather found a ready market among the well-to-do Jews of Buffalo. Growing up in this environment, my father and his siblings had learned more about tennis, golf, and dry martinis than they had of their Jewish heritage. Saul Bellow, another son of Jewish immigrants who came to this country in the 1910s or 1920s, writes of the “great sense of release” of his father’s generation “from the tsarist officialdom, not merely oppressive but downright crazy.”1 Bellow’s father believed that the U.S. “offered Jews unheard of opportunities for development—the first rational government in history.” I know—from a small stack of my grandfather’s letters, written to my father while he was struggling through law school against his wishes—that my grandfather, too, held this immigrant’s dream of success and happiness for the taking. “If you have any grit, guts, backbone or determination,” my grandfather wrote to my father in 1936, “you will find a way.” In four letters written between 1935 and 1936, Mandel exhorts George to stick to his course in law school, promising that “for every hour of grinding you do now, you may be repaid ten thousand times in your later life.” “Don’t start out in life defeated,” Mandel says in another letter, articulating his own and George’s greatest fear. Saul Bellow, writing of his Uncle Willie, described him as a “very gentle and depressed man,” who had “disappointed his father” in some way Bellow doesn’t mention, and in retaliation, the father, Bellow’s grandfather, apprenticed Willie to a brush maker. “This apprenticeship contained a hidden disgrace,” Bellow writes, “because as a brush maker he would have to deal with hog’s bristles.” In Bellow’s Uncle Willie, I recognize something of my father. Not every immigrant was destined for great material success, and the pressure to live up to this dream was for some, like my father, oppressive. 1. The Bellow quotes in this paragraph are from Philip Roth, “I Got a Scheme!” New Yorker, August 25, 2005, pp. 72–80. ↩