Dear Mr. Fingle,

Thank you for your prompt response.

In light of your concerns to retain your artistic integrity and to retain control of your submission, I have reread your story. Protagonize! holds itself to the highest standards, both in terms of supporting our authors and in terms of the quality of writing that we publish. In light of this, I have also looked at the original comments and requested changes to your work, and have attached a file with a new set of changes. My job is to ensure that your work reaches the highest quality possible in the interest of your development as a writer, before it is given final approval for publication. The changes I propose would in no way impinge upon your creative control but would fix certain spelling and grammar errors which impede the clarity of the conveying of your ideas. The changes are purely technical and have no relation to the actual content of the story.

For example, I found the following sentence: "She lukked out teh windo pane on her face." I would suggest the following: "She looked out the window, pain on her face."

As a helpful hint, I would like to let you know about a great online tool, Spell-check Wizard. It can be found at the following address: http://www.youtypebadly.com. I understand that access to word processors is often difficult or expensive, but this tool is free and might be useful to you in catching those accidental mistakes we all make.

I look forward to continuing to help you along the road to publication.

Sincerely,
Caley Johnson
Editorial Board Member
Protagonize! Literary Magazine

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This story is an exchange of letters between a copy-editor and the submitter of a story to a literary magazine, Protagonize! It follows the process of editing and readying an article for publication, or at least the attempts of the copy-editor to progress down that path. It also deals with the humour in problems of grammar, punctuation, and the pitfalls of errors in writing. And the pain. We cannot forget the pain. We hope that whether you are one who struggles with the technical side of writing, or are one who obsesses over spelling and grammar errors, you will laugh along with us. **NOTE** This story is currently limited to CheshireGrin and AnaChristina.

updated Jan 18 '09 by CheshireGrin