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#StetChat
@stetchat.com

Q2. What’s your worst nightmare with technology while editing? 💻😱 #StetChat

1 repost6 likes

Cryptoe39 💀
@tiptoe39.bsky.social

I notice that most responses aren't AI-related, but AI is definitely the cause of my (often waking) nightmares these days. Maybe that should be a question unto itself! #StetChat

Melissa Ann Singer
@masinger.bsky.social

A2. I have twice experienced major hard drive crashes which resulting in a lot of lost work, some of it going back decades in the days before we/my employer had good ways of saving large quantities of data. #StetChat

Melissa Ann Singer
@masinger.bsky.social

A2. Most of my smaller troubles were when I was on staff and things wanted to auto-update while I was in the middle of something. Sometimes in the middle of a video meeting! #StetChat

Melissa Ann Singer
@masinger.bsky.social

Some things had been printed out, but a lot of stuff was lost forever. Editorial letters, contract notes, rough drafts, copy, etc. etc. etc. Of course, it could be argued that there was no real need for that older stuff, but it still hurt losing it. #StetChat

NB Kuhn is a pen name
@nbkuhn.bsky.social

#StetChat Two things, both related to Word formatting. I have a few clients who use British or Australian English. I was once rushing to finish an Australian English book at like four in the morning (I was up anyway for unrelated reasons). Ran spellcheck, only to discover...

NB Kuhn is a pen name
@nbkuhn.bsky.social

Turning on spellcheck somehow changed the smart quotes to nonsense characters. In the entire 80k book. I forgot what I did to fix it (besides cry). There's also the issue where Word decides smart quotes are Arabic characters with right-to-left formatting and janks up the rest of the text. #StetChat

Roman Smith
@romansmith.bsky.social

PageMaker, 1990...would take the screen 2-3 mins to redraw, and sometimes you couldn't tell if a change you made had been accepted or not. Finalized an article that had four errors owing directly to the the screen redraw issue. Still haunts me 36 years later 😡

Jesse – Rainbow Pen Editing
@rainbowpenediting.bsky.social

Losing progress is a common one, but my computer dying would probably be the worst nightmare. I wouldn't be able to work properly until I buy a new one, and not sure if word would let me reinstall easily since I bought the software instead of the subscription. #StetChat

🌙🦇 Raquel ⟡ Fiction Editor 🦇🌙
@raqueledits.bsky.social

A2. Long time ago... one doc… super long, took 30–45 min to open up; it hated Tracked Changes (slow), hated when I left comments even more (50-50 freeze/crash). Started off as a super fun project… turned into what felt like a hostage situation. I still find myself looking over my shoulder. #StetChat

Melissa Ann Singer
@masinger.bsky.social

This happened to me a lot at one point in time. I decided Word couldn't handle Track Changes after a certain number of changes were made. Ever since, I break manuscripts into pieces as I go. An 80,000-word novel might become 4 or 5 different files. #StetChat

Melissa Ann Singer
@masinger.bsky.social

tbh I prefer to do it myself. I worked for many years with a terrific writer who liked to send each chapter as a separate file. but they didn't number well. sometimes I would get 2 or 3 copies of the same chapter, w/different numbers. or be missing a number, but have all the text. #StetChat