NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW
September 28, 2008\
Essay: What My Copy Editor Taught Me
By DOROTHY GALLAGHER
"Helene had no literary theories — she had literary values: clarity, transparency, the skillful use of style.
". . . In musical terms, she had perfect pitch.
"Helene had no literary theories — she had literary values. She valued clarity and transparency. She had nothing against style, if it didn’t distract from the material. Her blue pencil struck at redundancy, at confusion, at authorial vanity, at the wrong and the false word, at the unearned conclusion. She loved good writing, therefore she loved the reader: good writing did not cause the reader to stumble over meaning. By the time Helene was finished with me seven years later, I knew how to read a sent ence and how to fix one. I knew what a sentence was supposed to do. . . . "
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