As the creator of The California Style Book and copy editor and writer since 1970, I can tell you there is no enjoyable collaboration. Many writers don’t even care about proper spelling or grammar usage. They just hand me a mess and expect me to clean it up like magic. In my case, I wrote the rules and they must follow them. The editor is the commander and the writers are the troops. In this arena, even the editor-in-chief answers to me because more often than not his copy is thoroughly messed up too. No sloppy copy, not on my watch!
