The Weasley Clock

[Carol]

Ali wrote:
> 
> Would a consistency editor get a hold of an English-to-English
"translation," though?  It seems to me that that's something that
either (1) wouldn't get to a consistency editor at all or (2) get to
his/her desk but be of low priority.  But then, I've never worked in a
major publishing house, so I don't know how things get done when you
get into the big time.  :)
 <snip>

Carol responds:

I'm not sure what you mean by an English-to-English translation. The
only consistency editor I know of with regard to the HP books works
for Scholastic, and she would probably be in touch with Bloomsbury
about any changes other than the ones required by Scholastic's
in-house requirements (and basic copyediting, which was probably done
by a different editor), or at least any significant changes. 

I've never worked specifically as a consistency editor, though of
course part of my job as a copyeditor is making sure that spelling,
capitalization, terminology, documentation format, and so forth are
consistent within a given book. A consistency editor, in contrast,
works with books in the same series as opposed to a stand-alone book,
making sure that the books are consistent with one another, not only
in spelling and capitalization (the editor would have a style sheet to
work from so she'd know, for example, whether spells should be
capitalized) but in other details, such as the effects of a particular
spell (not, IMO, well handled), descriptions of characters (if one
book states that Ginny has brown eyes, she shouldn't have gray or blue
eyes in another; if one book refers to a character as a Muggle-born,
he shouldn't be a Half-Blood in another), and miscellaneous details,
such as how long Nearly Headless Nick has been a ghost. (One book says
four hundred years, another says five hundred. That particular error
was, I think, corrected, with five hundred as the "right" answer,
despite the anachronistic Elizabethan ruff and Jacobean plumed hat.)
If a character is assigned to the wrong House or the wrong year (as
compared with an earlier book), the consistency editor should catch
that, too. (Dennis Creevey should not have been at the Hog's Head in
OoP, for example, because he was only a second-year.)

Scholastic's consistency editor noted that Moaning Myrtle's U-bend had
become an S-bend in a later book but let it go, to the annoyance of
persnickety readers like me, because both kinds of bends are found in
English plumbing. She, or someone, did at least catch the differing
descriptions of "identical" Prefect badges that I mentioned earlier,
but it was the revised edition of the Bloomsbury PS that was changed,
not the (then) new book, OoP. (Possibly JKR liked the red and gold
badge better, especially in contrast to the silver Inquisitorial Squad
badges.)

Anyway, a consistency editor can't catch everything. In the case of,
say, the letter in DH not seeming to fit with dates and details of
earlier books, the best she can do is query. But if Dumbledore's
brother is Aberforth in one book and Alberforth in the next, she needs
to catch that error and correct the new version to match the old.

Carol, who thinks that the description of the Weasley clock is exactly
the sort of thing a consistency editor would look at (ditto for the
"identical" Prefect badges, with the word "identical" operating as a
red flag)