The Subversive Copy Editor Blog

Losing Is for Losers: It’s Easier Than Ever to Back Up Your Work

Backing up computer files is like flossing—we know we should do it every day, but even though it’s fast and easy, we procrastinate. It’s easy to skip it “just once.” Many of us have lost work that wasn’t backed up: We save an old version over the new one; our laptop is stolen along with the backup thumb drive plugged into it; we forget to save in the first place, and just when we’re getting ready to, one of the kids—the one who plays bass in a rock band—plugs his 200-watt amplifier into the electric circuit that includes the clothes dryer and the basement office computer. (Not that any of that has happened to me.)

OK, so I’m a loser. But my loss is your gain . . .

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Editing Quotations for Style, Rule 1: Don’t

In what seems to be an obsession with consistency taken to extreme, writers and editors continue to ask the CMOS Q&A whether it’s OK to edit quotations from published works “for consistency” with Chicago (or MLA or AP) style.

Let me try to understand why someone would want to do that.

Is it a fear that even though quotation marks make it crystal clear that a text is being copied from a different source—that is, by a different writer, publisher, editor, and perhaps from a different time zone or even century—readers will be surprised and offended that it wasn’t somehow miraculously copyedited according to the same style sheet as the current document?

Is it a personal tic, like a need to match one’s handbag and shoes, or like buying a painting that goes with the sofa?

Is it a belief that some hallowed goal of “consistency” can justify changing someone else’s published writing?

Quotations must retain the original styling. Think what would happen to scholarship if everyone who quoted an original text felt free to tweak the capitalization, change a few commas to semicolons, and impose British spellings—each quoter in a different way. Remember that old game called Telephone?

Scholarly integrity aside, capitalization and spellings are personal things, and sometimes political or religious. Someone writing about God does not want you changing he to He or vice versa.

When you mess with a quote, at best you misrepresent the writer; at worst, you introduce inconsistencies yourself. It’s unprofessional and unethical, if not criminal.

It’s possible that this drive to tidy up quotations from sources that failed to follow your style book is an overly eager extension of the accepted practice of changing the capitalization of book and article titles so they are consistent throughout a document. But titles of works are entirely different. Editors don’t always have access to the original in order to check the casing. Even if they do, titles often appear in all caps or in more than one way between the book cover, the title page, and the Library of Congress listing, not to mention in reviews or at online bookstores. Standardizing titles is a long-standing convention. It’s not personal.

One of the first tenets of editing is to render quotations accurately, following the original. If you are a writer or editor and are still confused about that, please seek some informed leadership. Take a class. Hire an intellectual property rights lawyer to give a workshop. Read The Chicago Manual of Style, chapter 13. Read Amy Einsohn’s The Copyeditor’s Handbook, chapter 8. Read The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, chapter 6.

If you still have questions, well, there’s always the Q&A.

Responding to Electronic Editing

Last week I wrote about what writers can expect when their manuscripts are edited on screen with the changes tracked electronically. This week I’ll explain what a copy editor can expect from writers in return.

(Of course, your editor will tell you in an e-mail or cover letter exactly what she expects, which might differ from my advice here. But knowing the odds of a writer actually reading a cover letter and following instructions, I’ll carry on.)

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Deciphering a Redlined Manuscript

More and more often, the editing stage of a book or journal article headed for publication is entirely paperless. Copy editors work on screen with the use of the tracked-changes feature of their word processor, and writers receive the edited version either as an e-mail attachment or as a link to a site where they can download it.

Depending on the amount of editing and the word-processing skills of the copy editor, the results will be more or less easy to read and respond to. In this post, I’ll discuss how to  look at redlining and what you can reasonably expect from a copy editor who works in this fashion.

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What’s So Hard About Reading a Cover Letter?

 

                                                                       Photo: Jessica Lucia

Honestly, what is it about writers of scholarly books that makes 33.4 percent of them* think they’re above reading instructions—never mind following them—when they receive an edited manuscript or page proofs? Don’t they ask their students to follow directions on exams? Don’t they sit on dissertation committees that require conformity with a set of instructions? Haven’t they been told since kindergarten to follow the rules?

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Endnotes or Footnotes? Some Considerations

                                                                                            Photo: Liz West

In response to my invitation to send questions, Albert in Indiana asked about the relative merits of endnotes and footnotes in books. Mr. Meyer prefers footnotes, which allow him to “converse with readers,” over endnotes that “require leafing backward and forward through the pages.” In general I agree—but there are other considerations.

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Details from a Diary: Mining a Family Treasure for Fiction

I never meant to write historical fiction—mostly out of laziness (all that research!), but also because of the responsibility. Since it’s fiction, we expect to take liberties with the facts. But how much liberty is too much? At what point does stretching the facts become a disservice to history, and to young readers?

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Quoting Well, Part 3: Dot Dot Dot

 

Today, in the last of a series of posts about quoting, I tackle ellipsis—that is, the omission of words, phrases, or longer passages from quotations. The best scholarly writers take care when using ellipsis. First, they use it with restraint and honesty; second, they render it clearly by means of punctuation.

While the first concern is more important, readers here are not likely to need my advice on how not to join two unrelated quotations to manufacture a connection the author didn’t intend. Or how not to, say, quote a presidential candidate verbatim while omitting the context . . .

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Quoting Well, Part 2: When It’s OK, and Not OK, to Meddle

 

Part 1 of my advice on quoting covered practices widely accepted in scholarly writing. Also well accepted, but perhaps not so well understood, is that it is permissible to make certain changes in quoted text.

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Readers may send Carol questions about academic writing, editing, and publishing. Write to her at AskCarolSaller@gmail.com. (Please ask questions about Chicago style here.)

 

Quoting Well, Part 1: It’s More Than Just Accuracy

 

Academics love to quote—as evidence, as embellishment, as filler. Snippets and long blocks. Quotations within quotations. It’s a pity that so many do it so poorly. Here is Part 1 of some advice from a copy editor experienced in tidying up quotations.

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Readers may send Carol questions about academic writing, editing, and publishing. Write to her at AskCarolSaller@gmail.com. (Please ask questions about Chicago style here.)