Writer, Editor, Helper

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.

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 copyeditor 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.)

Deciphering a Redlined Manuscript

More and more often, the editing stage of a book or journal article headed for publication is entirely paperless. Copyeditors 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 copyeditor, 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 copyeditor who works in this fashion. Next week, I’ll write about what your editor can reasonably expect from you.

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?

Endnotes or Footnotes? Some Considerations

Photo: Liz West, courtesy of Flickr

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.