Writer, Editor, Helper

Random Advice for Copyeditor Newbies

If you’re new to copyediting, consider these snippets of advice. (Be sure to check with your supervisor if any of them contradict your usual instructions.)

• Don’t query a word or spelling or locution without looking it up. If a writer uses an unfamiliar word or spelling more than once, it’s very possibly intended. It’s easy to paste “eat one’s cake and have it, too” into a search engine and learn that the writer doesn’t have it backward.
• Don’t waste a writer’s time by continually asking for approval. (“Okay? If you don’t like this, I can put it back.”) Rather, indicate your flexibility in the cover letter. On the manuscript, use queries for giving or asking for information.
• Save grief later by e-mailing the author before you make editing decisions that are hard to undo. (“Re romantic/Romantic: do you have a system for capping? Should I meddle?”)
• Don’t track changes that will be invisible or confusing on a black-and-white printout, such as deletions of hyphens.* If the editing is difficult to read, the writer won’t easily see that the results read well.
• Be conservative in editing until you have more experience. You should be ready to explain every mark you put on the page.
• Remember the copyeditor’s creed: First, do no harm.

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*My workaround is to explain in the cover letter that I have edited common compounds silently in accordance with CMOS and Webster’s 11th Collegiate, and that otherwise I track the opening or closing of compounds respectively like this: right_wing or home-townhometown.

Photo by Jamey Boelhower from Pixabay

Serial Tasking; or, How Not to Floss

I remember when my first son was little and I would be listening to music, and John would confound me by humming a different tune while he played at my feet. Maybe the ability to literally “tune out” so profoundly is just one of those stages of child brain development, like unintentional writing in mirror image. Or maybe I’m the only one who can’t hum against the music. Whichever it is, I’ve known for quite a while that my mind is pretty much limited to one track at a time.

Of course, I’m often forced to multitask. In fact I was inspired to write on this topic the other day when, pressed for time, I found myself flossing during my workout. (I’m not making that up. And yes, I did find muscles I never knew I had.) Once again, I learned that when I do two things at once, one of them suffers in quality.

We hear a lot these days about attention deficit and multitasking, and given that multitasking is the very definition of copyediting, how do we cope? I recall a study some time ago suggesting that teenagers study better while listening to music.* But more recent research concludes that “multitasking” is really just “serial tasking,” and that chopping chores into disconnected bits isn’t as efficient as we like to think. Rather, we suffer from “reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task.”**

But we knew that.

Experience and common sense tell us that when a deadline looms, turning off and tuning out can give us a dose of needed concentration and efficiency. For an hour, say, forget the e-mail, muffle the tweets, and go at it single-mindedly.

(Go on, now—git!)

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*Disclaimer: Whenever I mention a study without a citation, it’s possible I’m making it up.

**Eyal Ophir et al., “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers,” 1.

Photo by Charles Davis from Pixabay

Meticulous, Compulsive . . . and Liberated?

Copyeditors have a reputation. We’re conscientious and task-oriented. We like our little routines. We like things tidy. That’s what’s good about us—it’s why we’re useful. We are valued for our tolerance for tedium and our willingness to plug away till the last crumb of typographical trash is off the floor and into the bin. It’s a cliché to say that we’re compulsive perfectionists; that we’re the quiet and unsung heroes of publishing.

Oh, come on.

Doesn’t it get up your nose even a little when a fellow copyeditor gets on a high horse about authorial ignorance? Or trumpets a typo in a published work with shock and indignation? Who’s she kidding? Let’s see everything she’s edited: I’ll bet you a million bucks you and I could find a few crumbs she missed.

Copyeditors have to rate among the most self-satisfied and superior folks I know, and it’s not hard to understand why. A body has to work up some kind of defense under the pressure of that reputation.

But let’s liberate ourselves from the stereotype. I’ll go first: I admit it. I mess up all the time. It’s how I know things.

Hey—that felt great.

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Image: Prettysleepy from Pixabay 

Bad Editing and the Word Processor

Two popular types of bad copyediting are (1) editing that didn’t need doing in the first place, and (2) needed editing that didn’t get done. Both types can be accomplished with or without the aid of a computer, but there are reasons why a copyeditor deploying a word processor is likely to end up committing both.

Put simply, the reason for type 1 is “Because she can,” and the reason for type 2 is “Because she can’t.”

Perfectionists are helpless to resist the tweaking and refining that comes at the peck of a few keys, even if it’s ultimately unhelpful to the publishing process, even if the original was good enough, even if errors are introduced in the meddling. It’s just so darned easy, and it takes only a few seconds. Well, maybe just a few more—oops—that wasn’t what I meant to happen, but that’s okay, because I can fix it . . . oops—wait, I’ve got it now! Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes: talking about editing that didn’t need doing.

More laid-back types are no better off if they haven’t mastered the word processor. Freelancers regularly send me work that isn’t properly cleaned and coded. Are they simply blind to all the little e-boogers? Or does it not occur to them that there’s an efficient way to fix them? Either way, we get the type 2 problem of editing that goes undone.

The solution doesn’t lie in editing on paper any more than the problem lies in the machine. If all the copyeditors in the world throw themselves in front of that train to Technology, it’s still going to roll on by.

Might as well get on.

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Photo: Jonathan Cardy, Bullet Train in York, licensed under CC BY-SA

English Teacher Bullies?

Recently John McIntyre blogged at the Baltimore Sun about “pedagogical malpractice,” inviting readers to submit stories of English teachers run amuck. I read them with mixed feelings of horror and glee. After all, English teachers, not unlike copyeditors, are an easy target. Their job is to teach the rules, and if they sometimes get carried away to the point of inventing a few, why are we surprised?

Sure, as experienced writers, we’ve learned that the rules of English are often just cardboard bullies that blow over in the wind of good prose. But how is a teacher supposed to impart an ease with bending and breaking rules before they’ve pounded the darned things in to begin with?

An elementary school teacher who wrote to the CMOS online Q&A shamed me into understanding this struggle. She had written for help with commas, asking, “Is it necessary to use a comma after words like next, then, after that, last, and finally when they are the beginning of a sentence? I am a lower-school teacher and need to clarify this.” I had replied, “Punctuation is not so simple that you can make a rule that a comma ‘always’ follows a given word or phrase. Commas depend on syntax as well as pacing, tone, and personal preference. . . . Please don’t teach your students punctuation until you understand this.”

Her response was both discouraged and scathing, taking me to task for my smart-assed unhelpfulness. Who, I understood, would teach her kids if she didn’t? Was I volunteering for the job?

From my seat in the ivory tower, it’s easy to forget that teachers have an entirely different slant on things. Rules are the floats young learners cling to while learning to swim. Mind, I won’t excuse a high-school or college teacher-bully who demands that paragraphs consist of exactly five sentences or who ban the use of the word “thing.” The best teachers will figure out how to model flexibility as opposed to laying down the law. But if reducing English grammar and writing to a teachable science results in some overstated rules now and then, maybe we can consider it a valid—and temporary—stage of learning.

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Image courtesy of FreeSVG

Dodging Editorial Bullets

Last evening I attended a lovely cello recital in a private home in my neighborhood. Sitting in the parlor listening to Brahms on a 1768 Benjamin Banks, many of us deep in reverie (or snoozing—hard to tell), I was startled to see a teacup roll off its saucer from the lap of my abstracted neighbor Peggy. I tensed for the crash, but the cup hit the plush Aubusson, somersaulted gently onto the wood floor, and miraculously righted itself without a sound. At a suitable moment, I retrieved it from under the settee and handed it back. Peggy inspected it for damage, caught her breath, and whispered “Spode!”

Walking home, I pulled out my cell phone, thinking how lucky Peggy had been not to break the china—and saw that my ringer was on. Full blast. This time the luck was mine, not to have jerked everyone awake with a tinny chorus of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

In copyediting, we forget, we overlook, we nod off. Often we catch our errors (or someone else does) before it’s too late, and no doubt we are happily unaware of many errors that make it into print. Copyediting and proofreading the sixteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, the team here caught typos and errors in every round, and every time, we felt the relief that comes with escaping shame and embarrassment, along with the naive hope that now it’s perfect.

But inevitably a few goofs are lurking in the pages. (And knowing our readers, we won’t remain unaware of them for long.)

Who Loves a Book More?

[Note, March 30, 2021: This was written in 2010 and—unbelievably—still true.]

I am so tired of people looking down their noses at my e-reader and explaining that they love books. So today I’m going to answer their complaints, one by one.

Book Lover: Because I’m a person of passion and a true intellectual, I love the feel, the smell, the je ne sais quoi of a real book.

Me: Are you kidding? Recently I heard publisher Stephen Roxburgh speak to a group of writers in a bookstore. He held up a 1710 edition of Swift’s Tale of a Tub, leather-bound with marbled papers, beautifully etched, letter-pressed on vellum. Three hundred years old and looking like new. He said, “If you tell me you love this book, I’m right there with you.” He swept his arm toward the bookshelves. “These? Pulp. Fit for a landfill.” Then he held up his new iPad. “I also love this book,” he said, and showed how, like the Swift, it was beautifully designed, a pleasure to examine and hold, and how, unlike the Swift, its content was actually readable and enjoyable.

Book Lover: You can’t cuddle up with an e-book.

Me: But you can cuddle up with a four-hundred-page hardcover? My e-book is smaller, lighter, and easier to read in any cuddling position, I guarantee you. You can turn pages with one hand and the type will turn sideways or upside down, if you ask it to.

Book Lover: I don’t want my books to glare at me.

Me: Although we are probably in the minority, I will grant you that. That’s why I prefer an e-ink reader to an LED-lit one. I can read it outdoors in the sun or in the romantic glow of the lamp on my bed table.

Book Lover: I hate change.

Me: Well, you got me there.

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Photo: Emkaer / CC BY-SA