The Fine Art of Copyediting

Elsie Myers Stainton

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780231502702
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Many stylebooks and manuals explain writing, but before the release ten years ago of Elsie Myers Stainton's The Fine Art of Copyediting, few addressed the practices and problems of editing. This handbook has guided users through the editing process for books and journals, with tips on how to be diplomatic when recommending changes, how to edit notes and bibliographies, how to check proofs, and how to negotiate the ethical, intellectual, and emotional problems characteristic of the editorial profession. Now featuring solid advice on computer editing and a new chapter on style, as well as more information on references, bibliographies, indexing, and bias-free writing, The Fine Art of Copyediting, Second Edition offers the same wealth of information that prompted William Safire to commend the first edition in The New York Times Magazine.

Complete with helpful checklists for the manuscript, proof, and index stages of book production, as well as an excellent bibliography of reference works useful to the copyeditor, The Fine Art of Copyediting, Second Edition is an indispensable desk reference for writers and editors confronting a host of questions each day. Why use the word "people" instead of "persons?" What precautions are necessary for publishers to avoid libel suits? How can an editor win an author's trust? What type fonts facilitate the copyediting process? How does computer editing work? For experienced and novice copyeditors, writers and students, this is the source for detailed, step-by-step guidance to the entire editorial process.

ONE

Basics

Editors are everywhere. They are at work wherever words are being written and published—words about the universe, the world, our society, and our human sojourners here. Almost everybody thinks anybody can be an editor. Most editors think few can be good editors. Many good editors sometimes think nobody fully appreciates them. Yet any editor knows that many people have no literary skills, that some among them, quite a few in fact, appreciate what a good editor contributes.

THE COPYEDITOR’S JOB

What do copyeditors do? A copyeditor is assigned somebody else’s words to work on and must pour effort and thought into making them literate and clear. Copyeditors may like or dislike, approve or disapprove of the subject matter, but it is their job to make improvements where improvements are due. These contradictions are familiar to copyeditors, most of whom are working for money, earning a living, and thus must apply their skills to the project before them.

Selflessness and anonymity are standard qualities for copyeditors; in the vineyard they are laborers whose names will not be on the wine bottle. Sometimes they would be pleased to own up to the vintage; other times they are glad to be unknown.

This abstract description of the job points up a fundamental aspect of the copyeditor’s working life: one’s own accomplishments are often counted by readers as belonging to the author. From this point of view the editing process may be thought to pose a moral dilemma. Consider an extreme case: a manuscript that has been submitted to a publisher puts forth an appealing idea; it is timely; many readers might be interested in it. But the author has few literary gifts, often misstates the case, and expresses ideas tonelessly. So the manuscript is accepted, and in this unusual instance a copyeditor employed by the publishing house goes to work on it—revises many sentences, changes the order of the parts, deletes repetitious sections, and so on. The gem of an idea is now mounted in a suitable setting. The author, in the preface of the book, graciously thanks the publisher’s staff, perhaps even naming the copyeditor in question, for many improvements. (The faults that remain, the preface says, are attributable of course to the author alone.) Is the presentation of this book as the work of its author morally right? The author has had a lot of help.

We in the profession generally say, so be it. Many authors need help; most publishers see one of their roles as supplying it.

THE COPYEDITOR’S STANCE

What kind of person is this, who works behind the scenes, greases someone else’s axle?

The good copyeditor, above all, is a fusspot—one who cares. This is not to say that other workers do not care. They have their cares. In the arena of writing, the editor cares about honest expression, about order, about clarity, and about logic. Copyeditors hate non sequiturs and arguments ad hominem, ambiguities and muddy thinking, inconsistencies and badly proportioned parts, jargon, cant, and gobbledygook. They believe that commas and semicolons matter, that spelling a word correctly is important. And they are pleased to help.

The copyeditor’s approach, then, begins with “I care”—about the words, sentences, and paragraphs in the articles, pamphlets, and books that are helped along toward publication. The editor’s charge is to make sure that the words written will be comprehensible to those who read them. Communication. No small aim.

In this light, it seems reasonable that editors need to develop a working enthusiasm for the ideas they are dealing with. The good editor tries to make a murky idea clear and to make sure a brilliant idea sparkles. The professional editor tries to help any author to say what is meant and of course hopes that the author then means what has been said.

KINDS OF EDITORS

Various editors may deal with manuscripts at different stages of the publishing process depending on the procedures at a publishing house. A procurement, or acquisitions, editor searches out the manuscript on behalf of the publisher. A production editor may handle the manuscript from the signing of a contract to publish it through to production, including copyediting and checking proof, or may refer it at one point to a copyeditor for detailed scrutiny. An executive editor often finds and helps to develop a new work; such editors sometimes keep a close watch over the product from start to finish. At some publishers one person may wear several of these hats. A managing editor usually oversees the copyeditors in an editing department. A copyeditor closely reads and carefully corrects the manuscript, word by word, character by character straight through.

THE VALUE OF COPYEDITING

Copyediting adds to the cost of publishing. So questions arise: Why bother? Printing costs are inescapable, but can’t copyediting costs be reduced or eliminated? How much is gained by enhancing the text, how much in sales, in prestige, in general good?

Copyeditors can easily point to improvements: they make texts grammatically correct, clearer, easier to read, and more to the point. Publishers, though, generally supply guidelines to their editors as to how much editing is feasible—affordable—in view of the probable sales of a book. The greater the projected sales, the more money for editing if more editing is going to mean more sales. The publisher is lucky when a potentially popular item requires little editing. Considerable fine-line judgment is called for when a worthy project shows up that needs heavy editing yet will not reward the publisher with heavy sales. Then the copyeditor must make the text passable but will not spend the time, which costs money, to do everything possible. This kind of editing is not necessarily the easiest, because judgment must be exercised continuously. In publishing houses, the degree of necessary editing is usually determined in advance and stipulated for the editor as minimal, routine, or heavy. The publisher, as the cost-conscious head of a business, must decide how much editing time—money—can reasonably go into the production of a book so as to break even or make a profit.

With this important practical proviso in mind, copyeditors do their best to make any manuscript better. Who gains thereby?

First, the publisher gains. No firm is respected if its books contain misspellings or grammatical errors or if reviewers cite incomprehensible passages or ideas. So a publishing house is protecting its reputation by relying on editors.

Authors are saved from revealing their own foibles and shortcomings. Their reputations are enhanced, and perhaps each learns something during the editing process. The next book will be better.

Readers too are blessed when they are not distracted by misspellings or confused by ambiguities and instead may be charmed by felicitous expressions and enlightened by brilliant ideas.

Finally, copyeditors are also rewarded, by the knowledge that something faulty was made acceptable, something good made better, and something very good made extraordinary. This knowledge translates into satisfaction. The profession of copyediting pays its way, is worth a place in the sun. With this in mind, an editor may achieve an appropriate, optimistic attitude toward the profession—and toward the files in the computer or the manuscript on the desk.

TWO

Legal and Contractual Aspects of Publishing

In the long process of producing a book, who is responsible for what? A copyeditor who has spent many hours on a manuscript begins to have a proprietary interest in it. The copyeditor is supposed to catch any errors in the piece, is expected to notice that the name of Georges Clemenceau is misspelled, that Charles Darwin is placed in the wrong century, that a discussion of D. H. Lawrence lacks any mention of sex, that the generalizations about birth control from six examples are unreliable. With such responsibilities, this editor tends to think of the manuscript as his or her own. Whose is it?

MUTUAL DEPENDENCY

In part the manuscript belongs to the publisher, who has contracted to put money into it and staked reputation and financial resources on it. Yet it is the author’s brainchild: without the author, no book. A mutual dependency exists, but it is possible to distinguish what is whose.

The copyeditor must remember that the author’s name goes on the title page and that it is the author who must stand by what is said on the pages following. Therefore the book is the author’s. The author is boss except in a few matters: in some important legal areas, as in the case of libel, and in most production decisions, such as design, for which the publisher is generally responsible.

LIBEL

Legally and practically the publisher—and, acting for the publisher, the copyeditor—is obliged to be alert for possible libel. Although the contract signed by the author supposedly guarantees the publisher that the manuscript contains no libelous material, suits for libel are directed at both author and publisher. Hence the copyeditor must be the publisher’s watchdog, alert for possible derogatory, purposefully harmful statements made about living people or, in the unusual case, about a dead person if descendants could claim consequent willful injury to themselves.

The problem of libel does not show up often, but when it does, it is serious. One fine manuscript about pre–World War II Communists in the United States had to be scrapped because the author refused to delete the names of certain people listed as members of Communist-front organizations. The copyeditor signaled the problem, and a lawyer engaged by the publisher to vet the manuscript (examine it for libel) declared that the people named could sue for libel and probably would, being litigious types. The expense and effort involved in attempting to prove the accuracy of the statements, a traditional defense against a claim of libel, were a price that the press decided it could not afford, although the interests of truth and justice might have been served thereby. Most publishers would make the same decision in such a circumstance.

In another case an author included a derogatory account, based on oral descriptions given him by persons claiming to be witnesses, of an incident involving a traveler in Africa. The traveler declared that the account in the book was libelous and threatened suit. The case was resolved out of court by the publisher’s agreeing to print a public retraction and to alter the supposedly libelous statements in all copies of the book still in stock.

Here a more careful check of sources, and particularly identification and attribution of the source for the story, might have saved the author and the publisher embarrassment, but any derogatory, possibly damaging statement deserves a copyeditor’s careful scrutiny—of both the author’s intent and the reliability of the sources.

INDISCRETION (BIAS)

What may be called indiscretion is not so serious as libel. Court action is not likely to result from it. But an injudicious remark may cause whole classes of potential readers to become alienated, mistrustful of the author, inclined to dismiss the book, or determined to criticize the author and publisher. Here we need to explore the area of biased language—a delicate, important, and ever-changing problem in our society.

In a book of articles by various authors, one author, an Anglican, took a nasty sideswipe at Catholics. This dig should have been eliminated, since it was tangential to, really distracting from, the general argument and would alienate readers who might otherwise be interested in the author’s thesis. There is of course no harm in indicating one’s own religious belief, but it is sensible to be tolerant in print. The Anglican professor was adamant. Later, a reviewer struck out at this very comment, thus damaging the potential of an entire book because of a single sentence.

This suggestion is not meant to advocate disguising wolves in sheepskins. Writers must not be advised to conceal their points of view; rather, they should be encouraged to state clearly their personal position or bias, when relevant. What the copyeditor eliminates are tangential, irrelevant slurs that may arouse a reader’s distrust needlessly. It is surprising how many of these show up in manuscripts.

On another front sexism is deplored by a large constituency of potential readers. An author may flaunt his masculine qualities if he pleases. More frequently, however, missteps are taken unwittingly, vestiges of former attitudes:

The forklift operator, a woman, was unable to control the jamme...