Tag Archives: copyeditor

Overcoming perfectionism

In this post, Harriet Power discusses some ways of thinking that editors and proofreaders can use to disentangle themselves from the pursuit of perfectionism.

Many of us editors and proofreaders are perfectionists. I’m one of them. But while I think we should care about our work and that high-quality work is important, the trouble comes when this shifts into beating ourselves up over our mistakes, or spending extra unpaid hours on a job to get it just right, or feeding the sense of inadequacy that comes from imposter syndrome.

Here are some of the ideas and ways of thinking that have helped me to relax a bit and become less beholden to perfectionism.

Humans make mistakes

We all make mistakes: it’s just a human trait, and that’s OK. In fact, it’s an important part of how we learn: by making mistakes through trial and error, we learn how to do better next time. (One of the worst mistakes I ever made in-house was to send a book to press without the author’s name on the front cover. WHOOPS. Thankfully the author accepted my heartfelt apology, and it wasn’t too big a deal for the publisher because it was a school textbook where the author’s cachet was minimal, but you can be sure I learned my lesson from that.)

Linked to the idea that we all make mistakes is the fact that as (human) proofreaders and editors, we can’t catch everything. Some things will inevitably slip through the net.

This is something that the publishing system acknowledges. It’s why there are so many eyes on a book: the copyeditor isn’t expected to catch everything, and neither is the first proofreader, and so on. If a human could do a ‘perfect’ proofread, and a typesetter could do a ‘perfect’ markup, then we wouldn’t need three or four or even five proofreading rounds.

I’ve worked on school textbooks in-house where there were so many pairs of eyes on them: a development editor, a copyeditor, reviewers, the authors, in-house colleagues, proofreaders, and there’d still be reprint corrections. At first this was dispiriting, but the fact it kept happening helped me to realise that mistakes are just inevitable and perfection is impossible.

Publishers aren’t paying for perfection

Publishers usually have to compromise on quality in some way and they do this consciously. They choose not to pay for a separate development editor and copyeditor, they squash the schedule, they cut budgets: they choose to make a book that is OK, or even good, but rarely perfect.

Often there’s just not the budget to pay for the extra work that would elevate the book to the next level, and I think publishers realise that for the majority of books, those extra hours aren’t worth the investment anyway. Because readers (generally) don’t demand or expect perfection, so it’s not worth the time, effort and money that it requires.

So if the publisher isn’t shooting for perfection, then you shouldn’t feel you have to either.

This wonderful article by Jeff Reimer puts it much better than I can, and is well worth a read.

A project is simply a project, neither a sacred trust to better the world nor a consecrated burden the publisher has placed on their shoulders to ensure the book is a masterpiece. A job is a job is a job.

Readers are more forgiving (or less observant) than you think

Most readers are going to forgive or not even notice a few slips here and there, like the odd typo or clunky sentence or stilted line of dialogue.

I’m not saying that these things don’t matter at all – they do, and lots of them can accumulate to break a reader’s immersion in the novel, or make the how-to guide harder to read and understand. But a few slips here and there really aren’t the end of the world. Readers generally care more about the bigger picture, like whether the story’s any good or whether the text gives them the information they need.

This is something I’ve noticed when reading non-fiction books. Some of them have what I’d call significant flaws – issues that I’d try to fix as a development editor – like unnecessary waffle and repetition, unclear examples, etc. But these books still do hugely well and get 4+-star ratings on Amazon.

Maybe a good analogy here is a musical performance. A hard but important lesson to learn as a musician is that individual mistakes genuinely don’t matter (and half the time the audience doesn’t notice them anyway) – what matters is the overall performance. I’ve done performances where I’ve completely fallen off the tune, played bum notes, forgotten the chords and more, and people still come up afterwards and say ‘that was amazing!’ I think the same is true of reading a book: it’s the overall experience that matters. So don’t sweat too much over the small stuff.

Authors are allowed to write the books they want

This is something it took me a while to accept once I started working with indie authors, because previously I’d just been working in educational publishing, and educational publishers will usually intervene and rework a textbook if the author’s done a bad job (or has simply failed to write to the brief). But I think educational publishing is something of an outlier here and often it’s important to remember that it’s the author’s book.

When I first started doing development edits for indie authors, I think I had a tendency to go overboard: to try to make the book ‘perfect’ and in doing so bombard the author with tons of comments and things to fix. But I suspect this just overwhelmed them and I was asking for too much from them. So now I try to remember to rein my suggestions in. Because I can still help an author to make a book better, even if it’s not going to be perfect, and that’s OK.

The book is not (just) your responsibility

It’s the publisher’s responsibility, and the author’s, and the proofreader’s, and the typesetter’s, and so on. You don’t have to carry the weight of ‘perfecting’ the book on your shoulders alone.

Editing is subjective

If you give a manuscript to five different editors, you’ll come back with five different edits. This truism is something a lot of us freelancers hear without being able to witness it first-hand, but it’s something I’ve actually seen while working in the CIEP information team. If three of us in the team review a proof, we’ll all comment on different things. I don’t think that makes us better or worse editors than each other – it’s just that editing is subjective and we all notice different things.

The corollary to this is that we can’t all notice everything.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses

This is another way of looking at the idea that we can’t all pick up on everything. Every editor and proofreader will have some things they’re better at than others: that’s just a part of being human. We can’t be perfect, great or even good at everything.

I’m not great at the intricacies of grammar, I don’t know enough about the self-publishing process, and I really need to organise and formalise my workflows better. These are all things I’m slowly working on, but in the meantime I try to play to my strengths and do a decent-enough job otherwise, and make peace with the fact that I simply can’t be brilliant at everything. (And the positive feedback that I receive suggests that my clients don’t expect me to be brilliant at everything and don’t care that I’m not.)

Even regular people deserve to make a living

This freeing idea comes from Jennifer Lawler, who wrote this short post on LinkedIn about imposter syndrome. Never forget that even ‘regular’, far-from-perfect people (i.e. the majority of us) deserve to make a living.

Once I embraced the idea that I didn’t have to be special in order to deserve not to starve, it freed up a lot of mental bandwidth to do the work to the very best of my ability and not fret otherwise. Letting go of the idea that I have to somehow be A-MAZING all the time actually allows me to have a more realistic perspective on my abilities and to (so ironically) do better work.

I can’t claim to always follow my own advice, but I hope some of these ideas will help you if, like me, you think it’d be healthy to disengage somewhat from your perfectionism. If you’ve found other strategies that work for you, please share them in the comments!

About Harriet Power

Harriet Power develops and copyedits nonfiction books and educational materials. She is a commissioning editor for the CIEP information team, and a Professional Member of the CIEP.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
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Photo credits: header by Ann H on Pexels, woman reading a book under a tree by Pramod Tiwari on Pexels, sign saying wisdom with perfectionism crossed out by geralt on Pixabay.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Flying solo: Know your place!

What’s the job?

What work are you being hired to do? A heavy language edit? A light-touch edit? A proofread or a proof-edit? You need to know, so don’t be afraid to ask if it’s not clear from the information initially supplied. If you don’t know what you’re pricing for, that’s bad for business.

Do you know if you’re expected to carry out multiple rounds of editing for your fee? Your contract, whether it’s your own or your client’s, needs to spell this out. If there’s no formal contract, you still need to know so get it in writing in an email at the very least.

What has the file been through before it gets to you?

This is important to know because you need to understand what you’re getting yourself into. It’s good business sense to provide your estimate based on facts, not assumptions, so do ask what you’ll be getting, and get specific answers.

If you’ve never worked with pre-edited files before, you are in for a shock when the first one lands in your inbox, and you are quite likely to rush to the CIEP forums asking what all those colours and links are, and whether you can delete them (no, you can’t – you’ll be adding to them, actually).

If you’re working directly with an author then you’ll be getting the raw files. But what’s their story? What software were they produced in? Word? What version? (A lot of people are still working in really old versions of Word – be alert!) Something else? OpenOffice? Scrivener, maybe? Can your computer handle that? Google Docs? Can you handle that?

Is it as ‘simple’ as a file produced on a Mac being edited on a PC? Are you aware of the type of problems that might arise, and do you have solutions – or do you know where to look for them?

If it’s an academic text, has the author used referencing software and left the links live? What are the implications for you? Have you allowed enough time in your schedule to deal with them, and costed it all into your fee already?

What’s the workflow?

As I draft this, I’m in negotiation with a new client, who has asked me to provide cost and time estimates for a book. I got the subject, the title and the word count.

So I asked how he wanted author queries dealt with. Resolve them all directly with the author? Provide queries in comments bubbles, return the file and call it good? Send the edited full manuscript to the author for approval and query resolution, then get it back for a second round of editing?

You can see how each possibility has time implications, and therefore cost and scheduling implications.

Knowing the workflow that’s expected is a critical element in knowing how to price a job, and knowing whether it will fit into your schedule or not.

Deadlines matter

Yes – I also asked that client about deadlines. He’s a packager, so he needs to meet the publisher’s schedule for print-ready files, and therefore I must be able to meet the packager’s deadline to give him enough time to do his own work after I’ve finished, and to produce those print-ready files by the due date.

You’re not going to get repeat business if you miss deadlines.

If you’re running late, that puts additional, unwarranted pressure on the people who follow you in the process – typesetters or designers, proofreaders, authors, collators, printers, ebook producers, marketers – to make up the time you lost. Or it simply delays publication.

Some academic books are timed to come out just before major conferences, or for the start of the academic year, and simply cannot be late.

You need to be sure when you accept a job that you know what it entails and that there really is space in your schedule for it. Misplaced optimism is not your friend.

What’s going to happen to the file after you’ve done your editing?

This is important so that you produce what the client needs from you. It’s not good business to do anything else, is it! But do you make sure you actually know?

If the file is going off for layout or typesetting, and it’s not already been through pre-editing, do you need to use styles or tags to let the typesetter or designer know what to do? That’s fundamental information you need to know before you start work, or you risk producing a file that can’t be used by the people who follow you in the production schedule.

If the file is going to be an ebook, have you formatted according to the platform’s specification? If you’re to produce a print-ready PDF, did you know you need to embed the fonts in the Word file before making the conversion, so that the PDF will print correctly?

Communication and handover documentation

Knowing your place in the publishing process means, too, that you’ll understand what kind of handover documentation you need to produce, and it will, in fact, inform all your communication with the client and/or author.

For instance, do you know whether the publisher expects the author to be the sole proofreader, or will a professional proofreader also see the text? The author will need the style sheet and the word list every bit as much as the proofreader.

Therefore, if you have direct contact with the author, be sure to send that handover documentation, and to tailor it. Some of my publisher and packager clients want a list of special sorts, and tag codes. A proofreading author won’t need those, and might be rather confused to receive them – so don’t just send to the author what you send to the publisher. Provide excellent customer service – put yourself in their shoes, remember.

And, from another point of view, if you’re a proofreader, do you ask for the style sheet and word list if it’s not offered to you? They will exist if the text was copyedited by an editor who understands their place in the publishing process. Don’t just start grumpily compiling your own if you don’t need to! You might find that seeing the copyeditor’s decisions makes your proofread a bit less difficult.

Does your client actually specify how handover should be done? I have one client who provides a file for me to complete; others let me do things my own way. Some clients want the editor to provide running heads, others don’t. When you start on the job, make up a checklist of everything you need to return. Don’t leave it until the end, then discover the hard way that you’ve overlooked something in the rush.

Final thoughts

Understanding the publishing process, even in outline, means you understand your place in the scheme of things, and therefore the value that you bring. You can enhance your value by being smart about ensuring you’re fully briefed on what the work is going to be, and how it’s going to arrive, what the expected outputs are, and by when.

Copyeditors and proofreaders are links in a chain, not the tail trying to wag the dog.

About Sue Littleford

Sue Littleford is the author of the CIEP guide Going Solo, now in its second edition. She went solo with her own freelance copyediting business, Apt Words, in March 2007 and specialises in scholarly humanities and social sciences.

About the CIEP

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Photo credits: header image by DS stories on Pexels, woman working on a laptop by Vlada Karpovich on Pexels, planner with two pens on top by 2H Media on Unsplash.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Copyediting and translation editing: What’s the difference?

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Gwenydd Jones, an experienced translator, introduces us to the field of translation editing and considers how it shares similarities with copyediting.

I became a freelance translator in 2009 while I was still completing my first master’s degree. As the early ‘translation editing’ orders started trickling in from clients, it soon became apparent that editing was being used as a very loose term. In fact, I’d receive all sorts of requests to correct, edit, revise, review and/or proofread translations produced by others.

This initially confused me. But I soon figured out that, regardless of word choice, these clients were mostly asking for the same service: check the translation for accuracy against the original text, make sure the translation is idiomatic and grammatical, and then proofread it.

Where does copyediting come into this?

After promoting my services as a translator, editor and proofreader for some time, I eventually heard of a job called copyediting. I was intrigued. Here was another activity commonly referred to as editing that was in some way different to the editing work I was used to.

There was nothing else for it: I joined the CIEP and signed up for the Copyediting 1 course to figure out what it was all about. In this article, I’ll share with you some things I discovered about the similarities and differences between translation editing and copyediting.

What’s the right word to use for translation editing?

The ISO 17100 Translation Services standard defines the terms translation, revision, revise, proofreading and final verification. It identifies each one as a different task in the process of producing a quality translation.

Of these jobs, the reviser is the one who checks the translation for accuracy, idiomaticity, grammar and related issues. So, while the word editing is regularly used in the translation world to refer to this task, in this article, I’m going to refer to revision and the reviser.

Similarities and differences between copyediting and revision

Without further ado, here are some of my thoughts about what the copyeditor and the translation reviser have in common, and where the similarities end.

1. Role expectations and skillset

Both the copyeditor and translation reviser may have a broad set of skills and offer writing and proofreading services. However, being a copyeditor can be a standalone job, while revisers are normally translators by trade, with translation clients generally viewing revision as a subskill.

Translators tend to have language qualifications and often a postgraduate translation qualification like the DipTrans or an MA in translation studies. If they’ve been properly trained, they’ll know how to edit and proofread their own work to a reasonable standard. But most translators probably won’t have received specialist training as copyeditors or proofreaders.

This means their skill set is different to that of a copyeditor, even though they perform some aspects of copyediting as part of their job.

2. Knowledge of punctuation and style

Both copyeditors and translation revisers may be asked to follow a house style. It’s my impression that this is more likely to be the case for copyeditors. Also, while some revisers are very well versed in the different style guides, overall, the expectations regarding breadth of knowledge of style are lower for a reviser than for a copyeditor.

This is also true of punctuation knowledge, which is sometimes terribly lacking in translators. This expectation I mentioned in point one, that a translator knows how to edit and proofread, is problematic. In my experience of teaching early-career translators, many of them don’t have professional knowledge of the rules of punctuation. This is often reflected in the readability of the final text, with misused semicolons and commas placed where the translator thinks they might take a breath.

3. Respect for the creator

Both copyediting and revision involve texts created by other people. In copyediting, you have to respect the writer. In revision, you have two creators to contend with: the writer of the original text and the translator.

In the CIEP Copyediting 1 course, it was underlined that the copyeditor should be respectful of the writer’s voice and their decisions. This is true even if the copyeditor doesn’t necessarily like or agree with them.

This is very similar to what a good translator should do. When transferring the original text (source text) into the new language, the translator has a duty of loyalty. This means they should respect the writer’s choices. When translating, it’s very easy to try to ‘improve’ on the source text. The translator can easily stray into editing and even rewriting.

The reviser has to think about both the writer and the translator. They have to check the translation against the source text to make sure it’s accurate, and change it if it isn’t. But they also have a professional duty to respect the translator’s choices as long as they’re correct and appropriate. Just like the copyeditor, the reviser doesn’t have the right to change the translation on the basis of personal preference.

4. Error elimination

The reviser’s job is to eliminate errors in the translation but not in the source text. While revisers may notify the client of mistakes in the source text, they’re not expected (or paid) to do it. This is very different to the copyeditor’s task, where correcting the writer’s mistakes is a key part of the job.

Sometimes, the source text is poorly drafted and hasn’t been edited or proofread before being sent for translation. This can be very challenging for the translator and reviser. Do they carry errors over into the translation? How much can/should they change in the translation when the source text is poor? And how much are they being paid for all this extra work?

If a copyeditor is involved in the process of creating the original text, many of these problems will be eliminated. This reflects how crucial the copyeditor’s role is in the production process for texts that are going to be translated. Imagine the financial impact of omitting a copyeditor for a badly written text that then gets translated into ten languages.

5. Reader on the shoulder

Copyeditors and revisers are part of a process designed to serve a figure they’ll probably never meet: the reader. Both roles involve making decisions with that person in mind. The difference lies in the knowledge the reader is expected to have. Translation isn’t just about changing languages. The text is also going to be presented in a new cultural context.

The original writer will have created their text with a ‘local’ reader in mind. They would have expected this reader to have certain cultural knowledge, like automatically knowing what Barça is. When revising a translation, it’s important to consider how the new reader’s cultural knowledge is different from that of the original reader. Additions and changes may need to be made to ensure that the new reader can understand the text.

6. Typesetting

The CIEP Copyediting 1 course explained that editors are expected to mark up the text to help the typesetter identify headings, figures and the like. The reviser isn’t expected to do this job. The brief (where one exists) is almost always to respect the formatting of the original text and change nothing in that regard.

This makes sense because the copyeditor of the original text, assuming there was one, has already done that work. In fact, if the client didn’t plan the translation properly, they may well have already completed the typesetting.

7. Impact of artificial intelligence

Both copyeditors and revisers have a range of software they can use to help them ensure quality, check spelling and grammar, and maintain consistency across the text.

Developments in artificial intelligence have led to new types of editing. Writers sometimes produce texts with the help of AI writing tools. These texts can then be edited and improved by a human.

In the world of translation, the same neural networks can be employed to produce a rough translation for subsequent checking and editing. The translator-cum-reviser is now expected to also offer a service called ‘machine translation post-editing’.

Within this panorama, the skills of both professionals require adaptation. A text produced by artificial intelligence presents different types of errors and challenges to a text produced by a human.

To sum it all up …

As a translator, I’ve found my explorations into the world of copyediting fascinating. If you don’t have much contact with foreign languages, I hope I’ve managed to share something here that’s piqued your interest in translation.

About Gwenydd Jones

Gwenydd Jones is an experienced translator, course creator and copywriter. She blogs about all things related to her field and offers courses for translators at The Translator’s Studio.

About the CIEP

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Photo credits: globe by Adolfo Felix on Unsplash, Arabic text by Serinus, woman reading by THIS IS ZUN, both on Pexels.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

A week in the life of a journal/series editor

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Margaret Hunter specialises in editing all sorts of texts for organisations and businesses. Here she gives an insight into the particular editing requirements for regular and repeated publications, such as journals and series, and shows how both editors and their clients can benefit from efficient editing practices.

Editing recurring publications: how to ensure consistency and edit quickly and efficiently

OK, so editing articles for a journal or series usually takes more than a week (usually two for mine), but here’s a snapshot of how I tackle this sort of work. I can, of course, talk only about the titles that I work on, and you may find yourself working to different requirements, but I hope I can pass on some useful general insights and tips that will help you edit recurring publications efficiently and quickly.

What do editors and proofreaders need to do when editing journals and series? Does it require a different approach from editing other types of text? With multiple authors (meaning multiple approaches to the text) how do you judge what to change and what to leave? What working practices, tools and tips help you to be efficient and accurate? How does that make you a valued editor that clients will want to use again?

In this article I’ll talk about the following:

Use repetition to your advantage
My process for editing journal articles
Process tips for working on journals and series
Should authors be made to sound the same or is it OK to keep their different writing styles?
Build in efficiency
A good mindset for working on recurring publications

Use repetition to your advantage

Working on a journal or a series, by definition, means repetition. A good place to start then is by asking yourself: I’m going to have to do this again, so what will make it easier or more efficient next time?

For me, it’s to break the job down into parts that need different attention, then use tools, checklists and separate editing passes to make sure each part meets the publication’s style, language and formatting requirements.

Crucially, each time I work on a recurring publication I add useful information to my notes and tools, such as solutions to new issues I’ve encountered, new style decisions, improvements to my process, new information from my client, or aha! moments from checking how something’s been done in previous issues.

My process for editing journal articles

To give you an idea of what’s involved in this sort of work, here is my typical workflow for a journal issue. Because the quarterly publication schedule is fixed, and I know roughly when to expect the files, I set aside a block of two weeks in my diary in advance so that I can concentrate on the journal work. Over those two weeks, I may do small jobs for other clients too if I can fit them in or they need to be done then.

On average it takes me about 25 hours to complete the following work for each issue. As well as copyediting, I also do the layout in InDesign, so my steps may be different from yours, or your client may have other needs.

Check I have everything I need
Basic clean-up (uncontentious changes such as spaces, dashes, removing unwanted formatting and styles)
Format/add fixed article information
Consistency and style edit, using PerfectIt, macros and Find and Replace
Full text edit, plus markup for layout
Resolve queries with authors
Final text to layout template
Send layout proofs to authors for approval
Finalise and package all to client
Make any adjustments wanted by client
Check if I have anything new to add to my notes

What’s your process? Identify the steps you do each time and decide the best order.

Process tips for working on journals and series

Check you have everything when you first get sent the files. Don’t wait until you need an urgent response on a query to check you have the author’s email address, or realise when you’re about to hand off the files that you need a better version of a figure image because the one sent is too small to publish clearly.

Identify your fixed information – details that are always presented in a particular way. Make a checklist or set up a template so that you don’t forget to do this each time – it’s easy to get caught up in the main text and forget the extras. You may have to collate the information from different places, such as the article itself and a separate submission document.

In my journal, there’s a fixed way of presenting information such as the abstract, keywords, author details and declarations of interest, and a fixed order to other chunks of the main text. For example, keywords start lowercase and are separated by commas; full author names are required in the main text, not just initials (but initials are OK in reference lists); and figure and table captions appear above not below them. The authors invariably don’t write it that way, plus they add information that’s never included (such as their postnominals and phone numbers), which I delete.

Get clarity on author contact. My journal client wants me to resolve queries directly with the authors (other clients may want you to go through them, so ask). Usually I’ll fix as much as I can myself and ask only for answers that will enable me to make sensible suggestions where I’m stuck. The authors don’t usually see the edited Word file, though I occasionally send it if I’ve made substantial changes and want to check I’ve retained their meaning, especially if the author is not fluent in English. In most cases, I simply send authors a PDF of the layout proof for approval, with marked queries or comments if needed.

Stay organised – you’ll have your own preferred system but make sure you know which files are originals, which you’ve worked on, which are awaiting answers to queries and which have been approved and are ready to go. I have a tight timeline, so I need to juggle articles that are at different stages in the process. I file things in different folders, and I like to stamp my PDFs as ‘Draft’ and then as ‘Approved’ once I’ve got the author’s go-ahead. I have boilerplate text ready for my emails to authors.

Should authors be made to sound the same or is it OK to keep their different writing styles?

Yes and no. It depends. As, of course, for most types of editing. There’s no definite answer here because it depends on your client’s editorial policy and what type of publication it is. The client may be happy with, or positively encourage, different writing styles – even different versions of English and different punctuation within the same title. Or they may want you to edit so that the authors’ text is changed to conform to the organisation’s particular style or voice.

It’s common with the journals and series I work on to have authors from different countries. That’s interesting! But it also means I need to know how to deal with different writing styles, different conventions on presenting references (macros help!), different tones of voice. That means keeping working on building up my editorial judgement.

In my journal example, I often change quite a lot of what an author has written, but mostly to correct basic grammar and to make it comply with the client’s style requirements. I don’t query these changes with the author. Here are some examples:

spellings, hyphenation, punctuation and capitalisation (eg removing serial commas; lowercasing job titles)
style formats (eg removing superscript from ordinal numbers; changing format of references and citations)
how italic/bold/underline are used (eg bold not italic for emphasis).

I also edit for language choice – either specific language the client wants to use/avoid or language that I think is outdated or unwise. Examples are not describing people by their disease/condition and choosing more conscious options to replace sexist and racist wording. I will usually query such changes with the author, or at least flag them up at proof stage and explain why I’ve made the change.

Build in efficiency

If you’re working on a recurring publication, you’ll probably gain some natural speed and efficiency from familiarity – just by doing the steps time and again. But you can speed that up by building in efficiency from the start, and keeping it topped up.

Also, if you work for lots of different clients, as I do, all with different requirements for their documents, it can sometimes be hard to get back into that headspace at the start of a job. Is this the client who likes to capitalise job titles, or is that the other similar organisation …?

Here are some techniques I use to build editing efficiency and speed. That helps me because it makes my task easier and uses up less of my time. But it also makes me valuable to my clients, because they know they can rely on me to produce consistent work.

Checklists

Create and maintain checklists, for example to check you have all the required content, for the editing tasks you do each time, and for any additional process steps, such as getting author approval or compiling lists of queries and answers.

Project style sheet

Don’t rely on a client’s house style guide. Build your own project/client style sheet and keep updating it as you work. If the client’s house style is lengthy (as some are) you can pull out the main points into your style sheet as a quick reference point. If their house style is meagre or outdated (unfortunately quite common!) use your style sheet to start filling in the blanks and recording the latest decisions. I sometimes forget what decision I’ve made during a job, never mind a couple of months later when the next issue arrives, so I’m thankful when I’ve kept good records.

PerfectIt

As well as your own project style sheet, create a PerfectIt style sheet for that client/publication and run it before you do the full edit. It’s much easier than trying to remember all the specific style requirements yourself each time. You can build in their particular spellings, punctuation, capitalisation, and so on.

Separate passes

Use separate passes for different tasks. It’s usually more efficient and accurate to check some specific things separately than rely on dealing with every style and language point as you come across it in the full edit. It helps make sure that these elements in the text are consistent, because you’re dealing with them all in one go.

For example, do a pass to check that figure and table captions are not only there but are formatted in the correct way (eg sequential numbering; colon, stop or nothing before number?). Do similar passes to check other elements of your text that need consistent treatment: references and citations; fixed information such as abstract, keywords, author details; URLs and hyperlinks; abbreviations and acronyms.

What are the elements in your text that will benefit from separate checking?

A good mindset for working on recurring publications

Get organised – it will speed up your work and help you be consistent.
Be adaptable – similar clients/publications can have very different requirements.
Build in efficiency – with recurring publications, style sheets and checklists are not just useful, they’re essential.
Ask questions – it won’t just help you do the work in hand; you may be able to plug a hole in the client’s style guidance, identify an inconsistency in how things are being done (especially if you’re part of an editorial team) or help improve the workflow.

Learn more to help you work on journals and series

Course: Efficient Editing: Strategies and Tactics
Course: Medical editing
Course: References
Article: Flying solo: Turn hindsight into foresight with checklists
Article: Is medical editing for you?

About Margaret Hunter

Margaret Hunter helps organisations and businesses write effective content and get it online or into print. You can find her at Daisy Editorial, in the CIEP Directory and on LinkedIn.

About the CIEP

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Photo credits: library by Patrick Robert Doyle on Unsplash, to do lists by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

What are queries, and how should an author respond?

What are author queries, and when are they raised?

Having submitted the final draft of their manuscript, a first-time author might think their work is done. But hold on, who are these new emails from and why all these questions? And what does AQ mean anyway?

Author queries (AQs) form an essential part of the editorial process and, as the name implies, require the active participation of the author. Yet it is a stage that often takes a first-time author by surprise.

The bulk of AQs will be raised at copyediting stage, but there will be another round at
proof stage.

The CIEP’s fact sheet on the publishing workflow explains where the copyediting and proofreading stages fit in.

Download The publishing workflow fact sheet

Queries at the copyediting stage

The copyeditor will be the first person to go through the manuscript in really close detail. They will be interrogating the text with a critical eye: not in the negative sense of finding fault or pointing out mistakes, but with the aim of making the text the best possible version of itself.

And this involves asking questions of the author – AQs or author queries – on anything the copyeditor can’t resolve themselves or on any changes they have made which need the author’s approval or confirmation.

A copyeditor will usually contact the author not long after they receive the manuscript, introducing themselves and explaining briefly what their role is. They may send a set of initial general queries. They will also give the author an idea of when to expect further detailed queries and when to send responses.

Queries at the proofreading stage

Once a text reaches proof stage, it’s looking pretty much like the final product. A first-time author might be tempted either to just admire the clean pages or, seeing their text in this new presentation, to embark on a series of changes.

But no, their role is to read and check, and to respond to another set of AQs, this time from the proofreader, who will be reading the proofs with a fresh and critical eye.

Again, the proofreader will make an initial contact with the author, introducing themselves, alerting the author to expect queries and giving a deadline for the author’s responses.

*Note that although we have assumed direct communication between the author and the copyeditor/proofreader, it may be that a project manager or desk editor is the point of contact between the parties during the editing and proofreading stages.

What might a copyeditor/proofreader ask?

Copyeditor

A copyeditor’s initial general queries may be establishing whether to refer to the main sections as chapters or units; asking the author to supply, say, missing concluding paragraphs to chapters X and Y; checking the author is happy for ‘data’ to be changed from singular (in the original manuscript) to plural (house style).

No two copyeditors will come up with the same list of queries on a given text. Typically, though, as they work through the text in more detail they will query if they:

think something needs more explanation
suspect something may be missing
consider the text may be assuming too much knowledge on the part of the reader
believe something could be better presented in a different way, such as a table or
a diagram
genuinely don’t understand what the author is trying to say
spot inconsistencies or ambiguities
identify any inherent contradiction
want advice on preferred context if there is repetition.

All the time, the copyeditor will be putting themselves in the place of the reader,
anticipating anything that might diminish the usefulness, accuracy or enjoyment factor
of the published text.

The copyeditor will also decide what not to query and will use their skills and expertise to make small-scale, non-contentious changes or corrections to spelling, grammar, punctuation, facts such as dates and so on themselves – guided by the five ‘c’s of copyediting to make the text as clear, consistent, correct, concise and comprehensive as possible.

Here are some examples of a copyeditor’s AQs:

‘Mouth movements’ and ‘Handwriting’ are now subheadings under ‘Movement’. Are you happy with this?
Robertson 2019 isn’t included in the references, but there is a Robertson 2018 listed. Please check dates/details and let me know any changes required.
The table isn’t mentioned in the text – where would it be appropriate to add ‘(see Table 1.1)’ (or similar)?
NICE guideline CG23 has been superseded by CG90 – please review and update this paragraph.
You use ‘mute’ here – do you mean ‘moot’?
‘There are six variables taken into consideration’: only five variables are listed/explained. Please check/revise to include the sixth.

Proofreader

The proofreader will be picking up on anything that was missed at the copyediting stage (assuming there was one) or perhaps on some unforeseen knock-on effects of solutions to earlier AQs.

They may also be querying a puzzling cross-reference, a mismatch between the wording of a chapter heading on the contents page and at the top of the chapter opener page, or perhaps suggesting a solution to an awkward page break or an overlong page.

Here are some examples of AQs on a set of first proofs:

‘More recent proposals to make divorce easier would also not be concerning to the New Right’ – is this as you intended? Why the ‘not’?
Please add in the AO marks breakdown as necessary (cf. Book 2).
Date of the presidential election was given as 1 November 2020. I’ve changed this to 3 November – please check/confirm.

How should an author respond to queries?

There is no set way or format for recording and responding to AQs. The copyeditor/proofreader will describe their (or the publisher’s) preferred system and set out clear instructions about how the author should log their responses. Authors are advised to follow those instructions closely!

The most usual systems are listed below, but as technology evolves so will new and possibly more refined and efficient systems emerge.

An author query in a Microsoft Word comment

AQs logged in Word’s Comments in the edited version of the manuscript.
AQs embedded in the edited version of the manuscript, formatted in a distinctive style/colour.
AQs logged in the Comments bar of a PDF, tagged ‘AQ:’ or ‘Author query:’.
Any of the above and a separate Word document with the AQs listed as a table.
AQs logged in a spreadsheet.

In each of the above, the author will add their responses as instructed. The author shouldn’t make any ‘silent’ changes to the edited manuscript itself.

Author queries in an Excel spreadsheet

Here is an extract from a table of copyeditor’s AQs, including the author’s response:

Reference	Query/Suggestion	Response
Sub-lexical sound–spelling correspondences	‘Jolliffe, … agree’: Is this just Jolliffe? (Or ‘Jolliffe et al … agree’?)	Could we change the whole line to: ‘Joliffe et al, in their guidance for teaching synthetic phonics in primary schools, agree:’

Here is an extract from a table of proofreader’s AQs, again with the author’s
responses included:

Reference	Query/Suggestion	Response
p35 – KT	Add ‘of identity’ after ‘aspects’?	Agreed
p35 – summary	Transpose points 6 and 7 to reflect order of content in the main text?	Agreed
p41 – top	Can this be updated now?	Done, on my notes
p43 – ‘Dual-heritage …’ / p24	These refs to ‘intermarriage’ and ‘intermarry’ are fine, and tally with the answer to KC3. However, on p24 ‘intermarriage’ is used (I think) in the other (and opposing) sense of the word. This could be confusing. I suggest changing p24 to read ‘marriage within their class/social group’ or similar. Please advise.	I agree, change the ref on p24, if anything it should be ‘intramarriage’, but I think your suggestion is clearer.

Authors need to be as clear as possible in their responses. They should also check, double-check and look for any knock-on effects before returning them. Follow-up queries on unclear or problematic responses can add time to what may be a very tight schedule. At proof stage, authors must also be aware of space implications. And, of course, keep to the deadline!

A final word

It can be daunting for an author to receive a list of questions on what they thought was a final version of their text, and especially so if the publisher did not inform them in advance about this stage of the editorial process.

Furthermore, the process of going through the queries one by one can be tedious in the extreme. It can also be time-consuming, so authors are advised to check their own schedules to allow for this.

That said, AQs can be the main form of communication between author and editor, the basis of a fruitful working relationship, and a useful record of decisions made for further down the line. And the end result will most certainly be a more polished version of that final manuscript.

Querying: CIEP resources for editors

Fact sheet: Good practice for author queries
Online course: The Art of Querying (coming soon)

About Philippa Tomlinson

Philippa worked in-house as a desk editor and a commissioning editor before going freelance. She has edited and proofread fiction, non-fiction, reference, travel writing and educational materials, now specialising almost exclusively in the latter. She has also worked as a bookseller, a library assistant and a teacher of English as a foreign language. Philippa is a Professional Member of the CIEP.

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Photo credits: letter beads by Linh Pham on Unsplash; question marks by Gerd Altmann
on Pixabay.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

What is subediting?

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Louise Bolotin* stepped sideways from journalism to subediting, and starting copyediting 16 years ago. In this article, she looks at what subediting entails – and how it is similar to but different from copyediting.

Here’s what I’ll cover in this article:

The types of editors involved in periodicals
The speed and interventionist nature of subediting
Adding headlines and rewriting text
The importance of house style, facts and legalities
Working as a subeditor
Transferring skills and learning new ones
The jargon of subediting

I’m often asked what’s the difference between copyediting and subediting: ‘Isn’t it all just editing?’ Well, yes. But also no – there is an overlap between subediting and copyediting, but they’re not the same because they require different skillsets. For one thing, we have legal responsibilities that go far beyond what a book copyeditor may need to flag for a publisher – more on this below.

After ten years as a journalist who writes, I stepped sideways into subbing. The move was almost accidental, but I quickly discovered I’d found my niche. For over three decades I have subedited magazines and newspapers, often in newsrooms but these days largely remotely (even pre-Covid).

Types of editor

A periodical has many staff with the title of editor. The actual editor is the boss of the publication and will have a deputy editor. Commissioning editors don’t edit, but commission features. The picture editor is in charge of selecting images. The production editor oversees the production – page layouts, liaising with the printer, and so on. Subeditors edit the copy and, importantly, we are generally the last line of defence as there are no proofreaders to give everything the final check.

Fast and substantive changes

Subs generally work very fast because deadlines are always on our back. There is no time to dither over where to place a comma or muse on whether a particular paragraph should be moved. We make these decisions at lightning speed. What we do is substantive, but much more than what a copyeditor might consider to be substantive – it is directly interventionist.

Once a journalist has filed their copy, it is out of their hands. I might check with them to clarify something, but beyond that, they have no control over what we do with what they’ve written. They’ll already be busy writing their next piece anyway, but if you want to know what happens when a journalist gets precious about their copy, just google ‘Giles Coren subs’. Subbing can be a thankless task – make an error and you get it in the neck from all sides. Get it right and it’s the journalist who gets the praise, even though you saved their skin by polishing their dreadful prose.

Adding headlines and rewriting

As well as cleaning up spelling, grammar and punctuation, I will write a headline for each story, crossheads and captions if there are photographs, although, unusually, the last paper I worked for carried no standfirsts. Some subs work as layout subs, meaning they will edit within page layout software such as InDesign or QuarkXPress. Subs working on online publications will have a good knowledge of SEO for headlines.

Subbing can involve rewriting lacklustre copy so it has more oomph, and a lot of cutting to fit the allocated column centimetres on the page. I’m a big fan of cutting – I like a lean article in which every word earns its place on the page. I will freely move entire sections around as the opening paragraphs of any news story or feature must involve the five Ws – who, what, when, where and why (plus the occasional H for how).

If it turns out the most interesting angle of the story is three-quarters of the way down, I will renose it and write a new headline. In a newsroom, I may send a story back if it’s not up to scratch and instruct the reporter to redo it quickly.

House style, facts and legalities

I keep the house style guide in my head and only look at the printed copy when absolutely stuck – often it’s quicker to ask a suitable colleague. Fact-checking is a key part of the job – as well as asking the journalist to confirm something, I’ll spend time on the internet scouring Wikipedia or googling, or thumbing the local A-Z. If we receive collects, I check copyright by doing an image search on the internet, as you can’t publish photos lifted off Facebook, for example.

And then there is the legal stuff. Almost all periodicals are signed up to the regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and its Editors’ Code. The Code covers issues such as accuracy and privacy, intrusion into grief, reporting suicide, reporting anything on children including sexual abuse, reporting crime and criminal trials, and the public interest.

Subeditors must ensure stories comply with the Code. For example, children in sexual abuse cases cannot be identified, so we will remove not only their name and age but anything else relevant, including factors identifying their abuser if those could identify the victim. With crime reporting, we ensure everything committed by a perpetrator is described as ‘alleged‘ and only alleged unless and until they are found guilty at trial. A sub will also have a good head for defamation issues and refer to McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, our legal bible.

Working as a subeditor

Until recently I worked the freelance shift at a local weekly newspaper as the sole subeditor. My typical day, in an eight-hour shift that generally included a lunchbreak consisting of a sandwich at my desk while I kept working, looked something like this: The paper had four localised editions that carried unique content specific to those locations as well as content common to all editions. On my shift, I would edit four different splashes and four different back pages, around eight pages of local stories for each edition and eight or ten pages of stories for all editions. There were six pages of sports, six pages of readers’ letters and anything else, such as WI reports and church news. On an average shift, I’d edit around 70 pages.

Transferring and learning

When I made the partial switch to copyediting books 16 years ago, it was a steep learning curve. I was baffled by a lot of copyediting lingo and spent a lot of time looking up terms such as folio, running head and solidus (what subs call a slash).

Subediting is a highly transferable skill; many of us also work as copyeditors for corporate clients because the skillset is ideal. The bible for subeditors is Subediting and Production for Journalists (2nd edn) by Tim Holmes and a good starting place for copyeditors thinking of taking training in subediting.

Subs’ jargon

Byline – credit for the journalist who wrote the story

Collect – a photograph submitted by a reader or someone in the story, such as a crime victim

Crosshead – a sub-heading

Deck – the number of lines in a headline, rarely more than three

Flatplan – the page plan that shows where every article and advert will go

Go off stone – go to press, also known as putting the paper to bed

NIB – a one-paragraph story, short for news in brief

Overmatter – excess copy that has to be cut

Renosing – rewriting the story because you found a better angle lower down

Sells – very short article descriptions on a magazine cover

Spiked – when a story gets dropped

Splash – front page story

Standfirst – the paragraph under the headline that summarises the story in a longer sentence

Strap(line) – introductory words above the main headline

Summing up

The daily life of a subeditor has a different pace to that of a copyeditor, but requires similar skills, including decision-making and having the right knowledge (or being able to track it down) to make changes where appropriate. Have you moved from one kind of editing to another? Or from working one format to another? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.

*Louise Bolotin died in October 2022; her contributions are much missed.

About Louise Bolotin

Louise Bolotin has worked as a subeditor since the late 80s, for household name magazines as well as local newspapers and online publications. Last year she developed a webinar on the basics of subediting and has begun offering bespoke training to niche publications. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP and says there is no truth in the rumour that she trained at the Slash and Burn Academy of Subediting.

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Photo credits: World Business by AbsolutVision on Unsplash; bundled newspapers by Pexels on Pixabay.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Ten tips for your first copyediting job

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By Liz Jones

If you’ve focused on proofreading until now, the idea of copyediting can seem daunting. For a start, you’ll probably be working on a Word document rather than a PDF or paper proofs, which means you’ve got far more freedom to make changes. But are you qualified to do the work? How sweeping should your changes be? And how can you tell the difference between what needs to be changed, and what can be left alone? Here are some tips for coping with that first copyediting job.

1. Don’t panic!

First, take a deep breath. You’ve got this. Proofreading and copyediting are on the same continuum – it’s all editing, just at a different stage of the process and therefore with a different emphasis. Copyediting is about preparing the raw text for layout, rather than applying the final polish before publication. (That said, you want the copyedited text to be as clean as possible.) For copyediting, just as for proofreading, it can help to approach the work by considering what can stay the same, rather than what needs to change. The author’s preferences are a good place to start, and if you’re working for a publisher, their style sheet can offer useful guidance on many editorial decisions.

2. Read the brief.

This is your best clue to how much you need to intervene. What is the client expecting? A publisher might offer very clear instructions on the extent and scope of the work, and how much they would like you to change (or not). But what if there is no brief? If you’re working for a self-publisher or a non-publishing business client, the brief might be open-ended or even non-existent. In this case, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the reader. Your job as copyeditor is to remove barriers to understanding the text, and make it ready for publication. Consistency, clarity and accuracy are key. Take a look at the CIEP’s FAQs on copyediting for more tips.

3. Assess the work.

You wouldn’t start to build a house without a plan, would you? (Well, I hope you wouldn’t.) It’s probably a smaller job, but likewise you shouldn’t start a copyedit before you’ve assessed the scope of the work. When you quoted for the job, you will have looked at what it involves and should have a good idea of the time it will take. But before you start the edit look again, and more closely. Work out a plan of action. How will you order the necessary tasks? Can you figure out the most efficient way to complete the work to a high standard? (This is crucial if you’re being paid a flat fee.) It can be tempting to get stuck in right away, but a little forward planning can save a lot of time later on. You might also identify problems you need to discuss with the client, such as missing material or a heavier-than-expected level of editing.

A good way to get an overview of the whole document before you start editing in detail is to style the headings first. (It’s also all too easy to miss mistakes in headings when you’re immersed in the main text.)

4. Clean up the text.

Assessing the text (see tip 3) will have given you a good idea of the tasks that can be batched and automated. Lots of editors choose to run PerfectIt at the start of a job, for example, to highlight inconsistencies. Macros (such as those by CIEP member Paul Beverley) can also help you identify things that need editing, and make the necessary changes more efficiently. Cleaning up the text before you start the language editing can help you focus on flow and readability with fewer distractions.

5. Build a style sheet.

One of the key tasks of a copyeditor (aside from actually editing the text) is compiling a style sheet – either starting from scratch, or adding to the one supplied with the job. This helps you as you progress through the edit, providing a point of reference for all the editorial decisions you make. It also helps the client, and eventually the proofreader, so they can understand your working and hopefully won’t arbitrarily undo your editorial decisions.

6. Consider working on the references first.

If the document you’re editing has a lot of references (and it might not!), it can help to work on these first. There are several reasons for this. First, this is another way of gaining insight into the main text before you start to read and edit it in earnest. Second, the references need to be consistent, so editing them all together can be more effective than dealing with them as they arise in relation to the main text. Finally, they can take a surprisingly long time to sort out, especially if you need to check them for accuracy and tidy up formatting. If you’ve got them sorted before you start the main bulk of the editing, you don’t need to worry about spending an unexpectedly long time on them at the end of the job.

7. Work through the text in order.

Although I know plenty of copyeditors who adore references (!), for me this is the fun part. Read through the whole of the text, and make edits as you go to ensure it is consistent, clear and accurate – as in tip 2. It’s a skilful balance between knowing when to leave things alone, and when to tweak things to improve the flow of a sentence, or to help the author express themselves more effectively. Question (almost) everything – but don’t spend too long doing it.

Some questions arise: What is the copyeditor’s responsibility, and what is not? How many times should the copyeditor read the text? The answer is usually ‘it depends’ – on the brief, on the budget, and on the schedule. Keep track changes switched on (unless your client’s specified otherwise), and be careful not to change the meaning of the text. If something’s ambiguous, query it. If a change is unarguable, and can be justified, go for it with confidence. You’ve been hired for your expertise, and your ability to interpret the client’s needs.

8. Query sensibly and clearly.

How you present your queries might be specified in the brief. You might write them as comments on the Word document, or as a separate list, or both. However you present them, try to ensure they are worded clearly, and politely. It can be tricky knowing what to query, but generally you will want to defer to the author on matters of fact or content that you can’t easily check and verify. If a meaning isn’t clear, this will also need to be queried. You might also flag up editorial changes where they deviate from the author’s preferred style to explain why you did something (such as changing gendered pronouns in favour of singular they/their). For more about querying, see the CIEP’s fact sheet.

9. Carry out a final check for consistency.

Many editors run PerfectIt again at this stage, which can help you weed out straggling inconsistencies. But how many times should you actually read the text? If I’m being paid enough, I read everything twice. Once for the edit, then once to check over what I’ve done. I often find things to improve on this second pass. However, if there isn’t the time or the budget to support an entire second read, I would certainly check over all my corrections to make sure I haven’t introduced typos or other inaccuracies.

Also, check your queries. By the time you finish editing, you might find that some of the answers are clear and don’t need to be referred back to the author.

10. Return the edited document(s) with care.

Don’t rush the return: get things in order, check the brief again to make sure you’ve dealt with everything, and make sure your covering email is informative and clear. As well as the edited text, send your queries and style sheet. Let the client know they can ask you if they have any questions about what you’ve done. Once you’ve submitted everything, invoice promptly, put the kettle on and look forward to the next copyedit! All jobs are different, but your confidence and efficiency will increase with each one.

Liz Jones has been an editor since 1998, and freelance since 2008. She specialises in copyediting and proofreading non-fiction, specialising in architecture, art and other practical subjects, as well as highly technical material. She is one of the CIEP’s information team, and is also a mentor in proofreading and copyediting.

Photo credits: Getting ready – Johny vino; planning – Glenn Carstens-Peters, both on Unsplash

Proofread by Joanne Heath, Entry-Level Member.
Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.