Tag Archives: free resources

Resources round-up: Non-book formats

Welcome to this round-up of resources compiled by the CIEP. This time, we look at working with non-book formats, from board games to corporate communications. We have divided our picks into:

  • free CIEP resources
  • one great book
  • blogs and websites.

Free CIEP resources

A dive into the archives of the CIEP blog gives you a taste of the strange and wonderful formats that can be edited, including multiple-choice questions (there’s even a new free fact sheet about this) and puzzles.

We all learn from applying editorial principles to content beyond books, and this enriches our editing if and when we edit books again – although who would blame us for deciding to edit puzzles forever? Rachel Lapidow, who wrote for us about how creating style sheets for role-playing games (RPGs) could shed light on fiction editing, describes how she used a style sheet from her own editorial training at the University of California, San Diego, as a basis for the style sheets she developed for the games she worked on. She recalls how her knowledge and practice came full circle: ‘One of my instructors from UC San Diego asked me to share one of my RPG style sheets for her to use in her class. It’s a bit surreal to imagine future copyeditors looking at a style sheet I created while they’re learning how to utilise this tool. But it’s also pretty darn cool.’

Corporate communications can be cool, too, of course. The CIEP blog has articles about corporate editing, business content, brand voice and how to work with SEO if you’re an editor or a proofreader.

One great book

Unlike the CIEP blog, our book pick isn’t free; however, it’s well worth its £30 price tag. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A guide for book publishing and corporate communications by Amy Einsohn and Marilyn Schwartz (read the CIEP review of this handbook and the accompanying workbook) is packed with useful information about what copyediting is and how to do it. It’s as relevant for copyediting business content as it is for copyediting traditional books, as the authors make clear in the introduction: ‘Copyediting is one step in the iterative process by which a manuscript is turned into a final published document (e.g., a book, an annual corporate report, a newsletter, a web document).’

The Copyeditor’s Handbook is written from a US perspective, but wherever you are in the world, if you’re working on corporate content it will help you. Just break out the sticky notes and spend time familiarising yourself with which of its chapters and sections you’ll need, as it’s dense and detailed.

Book marked with sticky notes

Blogs and websites

Words pop up everywhere, and where there are words, there is editing and proofreading (or there should be, for best results). Blogs from editing associations and dictionaries have covered formats as diverse as comic strips, association magazines and surveys.

More useful, sometimes, are articles on issues that are likely to come up when editing and proofreading non-book formats. For editors of websites and other formats that cite URLs, there’s practical advice on taming messy URLs from the Chicago Manual of Style, and information on how web design and branding choices can affect a reader’s ability to access text from ProCopywriters.

Working with contributing writers can be a challenge in business editing. Alison Harmer offers ten tips for keeping corporate communications on track; and June Casagrande makes a convincing case for using plain language, just in case you’re dealing with contributors who are fond of writing in a flowery manner.

As a general principle, if you’re editing beyond traditional books, make sure you look beyond traditional editing blogs. The Web Accessibility Initiative is excellent. The extensive ProCopywriters blog is absolutely free, written by people who write for a living and want to showcase their skills, and gives great tips on areas such as structuring online content, cutting fillers in writing and tone of voice that will be particularly useful if you’re editing business content.

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.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: comic books by Eric Mclean on Unsplash, book marked with sticky notes by cottonbro studio on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

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

Resources round-up: The publishing process

Welcome to this round-up of resources compiled by the CIEP. This time, we look at how books are made. We have divided our picks into:

  • Free resources from the CIEP
  • Books
  • Glossaries
  • Articles

Resources round-up: The publishing process

Free resources from the CIEP

Forgive us for leading with our own resources, but some of the free fact sheets on the CIEP’s practice notes web page provide a useful overview before we delve into the details of how books are made. ‘Anatomy of a book’, which describes the different parts of a book, is a good place to start. After that, you might want to explore the book-making process with ‘The publishing workflow’, supplementing that with the ‘Good editorial relationships’ infographic. Finally, ‘Proofreading or copyediting?’ covers which type of editing happens at different points in the creation of a book.

Books

These books aren’t free, but you can read free reviews of some of them by members of the CIEP, which might help you decide which are worth investing in.

Books about the publishing process

Two major editing and proofreading books – Butcher’s Copy-Editing (4th edn, Cambridge University Press, 2012) and New Hart’s Rules (2nd edn, Oxford University Press, 2014) – contain overviews of the publishing process. You might already have these volumes, so see what gems you can find within.

Inside Book Publishing by Giles Clark and Angus Phillips (6th edn, Routledge, 2019) covers the processes of traditional publishing in more detail. And to really dive into the subject, reach for the Oxford Handbook of Publishing, edited by Angus Phillips and Michael Bhaskar (OUP, 2019). Since this was reviewed by a CIEP member, a cheaper paperback version has been published.

If you’re coming to book production from a self-publishing point of view, the Writers’ & Artists’ Guide to Self-Publishing (Bloomsbury, 2020) could be helpful. Read the CIEP review for more.

The parts and people that make up the books

From a book’s blurb to its index, the different parts of a book have been explored in recent publications that are as entertaining as they are fascinating. For more recent bookish books, read our end-of-2022 round-up blog.

To add to these, get a copyeditor’s experience in The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller (Chicago University Press, 2016), and hear from a lexicographer about how dictionaries are made in Word by Word by Kory Stamper (Pantheon, 2017).

Woman in a bookshop reading a book

Glossaries

Introducing ‘Publishing terminology explained’, Penguin Random House says: ‘Publishing shouldn’t be a mystery and that’s why we’ve pulled together an A–Z list of terms that we use in our business to help you navigate conversations and become familiar with how a publishing team operates.’ The CIEP has also written a free glossary of editorial terms.

Articles

Articles by and for the self-publishing industry excel in discussing how books are made. Recent examples include: ‘Why prologues get a bad rap’ by Tiffany Yates Martin on Jane Friedman’s website and ‘When should you have a table of contents and an index in your book?’, a TwitterChat run by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). You can rely on ALLi to really drill down to the intricate details that self-publishing authors might not realise they need to think about before the process starts.

However, one element that most authors will consider is the cover of their book. Cover designer Jessica Bell wrote articles recently on different aspects of this. For Jane Friedman, she discussed ‘The key elements of eye-catching book cover design’, and for ALLi she wrote about ‘Indie author book cover design: what works in 2022’. From ALLi you can also discover what really doesn’t work, in the TwitterChat ‘How a bad cover can ruin book sales’.

Last but never least is indexing. Indexer Geraldine Begley took to the AFEPI Ireland blog with ‘Indexing: An introduction for the curious’ which answers every question about indexing you can think of, including ‘Can’t a computer do that?’ (‘No’), and ‘Do I have to read the whole book?’ (‘Yes and no’). For anyone considering entering this interesting profession, or simply interested in what indexers actually do, this is indeed a great introduction for the curious.

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.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: laptop and notebook by Maya Maceka on Unsplash, bookshop by Alican Helik on Pexels.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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