Castle Walls Editing

Tag: copy editing

  • Editing Is a Conversation

    Editing Is a Conversation

    Too often people view editing as a one-way service in which the editor “corrects” the author’s prose. To get the most out of the author–editor relationship, however, it’s important to remember two things:

    • Editing is a conversation.
    • Edits are suggestions.

    (Though general principles still apply, the following is geared toward the relationship between indie authors and editors. In traditional publishing the author will usually not communicate directly with the copy editor or proofreader.)

    The Conversation: Working Together

    The author and editor are partners working in service of the reader. This relationship is laid out beautifully in one of my favorite books—The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller. (I will never stop recommending this book!)

    The editor is there to help the author and to honor the author’s voice. As with any good conversation, this means that the editor must practice the art of listening so that they can hear that voice before they can edit effectively.

    Of course, editors also bring expertise that authors may not possess. This expertise includes adherence with style guides and dictionaries, awareness of inclusivity concerns, and knowledge of publishing standards.

    But, again, it’s important to remember that the author’s voice should always be honored, so if maintaining that voice and serving the audience means bending a guideline, then that’s what the editor will do. Style sheets exist in part to record exceptions to style so that they can be applied intelligently and consistently.

    If an author has a style preference, they should let their editor know, and authors should feel empowered to “push back” against their editor. I’ve put that phrase in quotes because, when pushing back, authors will usually be surprised by how little resistance they meet.

    Edits Are Suggestions

    Whether an author is reviewing a tracked change or a comment, the author does not have to accept that change or suggestion. The author is paying the editor for the service, so it’s advisable to consider the editor’s suggestions, but the author always has the power to reject an edit.

    If an author feels as though they’re fighting their editor every step of the way and arguing every change, then that’s probably a good sign either that they’re not ready for editing (which requires an openness to being edited) or that they’re working with the wrong editor.

    If the former, then the author may need to open themselves to being edited and remember that the editor is there to help. It’s easy to be defensive, but too much defensiveness can work against the reader.

    If the latter, then the author may need to rethink the relationship. A great author and great editor may not pair well for any number of reasons, and there’s nothing wrong with amicably parting ways.

    The Conversation

    Perhaps the most effective way to ensure that editing is a helpful conversation is to remember that it is a conversation. As with all conversations, politeness and respectfulness should be maintained at every stage, by both parties.

    Before Editing

    Sometimes an author–editor fit can be determined only by working through an edit, but authors can learn a lot about their editor by reviewing their website, social media posts, and listings in professional organizations.

    A sample edit shows an editor’s editing style (heavy, medium, or light), their ability to use basic markup functions, and their commenting style (a good comment should explain the issue, explain why it’s an issue, and offer a suggestion or resource).

    Email exchanges also indicate an editor’s professionalism, timeliness, and demeanor. Editors are sometimes open to video calls (though, of course, editors are notoriously introverted).

    During Editing

    The editor’s primary means of communication during editing is through tracked changes, comments, and the style sheet.

    While an editor will usually make silent edits to clean up such things as double spaces, spaces around returns, and straight quotes), these silent edits will be listed on the style sheet, and other edits will be tracked for the author’s review.

    This is part of the open conversation so that the author is fully aware of what the editor is doing and there are no surprises.

    Comments are essential for explaining edits, querying such things as continuity issues, and even offering the occasional “Well done!”

    Needless to say, an editor’s comments should never be condescending or mean spirited.

    The style sheet is a separate document that details general guidelines for editing, exceptions to style, a word list of proper nouns and manuscript-specific styles, a character list with character details (helpful to ensure such things as eye color don’t change during the course of the story!), setting details, and a timeline (a big aid for continuity concerns).

    After Editing

    When the editor returns the manuscript and style sheet, they will continue the conversation with an editorial letter (usually an email) covering the work. I’ve also been employing Loom to use video to add a personal touch and demonstrate such things as good practices for reviewing tracked changes.

    The conversation may continue if the editor will also be reconciling edits after the author’s review, and I always make it a point to encourage authors to send me any questions that arise while they’re reviewing the edits.

    The Ongoing Conversation

    It’s a beautiful thing when authors and editors work together to present readers with works that inspire, amaze, and take them to faraway places of wonder. Keep the conversation going, and make it a good one.

  • January Thanks

    January Thanks

    This January I tweeted daily thanks for helpful things in my editing world. The following tweets offer useful resources and provide insight into my editing life.

    I missed the first two days, so I’ll send a special thanks to authors everywhere and to The Best Punctuation Book, Period from June Casagrande, with honorable mentions to all the wonderful resources there simply weren’t enough days for. 

    (There’s also a pretty obvious typo in one of the tweets, so feel free to enjoy a little treasure hunt.)

    Here we go!

    And that’s a wrap. Just let me know if I can help with your writing projects. 

     

     

  • Training and Its Many Benefits

    Training and Its Many Benefits

    Professional associations such as the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) and ACES: The Society for Editing offer many resources that help editors excel in their work and run successful businesses.

    I particularly appreciate the access to quality training provided by these organizations, which offer courses at discounted fees to members. 

    Courses are generally either learn-at-your-own-pace (where you’re given access to the materials for a set period, typically six months) or instructor led (in which instructors deliver training materials each week for a designated stretch, providing students with weekly feedback on graded assignments).

    The EFA and ACES have also made free webinars available to members during the pandemic.

    The benefits of training are many:

    • Refresh your knowledge
    • Stay current with trends in the profession
    • Expand your editorial offerings
    • Get feedback from world-class professionals
    • Meet other editing professionals
    • Reinvigorate your enthusiasm for the profession
    • Fill gaps in your schedule in a positive way 

     

    Refresh your knowledge

    Most editing skills are picked up through hard-earned experience, and basic courses may seem below your current skill level. But even 101-type courses can fill a gap in your knowledge or cause you to rethink an aspect of your editing business.

    Stay current with trends in the profession

    Language is always changing, along with electronic tools, editing trends, and publisher requirements. Continued training keeps you current and enables you to incorporate new tools and fine-tune your processes.

    Expand your editorial offerings

    Proofreading is very different from copy editing, and copy editing is different from line editing, and line editing is different from developmental editing. Training lets you get your feet wet in new areas under the guidance of a seasoned professional.

    Get feedback from world-class professionals

    Your instructors are generally respected members of the editing community (and in my experience they care deeply both about the profession and about helping others). Learning from the best is never a bad idea.

    Meet other editing professionals

    Most classes contain forums where you can meet your classmates and learn from those at all levels. The editing community is wide and welcoming, and the fellow editors you meet will prove invaluable for sharing both knowledge and work opportunities.

    Reinvigorate your enthusiasm for the profession

    Learning something new almost always fires you with enthusiasm for putting your knowledge into practice. It’s easy to get caught up in the grind of job after job, and stepping back for a moment can remind you of what you love about editing.

    Fill gaps in your schedule in a positive way 

    For those running their own businesses, any downtime between jobs can feel like lost time and fill you with anxiety. Though there is never a shortage of marketing, accounting, or other nonediting work to tackle, training is a particularly satisfying way to bridge gaps between jobs.

    The following is a selection of courses I’ve taken from my professional organizations (and from the amazing Jennifer Lawler):

    Copyediting: Beginning (EFA)

    Copyediting: Intermediate (EFA)

    Copyediting: Advanced (EFA)

    Developmental Editing of Fiction: Beginning (EFA)

    Developmental Editing of Fiction: Intermediate (EFA)

    Developmental Editing of Mystery, Thriller, Suspense (Jennifer Lawler)

    Editing the Romance (Jennifer Lawler)

    Essentials of Conflict (Jennifer Lawler)

    Truby’s Masters Studio: Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy (Audio)

    How to Edit Marketing Materials with Savvy and Sense (ACES/Poynter)

    The Art and Science of Editing (ACES/Poynter)

    The Web’s Best Editing Resources (ACES/Poynter)

    Language Primer: Basics of Grammar, Punctuation and Word Use (ACES/Poynter)

    Writing Online Headlines: SEO and Beyond (ACES/Poynter)

    Getting It Right: Accuracy and Verification in the Digital Age (ACES/Poynter)

    Fundamentals of Editing (ACES/Poynter)

    Clarity Is Key: Making Writing Clean and Concise (ACES/Poynter)

  • What Level of Editing Do You Need?

    You’ve completed your manuscript and are eager to send it out into the world, but for your sake (and for the sake of your work) it’s important to determine the level of editing you require.

    The following are the four basic types of editing. (Definitions of the different kinds of editing can vary among publishers and editors, so it’s always important for you to clarify these terms and the kind of work an editor will do.)

    • Developmental (or Substantive) Editing
    • Line Editing
    • Copyediting
    • Proofreading

    Ideally, a manuscript would pass through all four levels of editing, but authors also have to consider their budget and make hard decisions about where to dedicate their resources. Asking the following questions is a good place to start.

    Have you walked away from your work?
    Setting your manuscript aside for a few weeks or even a month allows you to see it with new eyes. Let it breathe. You don’t want to submit it for editing and then find yourself wishing you could take it back for rewrites.

    Does it require a Big Picture look?
    If you need someone to address such issues as plot, character development, and pacing, then you’re looking for developmental editing. This isn’t the time to worry about typos. After all, you wouldn’t start painting your living room if you were thinking about knocking out a wall first.

    Are you ready to tackle it paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence?
    If you need someone to focus on clarity, flow, rhythm, voice, style, and readability, then you’re looking for line editing.

    Are you ready to get down to the nitty-gritty?
    If your manuscript is far along in the process and you need someone to address matters of spelling, punctuation, grammar, usage, and consistency, then you’re ready for copyediting.

    Does your manuscript need a last look?
    If you’re perfectly happy with your manuscript and need one last look to catch any typos, formatting issues, or anything else that was missed in previous steps, then you’re ready for proofreading.

    Determining your level of editing is the best thing for your manuscript and the best thing for your wallet.

    Let’s be honest, editing isn’t free, and you don’t want to waste money on proofreading if you’re going to do significant rewriting.

    If you’re still unsure about which level of editing you require, simply contact us and we’ll be glad to help you determine what’s best for your work.

  • Talk About Bleary Eyes

    While attending the George Washington University, I picked up extra scratch by proofreading patents for a law firm. Back in the early nineties, twelve dollars an hour seemed like a lot of money (though, being a college student, the firm might as well have sent my checks directly to the M Street bars).

    The gig entailed traditional proofreading, not the popularly held catch-all sense that can seemingly mean almost any kind of copy editing. The job was to proof already-printed patents against documents the law firm submitted to the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). I worked as part of a two-person team, taking turns reading the office copy while the other proofreader followed along in the printed patent. (In practice, I followed along about 90 percent of the time. Yes, I had the more difficult task, and no, I didn’t make a cent more for my efforts!)

    If the patent had already been printed, you might wonder about the point of proofing it. Would the patent be reprinted? No, but if the clients, who were billed for our services, thought the change important enough, an errata sheet could be filed with the PTO and permanently attached to the patent.

    Lest you’re thinking, “Wow, you must have gotten a sneak peek at some crazy-cool inventions!,” I can assure you that wasn’t the case. These were chemical and electrical patents detailing processes for such things as substrate application for computer chips. The patents were highly technical, and their proofreading often involved the reading of long chemical strings and formulas, along with such text features as superscripts and subscripts.

    Wait a minute. This was college. Shouldn’t I have been out kidnapping the rival school’s goat?

    The work had to be done in the law firm because the firm, for obvious reasons, wouldn’t allow client files to leave the office. So my partner and I would steal into the office at odd hours (usually Saturday or Sunday mornings), grab the files, and find an empty conference room to spend the next six or so hours performing the incredibly tedious work.

    And the work was tedious, but I credit it for helping me develop the mental muscles that allow me to concentrate for long periods of time. It’s common for people to see an error in text and say, “How could an editor miss this?” But that question presumes that the editor has had that bit of text and only that bit of text laid before him or her, when these instances are usually missed not because editors aren’t capable of picking up a specific error, but because of a lapse of concentration during the course of a long day of editing.

    This is why frequent breaks are so important. When reading text, the mental red flags that go up when something is amiss might very well not be raised if the editor is fatigued. If tired, editors can easily read right over something that would jump out at them if they were fresher.

    I can now look at all the work I did proofreading patents as training for my editing career, but I suppose the training would only have done so much good if I didn’t love the work as well. Even when proofing materials that were largely impenetrable to me, I loved finding errors, and while some patents were fairly clean, any problem that could go wrong at some point inevitably did. Missing lines or even pages of text. Words run together. Even an innocently introduced case of profanity. (Yes, I once caught the f-word in a patent.)

    One of the fun parts of the job was that, because we did off-hours work, almost no one at the firm knew who we were. We felt a bit like secret agents Mission: Impossible–ing our way into the office, knocking out our work, and getting the hell out of Dodge.

    Or maybe that makes it sound a bit cooler than it actually was. Maybe you wouldn’t think there was much cool about a job that involved making sure every little syllable was correct in a word like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. But I enjoyed it, and in many ways I miss the job that I will forever associate with a particular time in my life.

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  • Now That’s a Fire

    People love to point out other people’s mistakes. Sometimes this is done with an encouraging word and a gentle smile. More often, it’s done less kindly, and is perhaps accompanied by a pointed finger and raucous laughter (try tripping over a rug at a cocktail party sometime). Whatever the case, people generally feel a smug mixture of superiority and relief (Thank God that wasn’t me!) when someone else screws up.

    As a copy editor, I get paid to find other people’s mistakes. Diving into a manuscript and locating errors, seeing one red mark become two, five, ten, beyond count as the pages flip by, brings undeniable satisfaction. With every new mark, I experience a little charge.

    There are worse ways to make a living.

    Earlier today I came across a piece of publisher copy for a book I will not name. In the copy, a fire was described as raging through a residence, rendering the house “inhabitable.” That’s one hell of a helpful fire!

    I laughed, mentally pointing—and it was damned funny—but a part of me wanted to give that anonymous copy writer a friendly pat on the back and say, “Hey, we’ve all been there.”

    I suppose most people are protective of others in their professions, and the stark truth is that mistakes happen, even to the best of us.

    Once a mistake has been identified, it’s easy to circle it and isolate it and say, “How could you miss this? How could this happen?” The person saying this is usually not an editor but someone who, having found a goof, immediately believes himself or herself capable of having caught all the other thousands of mistakes in a document. (A point to be discussed at another time is that somehow the ability to read confers on nearly everyone the belief that that person is a writer or editor.)

    Unfortunately, even the best editors miss something from time to time, especially when someone is overworked, or not 100 percent healthy, or subject to all manner of distractions that can occur in an office.

    So, yes, mistakes happen. But as copy editors, we have to move forward and learn from these mistakes, adjust our processes if doing so can prevent similar mistakes in the future, and rededicate ourselves to achieving a perfection we can at least aim for, if not attain.