Editing vs. Proofreading

After class today I was thinking about the differences between our copyediting marks and our proofreading marks. My question: If we are using proofreading marks do we always use them in addition to the copyediting marks? For example, you couldn't use the proofreading mark alone to transpose text. You need the copyediting mark to indicate which text is to be transposed and then you can include the proofreading mark in the margin to indicate that something needs to be transposed on that line.

Comments?


I also did some googling, and the title link is to an article that differentiates copyediting and proofreading.

An ego boost for copyeditors

from THE INTERN’s blog Hail to the Copyeditor

“Copy editing is not for sissies. A good copy editor does not humor you. A good copy editor does not chuckle warmly at your tendency to misspell the names of foreign dignitaries or diseases and let it stand ’cause it’s cute. A good copy editor will kindly but firmly tell you that your phrasing is unclear, your language offensive, and your punctuation laughable. These people are frighteningly smart and thorough and have your manuscript’s best interests at heart and deserve all the love and respect in the universe.”

The Letter...

I am mortified that any company would send something like this out to its customers or the general public!!! I agree with Samantha in that I am having extreme difficulty simply copyediting, rather than tearing this piece apart and rewriting (something I had alluded to earlier when it came to editing papers). I'm truly frustrated because there are so many basic grammatical mistakes that it seems almost impossible to even distinguish a starting point!

Grammar News

The New York Times has a nice site called Grammar News, with links to articles, books, and blogs. Several items on the site are relevant to our topic of how, and how much, to edit. One in particular is “Let’s Kill All the Copy Editors” (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/01/magazine/l-let-s-kill-all-the-copy-editors-652691.html?ref=grammar), written by a manuscript editor at a university press. It stresses that editors and authors need to learn to cooperate.

Editing Within Different Mediums?

Reading the bit about “One Paragraph, Three Ways” was very interesting, as I had never thought about the importance of preserving the author’s style when editing. However I was wondering if copyediting in different mediums call specifically for different degrees of editing "heaviness". For example, it would probably be safe to assume that maintaining authorial style would be very important in a novel, and so a light copyedit would be used to revise the piece. But what about magazines, newspapers, or web pages? Are there any standards that are restrictive of the medium that the editor must work in?

When do I...

The text we read was interesting in that it made me come to better understand when to edit the text. During the first week of classes, I was honestly tempted to change the author's text. As the article stated, however, there are a large amount of questions that include how to continue the author's style. It brought me to thinking about the legality of editing it after we discussed the publishing process in class yesterday. How does the author get input in what changes are included when the publication goes to print after they receive the galleys?

Factual queries

I am curious about the copyeditor's role, if any, in addressing factual errors as opposed to "querying factual inconsistencies" as Einsohn mentions. (I assume the author's spelling Oe's name two ways is a "factual inconsistency.") Regarding your last post, it would have taken Memminger only a minute or two to check whether the UH editor was a he or a she, but if his piece was copyedited, should the copyeditor have checked this? If you are copyediting a piece that contains URLs, should the copyeditor be checking each URL?

I assume the copyeditor shouldn't spend to much time looking for factual errors. On the other hand, our editor sometimes recognizes errors of fact in my newsletter, for which I am very grateful!

Are copyeditors ever directed to check for factual errors, or particular kinds of factual errors under light, medium, and heavy editing?

19th Century British writing

I'm doing some reading for another class from Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (first published in 1851) and I came across the following passage that just made my wannabe-editor head spin.

He brings the greengrocery, the fruit, the fish, the water-cresses, the shrimps, the pies and puddings, the sweetmeats, the pine-apples, the stationery, the linendrapery, and the jewellery, such as it is, to the very door of the working classes; indeed, the poor man's food and clothing are mainly supplied to him in this manner.

The use of so much alternate spelling and hyphenations was a little overwhelming, and I honestly don't think 'linendrapery' is a word. It wasn't in any dictionary that I could find.

So, if we are ever called to edit an historical text that includes words that don't exist any longer (or that the author possibly made up?), do you let it stand?

Staff Hierarchy

After discussing the inter-workings of different editing staffs today, I began to wonder where and how certain people fit into the hierarchy. For example, I understood a literary agent to be someone who is proficient in editing skills; however, it seems as though this position is redundant and unnecessary. What is the real purpose of a literary agent, and how would one really be of use in an author-publisher relationship?

A Million Little Lies

I recently saw a documentary on James Frey and his controversial book A Million Little Pieces. I decided to do some research, and I found this review on A Million Little Pieces on amazon.com. It got me thinking, "Should editors be more careful (I guess you could say) about what they choose to publish?"

Amazon.com
News from Doubleday & Anchor Books

The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesn’t matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them.

It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor's policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher's relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey's repeated representations of the book's accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.

We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces. We are immediately taking the following actions:

We are issuing a publisher's note to be included in all future printings of the book.*

James Frey has written an author's note that will appear in all future printings of the book.* Read the author's note.

The jacket for all future editions will carry the line "With new notes from the publisher and from the author."

Interview with Gary Mawyer

Gary Mawyer is the managing editor of the medical journal Journal of Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing.

Pat: Gary, a message from an online scientific journal was recently sent to the UH-Manoa English department. Here are some excerpts from the message:

Every artist or author deserves a fair consideration to be published. S——— J——— I——— provides an efficient forum for publishing research and creative work from all disciplines. S——— has assembled an extensive and prestigious Editorial and Advisory Board.

This initiative is driven by an overriding passion to assist artists and authors to cope with the "publish or perish" reality that has been created by the policies of the academia and funding agencies. According to several surveys, a large majority of authors and researchers cite slow review process and publication delays in the current system as a major obstacle to their publishing objectives. Many have also expressed concerns about the fairness and integrity of the peer review process in traditional publishing. Some scholars have argued that there is a need to liberate the publication process for broader and fairer access.

S——— J——— I——— is the first global initiative that intends to accomplish this objective. We sincerely believe that artists and authors who have devoted months or years to a project, should not be shut out of the publication world simply because they did not follow some procedural or stylistic rules and guidelines or because their work did not fit in. All traditional journals have very rigid stylistic or procedural policies that unduly create artificial barriers and in effect retard innovation and creativity.

S——— maintains minimal procedural and stylistic rules, and accepts scientific and creative works that follow any style manual. A fair peer-reviewed evaluation system is used to select works for publication. S——— maintains a rapid electronic submission, review and publication process. Our capability for perpetual future accessibility and preservation is also extremely valuable to both authors and readers.

Gary: This sounds like a shady spinoff of a long-speculated theory about how to resolve the cliquishness of science publishing by having something like the "open journal" idea where researchers sort of post up their work rather than submitting it to an established institutional journal. Peer review and the editorial vetting of the material is the issue that has kept the open journal idea from meaning anything. Obviously I could swear I just recreated cold fusion and this could be done quite egregiously—and then be cited as a published finding—if I can find a way to turn it into a proper-looking cite without exposing the work to any physicists. So the riposte is, we'll have editors and reviewers.

And the next question is, who approves these editors and their reviewers—in other words, what keeps the scientologists and UFO nuts from being the "reviewers"? And suddenly we're heading lickety split back toward the establishing institutional journal after all, whose ancient cliques annihilate all but a select body of "the fit" who then Darwinianly rule the publishing in their field. But the open journal remains awful tempting, especially to outsiders, but also to investors because of its pay-to-publish or self-supporting fee structure.

It is an interesting subject and some general discussion of it would be valuable to would-be editors and writers because more and more of it is going to be encountered—and also because some pay-to-publish venues are well run and a good idea. There's a host of issues: intellectual property rights, what's a fair cost, is the venue providing an audience or not, and what's being claimed. Scholarly pubs are so much about job evaluations and ultimately tenure and advancement that I wouldn't recommend anyone to stray off the traditional track, but non-scholarly pubs can be a different matter.

website or Web site

I have seen the word website written in many ways; website, web site, Web site. The last in the list is to me the most awkward way of writing it out, but the AP style book says that it is correct, is in fact the only way to write it properly, since the word web is an abbreviation for World Wide Web. Still, a lot of newspapers, like the New York Times, for example, do not write it this way. I understand this could just be the preference of the paper, but what do you think is best? What does Chicago say about web addresses? AP says the "http://" should always be included, but this looks so messy.
Also, how much fact-checking are copy editors expected to do? Names, dates, but what else? Where do you draw the line and query the author for more information?

The Copyeditor's Goal

Chapter four discusses the editor's role in technical terms. However, what is the copyeditor's ultimate goal? Overall, what does the copyeditor strive to do through the first, second, and third edits? I was wondering if the copyeditor strives for perfection. Or if, perhaps, it's something more realistic or practical, such as clarity or readability. Maybe we hope to polish a rough stone. But do we hope to make it perfect?

research responsibilities

Part of the copyediting tasks listed in Ch. 4 discuss researching missing information (#20, p.59). How much research is usually expected of a copyeditor when an issue arises, and at what point do you query and leave it to the author to fix?

(from Rebecca)

Copyeditor's task

Reading through the copyeditor’s role and copyediting tasks covered at the end of Chapter 4, I realize it is difficult to clearly define a copyeditor’s task. Referring back to the giraffe article in the first chapter, I feel that a copyeditor could have produced either versions (standard online copyedit on page 4 and substantive edit on page 5). On page 54, the book mentions that “your editing manager, supervisor, or client, should examine each project and tell you the level of effort required and time allowed.” Unfamiliar with the field, I was wondering which factors usually determine the extent of a copyeditor’s task. Does it depend solely on the editor’s (or journal’s) requirement, or is there a generalization?

Communication Style

In class Prof. Matsueda advised that we think of the copy editor as participating in a dialogue with the author. I'm interested in the details of that relationship.

For example, do you change the tone of your queries based on your personal experience with the author? Do you ever try to guess or research the author's disposition so that you can communicate with her more effectively? How often does the dialogue between writer and copy editor end on the page, and how often do copy editors and authors meet, either in person or via email/teleconference? I imagine the effort of relationship management varies between publications, as well as between freelancers and non-freelancers. If you freelance there aren't other people in the organization to aid in managing the author-copy editor relationship. Ideally though, would your final copy edit be identical for the same piece of writing, even if it were written by two different people?

Errors Where There May Be None

This isn't really a technical question, but it's one that has definitely come up for me (especially when we looked at the review of Beyond Words). When copyediting, how do you avoid a certain sense of "paranoia?" I sometimes find that when I am looking for errors, I look too hard and find error where there perhaps is none. Is it just a matter of becoming more comfortable with copyediting? Is there a way to relax about it a little? Or is it better to be, sort of, overly cautious? Maybe this feeling will pass. But, I was just wondering. Thanks.

(from Jenny)

Responsibility

What degree of occupational/moral responsibility should/do copy editors have for the finished work? On the occupational end: what if Idiscover a work is irredeemably beneath its publications standards? Do I edit as well as I can, but let it go? Or is it the my responsibility to blow the whistle?

The moral end interests me more,. If I copy edit something morally reprehensible, or at least irresponsible, am I morally responsible for it? How much of the finished work is it fair to attribute to the copy editor? I see three options:

1) None
2) Just implemented edits
3) As much as the author

The copy editor's name doesn't go on the finished product. Does that mean a copy-editor shares no responsibility for the finished work, so long as the prose follows all appropriate rules of grammar and reads clearly? Or do you feel its more beneficial as a worker, and more moral, to think of myself as responsible for what appears on the page beyond that, because clarity and grammar are inseperable from content? How high do you think the stakes are when it comes to making writing clearer than it once was?

Sorry for the abstract and navel-gazing question. thanks

Clarity

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, but here it goes:

When looking at text, how much power does the editor have to change the order of the words? Or to add the the already existing words? Number seventeen in exercise two brought up these questions for me. Are words added simply to make the sentence more clear? In editing, how does one know the best way to offer more clarity?

(Original: Shakespeare's sonnets are about people who agonize over it.

Lovers was struck out for "people." And "over it," for "about being in love.")