Saturday, September 01, 2001
The Copyeditor’s Handbook
Book Review
The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications, by Amy Einsohn. Published by University of California Press, 2000. $19.95, 560 pp, paperback.
Published in 2000, Amy Einsohn’s The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications remains a recommended handbook for copyeditors and proofreaders. In this review, Darlene Davidovich details the contents of the book, useful for anyone considering which handbook to purchase, and shows how it “goes a long way toward making up for the lack of systematic mentoring and on-the-job training that many copyeditors face today.”
As the instructor of an introductory editing course at a local community college, I always survey my class on the first night to learn how many are currently working as editors and what they hope to learn from the course. Often 10 or more of a 20-member class are working as editors, and what they very much want to learn is how to make the right decisions on their projects, in effect, how to think like trained, experienced editors.
With the recent publication of The Copyeditor’s Handbook, I now have a new tool to help my students gain the confidence that comes with making good editorial decisions. Targeted at “new and aspiring editors who will be working on nonfiction books, journal articles, newsletters, and corporate publications,” the handbook aims to help readers understand what copyeditors do, what they look for when they edit, and how they develop the editorial judgment needed to make sound decisions. This book is also useful to people who have been working as copyeditors for some time and thus understand the mechanics of copyediting but need a deeper understanding of copyediting conventions and how they arose so as to make more informed decisions about when and how to adapt or ignore them.
Part I, The ABCs of Copyediting, covers the principal tasks of copyediting and the procedures that these tasks involve, fundamental concepts that many other books assume readers already know.
Chapter I starts with the basics of copyediting theory: who it is the copyeditor works for (author, publisher, readers), the need to juggle these parties’ conflicting needs and desires, the principal tasks of the copyeditor, levels of copyediting (light, medium, heavy), the editorial process, editorial triage (setting priorities when the available time and budget do not permit doing everything that needs to be done), and estimates (determining how long a project will take). Useful advice includes what to say in difficult situations (“I’m sorry but I can’t give you a useful estimate until I’ve seen the manuscript”) and how to modify hard-copy procedures when working on screen. Explicitly discussed are things copyeditors must not do (change the author’s meaning, introduce errors, miss a deadline).
Chapter 2 introduces basic working procedures starting with hard-copy markup and moving to on-screen procedures. The traditional copyediting marks are provided and illustrated, and an in-depth discussion of querying examines when and how to query. Numerous examples are provided to help give new editors a better understanding of what is considered acceptable practice. Following an illustrated presentation on style sheets, the chapter ends with a discussion of cleanup, or how to incorporate the author’s responses to the editor’s queries.
Chapter 3, “Reference Books and Resources,” advises that a minimum of four basic references are required, either as books or on CD-ROM: a dictionary, the publisher’s preferred style manual, a thesaurus, and a usage guide. The use of each type of reference is discussed, and the most popular examples of each type are compared. Readers are advised to update their reference books regularly. Also provided is a list of “guides for newcomers to publishing,” highly regarded books and other resources that focus on different aspects of publishing and editing.
Part II, making up chapters 4 through 13, discusses a wide range of topics under the umbrella of Editorial Style: punctuation, spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, numbers, quotations, abbreviations, tables, art, references, front and back matter, and what Einsohn calls “typecoding,” or what others may know as design markup or on-screen tagging. This part discusses the conventions underpinning each topic, identifies important differences in style between major style manuals, and examines solutions to often-encountered problems. Especially useful to experienced copyeditors are the discussions of conventions, fashions, and style.
Part III examines Language Editing. Here the aim is to raise the copyeditor’s awareness of selected stylistic and substantive issues for which there are both solid rules that must be followed and aspects of style for which the author’s choices must be respected.
Chapter 14’s discussion of the principles and pitfalls of grammar focuses on helping copyeditors ensure that the message of the text is unambiguous. An important question underlying the chapter is that of “whose grammar?” (the author’s? the editor’s? the latest expert’s?). After discussing several grammar myths, the chapter goes on to examine a range of problematic grammar points with a discussion of each point’s basic rules, comparisons of how different grammar and usage guides apply the rules, and analyses of correct, incorrect, and weak sentence structures.
Chapter 15 ends the first three-quarters of the book with a discussion of frequently encountered structural, conceptual, and stylistic problems in the four areas of organization, expository style, bias-free language, and publishing law. Document organization is discussed in relation to the document’s central purpose, and examples of different types of organization are provided. The section on expository style focuses on how to decide which writing problems are most likely to lead to a breakdown in communication and how to revise these rough spots as discreetly as possible. Readers are asked to pause before rewriting to consider their purpose for doing so and are again instructed not to introduce errors when rewording. Bias-free language is discussed in the context of avoiding unwittingly offending, marginalizing, or excluding people. Publishing law covers the topics of libel, privacy, obscenity, and copyright in terms of the copyeditor’s ability to identify material that may be problematic. Published in the United States, the book takes the American legal perspective.
Supplementary material makes up the final quarter of the book. First is a photocopiable checklist for recording editorial decisions as to the mechanics, formatting, and documentation of projects. Next are glossaries of copyediting terms and grammar terms. Answer keys to the book’s 15 exercises follow, as does a bibliography of selected reference works and an index.
This book goes a long way toward making up for the lack of systematic mentoring and on-the-job training that many copyeditors face today. An experienced, knowledgeable editor and instructor, Einsohn freely shares her two decades of knowledge and experience. Wise readers will pay attention to every word.
From Newsletter Number 94 (September 2001)