Today is the LAST DAY to take advantage of the special discount that An American Editor subscribers can receive for the upcoming “Be a Better Freelancer! (Re)Invent Your Business,” the ninth annual Communication Central conference for freelancers, September 26–27, 2014, in Rochester, NY.
Topics include launching your business, macros and other efficiency/productivity tools, working with MS Office, organization tips, a self-publishing roundtable, balancing freelancing and family life, resources, benefiting from social media, and more.
Until midnight (New York time) today, AAE subscribers can receive a special discount.Use this link to register and receive the special AAE price (the password is 2014c-c). Be sure to make your hotel reservations early — the conference coincides with the last weekend of a film festival and space will be at a premium the closer it gets to September.
Remember that the countdown ends today. This is 0 day — the day when the AAE conference discount expires. You have until midnight (New York time) today to register and receive the AAE subscriber discount!
Disclaimer: Neither I nor the An American Editor blog has any financial or other interest in this conference. — Richard Adin, An American Editor
It hasn’t been very long since my last On Today’s Bookshelf (XV) was published, just two months. But it seems that I have had the (mis)fortune (depending on one’s perspective) to discover a lot of books that interest me. And so I have been spending money acquiring yet more books for my ever-growing to-be-read pile. Fortunately, many of them are in ebook form, although if I read a nonfiction book in ebook form and find I really enjoy it, I tend to buy a hardcover version for my library. (It would be so much better for me if publishers bundled the ebook with hardcover version for just a few dollars more than the hardcover alone. I’d always buy the bundle.)
I admit that I get a great deal of pleasure from sitting in my library and looking at the hardcovers on the shelves, remembering the books as my eyes slide over the spines. As much as I like the convenience of ebooks, ebooks fail to evoke in me the sensory pleasure (or the memories) that print books bring forth. Scrolling through a list of ebooks just doesn’t provide the same degree of pleasure I get from sitting in my library surrounded by print books.
Books are the armchair way to experience the world in which we live. Few of us have the resources, whether it be financial or time or something else, to spend years traveling our world and participating in discovery. Consequently, we rely on others to do the legwork and to share their experiences and gained knowledge. Books are a guilt-free addiction. Editing fills part of my craving; the rest of my craving is fulfilled by the books I acquire and read. Alas, there isn’t enough time to sate that craving and so I keep on acquiring.
Here is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or have acquired and added to my to-be-read pile in the two months since On Today’s Bookshelf XV was published) either in hardcover or in ebook form. I have already started On Today’s Bookshelf XVII.
Nonfiction –
Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966 by Michael S. Bryant
Confronting the Good Death: Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-1953 by Michael S. Bryant
Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity by Prue Shaw
A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War by Isabel V. Hull
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa by David E. Murphy
Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre
God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy
1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See by Bruce Chadwick
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Romeo Dallaire
Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister by Robert Hutchinson
House of Treason: The Rise & Fall of a Tudor Dynasty by Robert Hutchinson
The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor
Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII by David Loades
Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force by John L. Allen
Vienna 1814 by David King
The Destructive War by Charles Royster
The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 by Lisa Tetrault
The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914-1940 by Frederick Brown
How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust by Dan McMillan
Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth and the Wars of Religion by Susan Ronald
Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics by Terry Golway
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
The Last Alchemist, Iain McCalman
Fiction –
The Inventor’s Secret by Andrea Cremer
Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson
The Dark Citadel Trilogy (3 books): The Dark Citadel, The Free Kingdoms, and The Golden Griffin by Michael Wallace
The Mapmaker’s Daughter by Laurel Corona
Paris by Edward Rutherford
The Legend of Oescienne: The Awakening (Book 3) by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson (I previously bought and read book 1: The Finding and book 2: The Beginning)
Last Rituals (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir Series #1) by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Power Down by Ben Coes
The Soul Forge by Andrew Lashway
The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent
Blood Money by David Ignatius
Stone Cold by Joel Goldman
Natchez Burning by Greg Iles
The Increment by David Ignatius
In the Hall of the Dragon King by Stephen Lawhead
Agency Rules by Khalid Muhammed
The Scavenger’s Daughters by Kay Bratt
Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign (Books 1 & 2 of the Powder Mage Trilogy) by Brian McClellan
The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
Mirror Sight (Book 5 of the Green Rider series) by Kristen Britain
The Tattered Sword and The Huntsman’s Amulet (Books 1 & 2 of The Society of the Sword series) by Duncan Hamilton
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Night Birds by Thomas Maltman
As you can see from the lists, nonfiction and fiction are about equal. Interestingly, for the past 6 or so months, the majority of my reading has been fiction, which should have meant that fiction would greatly outnumber nonfiction. But I know that it won’t be long before I return to nonfiction to the near exclusion of fiction. More importantly, most of the nonfiction I acquire in hardcover, whereas the fiction is largely acquired in ebook format.
A goodly number of the nonfiction books I acquired I discovered from reviews or ads in the New York Review of Books. One of the things I like about the NYRB is that the book reviews almost always not only discuss the book being reviewed, but other books relevant to an understanding of the subject matter. Thus the reviews act as leads for me to acquire other, older books.
Am I the only editor whose TBR pile keeps growing and who cannot stop buying books? What are you reading/stockpiling? I know I ask that question with regularity, but it would be nice if more of you listed books you are buying/reading in the comments — it would expose the rest of us to books and authors we haven’t read.
Rich Adin has talked about a desire for licensing copyeditors (see Evaluating Editors) to help prove their worth. It’s an idea that intrigues me. There are existing programs that offer certificates in copyediting, but these certify that you’ve completed a specific course load, not that you have experience and a tested level of mastery.
Worse, there’s no standard training program. You can take a single college course, several college-level courses, or public training courses in copyediting and learn vastly different, if useful, things. Each of them will say that you’re a copyeditor when you’re finished.
Not all copyeditors are trained equally, then.
So when I attended the Editors’ Association of Canada’s (EAC’s) national conference in Toronto this month, I was curious about the group’s certification program.
I talked to a lot of folks about it. Not everyone agrees on the value of it or that the way it’s currently set up is the best way. But love certification or hate it, EACers are passionate about this subject.
The EAC first formed a committee on certification in 1997, after talking about the need for it for a decade. Testing didn’t even begin until 2006. It was a long, slow process that has depended entirely on volunteers.
Here’s how the EAC approached creating its program.
Types of Editing and Standards
The EAC is open to all types of editors, so deciding what type certification should cover was a first step. The organization chose four categories to certify, with labels it found descriptive: proofreading, copyediting, stylistic (“clarifying meaning, eliminating jargon, smoothing language and other non-mechanical line-by-line editing”), and structural (“clarifying and/or reorganizing a manuscript for content and structure”).
Next, it had to define standards of what’s involved in these different types of editing. The standards, which are based on Canadian style, are reviewed periodically for possible updating.
I can only imagine the debates that occurred on what the standards should be. I’ve heard comments that the committee would debate for “months and months” over the standards and what they should encompass. That it took nearly a decade to get to the point of testing says something.
Testing and Grading
The EAC approaches certification similarly to how other industries approach it. Think accounting certification and medical boards. These aren’t certificates of learning, but of mastery and experience. As a result, the tests aren’t easy; only the foolish don’t prepare well for them.
Currently, the tests are on paper and in-person only, largely for security reasons. The committee is looking at ways to computerize the process and imitate better how most of us work.
Two tests are offered in November at various locations around Canada. You can earn certification in any of the categories — in any order — or take all four to become a Certified Professional Editor (CPE). You must score 80% to pass a test.
The EAC created a study guide for each of the tests, which includes practice tests and sample graded tests. It also offers a list of resources and study techniques. I heard more than once the advice to apply test-taking skills from your college years.
Because editing is so subjective and because this is a test of mastery, grading is a challenge. Tests are graded by hand by two trained graders with extensive answer keys. If the graders disagree on whether someone should pass or fail, a third grader is brought in. Then a marking (grading) analyst and an independent auditor review the graded tests.
Value
Earning certification is great confirmation of your abilities, but given the time and costs involved in getting it, it must be more than that. As Rich Adin has noted (see Who Speaks for the Freelance Editor?), the real value is in clients and employers understanding what it means to be a CPE and desiring to hire them over non-certified editors.
One editor I talked with noted how the scientists he edits for immediately changed their opinion of him when he became certified. Specialty degrees and certifications are something his clients understand. They now see him as a colleague rather than support staff.
At this stage, though, it’s up to individual editors to educate their clients on the value of certification. The EAC’s next step is to educate the Canadian hiring community. Already there has been headway: some job ads have stated that CPEs need not take the editing test when applying for the job. But there’s a long way to go yet.
Right for the United States?
For a program like this to work in the United States, we need two things: a strong professional organization and the liberal borrowing from or licensing of the EAC’s program. If Americans don’t have to start from scratch, we could get up to speed much quicker. Starting small by focusing on just copyediting certification would help, too. We could add more certifications as time goes on.
My big reservation is that there really isn’t an organization ready to take on this challenge. The American Copy Editors Society (ACES) is great, but it’s still heavily focused on journalism and has taken up the much-needed crusade against plagiarism and sloppy reporting. Other editor organizations are either focused on a specific type of editing (e.g., Board of Editors in the Life Sciences, which already has a certification) or are too local, lacking the resources for such an undertaking.
But maybe I’m wrong. Is there an editing organization out there ready to take on the challenge of creating a US certification program? Are there enough interested editors willing to form a new group to explore professional certification for American editors?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks to Jeanne McKane, Frances Peck, Stan Backs, and everyone else who spoke with me about certification at the conference.
Erin Brenner is the editor of the Copyediting newsletter and the owner of Right Touch Editing. You can follow her on Twitter. Erin is also a guest presenter at various conferences on topics of interest to freelancers.
I found the following video “educational” and thus worth repeating here. In 10 minutes, one can learn the “history” of English.
Now that you have fulfilled your job requirements for the day, let’s move on to some entertainment. The following videos star the ultimate winner of Italy’s version of “The Voice.” Although there are a lot of videos, they are worth watching (although I would just watch while they are singing, not the after remarks, which reduces the time needed to get through them).
If the videos are blocked in your country, but you can access YouTube, try searching for “suor cristina the voice.”
This first video was the original blind audition. Be sure to watch the expressions of the judges when they turn around and see the performance.
Bon Jovi gets the treatment in this song:
This is the first “battle” between contestants, the winner of which moves on to the next round:
These show a great range of talent:
This was the winning performance:
And when she was interviewed about her future after winning “The Voice,” her response was that she hoped to return to working with the children. Sometimes the most impressive people are found in unexpected places.
On another forum, a colleague raised several interesting questions, ones that we need to address. Ultimately, the questions, although paraphrased below, boil down to this:
Did I cross the line?
The questions our colleague asked were these (as distilled by me; I did not receive permission to quote directly from the message our colleague posted):
Because I have years of editing experience, cannot I assume that my edits are always reasonable and correct and that the client — whether author or publisher — should both accept and trust my judgement?
Because the client should accept and trust my judgement, is there really any need for me to provide an explanation in a comment?
Because the client is free to accept or reject any or all of my edits, is there any reason why I should spend the extra time to add the explanations?
What are the limits, if any, to my role as a copyeditor?
Our colleague’s message began with an example of a sentence that our colleague edited. Because I do not have permission to quote the original sentence and our colleague’s alteration, I have mimicked the original and the change:
Original: “The regime collapsed as a result of a decline in population from misguided birth control policies, the reintroduction of previously wiped out diseases from the regime’s refusal to allow vaccination, and famine and malnutrition as a result of policies that discouraged food production.”
Change: “The political hypotheses for the regime’s collapse include a decline in population from birth control policies, the reintroduction of epidemic diseases from the regime’s antivaccination campaign, and famine and malnutrition as a result of Stalinist farming policies.”
The client pointed out to our colleague that the changes were made without any explanatory comment and asked, as an example, for justification for the change from “famine and malnutrition as a result of policies that discouraged food production” to “famine and malnutrition as a result of Stalinist farming policies.” Our colleague’s justification for describing the farm policies as “Stalinist” was that our colleague just knew it — the information came from her acquired knowledge.
Did our colleague cross any lines? How do we answer our colleague’s questions?
Because I Have Years of Editing Experience…
Unfortunately, this is the approach of many editors. Yet, it is not a valid approach to our job. No matter what the author has written — be it novel, biography, scientific treatise — when it comes to subject matter, the author is expert, even if the author is not.
The role of the copyeditor is not to developmental edit. The copyeditor’s focus is on grammar, spelling, word choice, not on rewriting. Rewriting should be incidental, an occasional occurrence. Under no circumstance should the copyeditor interject their own knowledge except in the form of a query. This is true for many reasons, not least of which is that it is the author who will ultimately be held responsible for the quality of the book. We have discussed this author–editor relationship before (see, e.g., Relationships & the Unwritten Rules and The Commandments: Thou Shall Treat Editors as Partners).
More importantly, “I just know” is not something we would accept from an author. We would require the author of a biography to have a comprehensive bibliography, to be able to cite sources for statements given as fact (opinion, of course, is a different matter). Importantly, even if we construe an author’s statement as opinion, we want it to be the author’s opinion, not the opinion of an anonymous editor whose credentials to draw the conclusion are unknown and may be nonexistent.
In the absence of provable subject matter expertise, the editor’s alterations cannot be given the status of “always reasonable” nor can they, even if reasonable, ever be given the status of blind acceptance: Clients should neither accept nor trust the editor’s judgement on items that fall outside the editor’s known expertise or outside the responsibilities for which the editor has been hired.
Because the Client Should Accept and Trust My Judgment…
This was generally addressed above but the question is really about the need to provide explanations. The need to provide an explanation should be unquestioned. Editors are suggesters not arbiters of fact. If a sentence can be better written without changing meaning or author voice, then making the change and asking the author if the change is OK is acceptable.
But it is never acceptable for the editor to add to or substitute for the author’s facts — except by way of comment. I have edited many hundreds of books in my 30 years of editing, including books in my area of educational expertise. Yet, I have made it a rule to never alter an author’s facts; I always query (e.g., “Do you think that the addition of XYZ would better represent your view?” “According to Professor Smith, ABC was caused by poor logistical planning. Do you think it is worth mentioning or discussing here as further explanation of your perspective? See Smith, xxxxx.”)
If I know something is amiss, I try to let the author know something is amiss by commenting. The one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I am not so currently knowledgeable about the topics I am editing that I can infallibly rewrite what the (expert) author has written.
Comments are always justified; uncommented substantive changes are never justified.
Because the Client Is Free to Accept or
Reject Any or All of My Edits…
This is the traditional editor excuse, yet it neglects to address a very important topic: the editor–client relationship.
First, I never think that an author wants to spend hours going over my edits. Deciding whether the change from about to approximately is justified is boring enough but after seeing the change a dozen times, the author soon learns whether such changes can be skipped over (i.e., the author evaluates the editor’s credibility). But that is not true of substantive changes.
Second, I think about the message I send the author when I make a substantive change without explanation. Am I not telling the author that I am the one who should have written the book? And why should the author have to guess at why I made the substantive change? An author will accept that I changed “famine and malnutrition as a result of policies that discouraged food production” to “famine and malnutrition as a result of Stalinist farming policies” because three paragraphs earlier the author referred to the “Stalinist farming policies” as the cause of famine and malnutrition, especially if I make the change and include an explanatory note. But the author is likely to be upset by my change in the absence of the explanation and then resistant to other suggestions and changes.
Basically, I see making substantive changes without explanation as an invitation to disaster. With the explanation, I increase my credibility as an editor; without the explanation, I risk angering the author and making the author lose faith in my ability as an editor. I also risk making the author take a “stand-your-ground” attitude toward other editorial suggestions I make.
Regardless of whether the client can accept or reject any changes the editor has made, not providing an explanation for a substantive change jeopardizes the editor’s credibility. Which brings us to the penultimate question:
What Are the Limits, If Any, to My Role as a Copyeditor?
The line between copyeditor and developmental editor is not a bright line. We discussed the roles 4.5 years ago in Editor, Editor, Everywhere an Editor, but the demarcation is worth repeating.
A developmental editor’s role is multifaceted, but it is less concerned with grammar and syntax and more concerned with the manuscript’s overall structure, as well as with the accuracy of the subject matter content. It is the developmental editor’s role to suggest other causes of an event to an author and even to rewrite sentences and paragraphs to reflect those suggestions. Yet, even the developmental editor needs to query the author about the changes being made, although such querying may be done more broadly, such as “I have rewritten the next five paragraphs to reflect the discussion of the subject found in chapter 3.”
The copyeditor’s role, on the other hand, is to focus on the mechanics of the manuscript — such things as, grammar, spelling, punctuation, conformance to a style, and consistency. Rewrites should be very limited, often to compact a sentence by removing redundancies or to ensure that, for example, material is in the present tense. It is not the copyeditor’s job to rewrite substantively. At most the copyeditor should suggest a substantive change in a comment.
In the case of our colleague, I think our colleague crosses that fine line that an editor needs to walk. Hired as a copyeditor, our colleague should not have crossed over into developmental editing without including an explanatory comment.
It is not unusual to see negative comments about editors generally. I think these comments come about as the result of numerous factors, one of which is the crossing of the line. What do you think?
Readers’ responses to both of the above-mentioned articles clearly showed the value proofreaders and copy-editors place on a style sheet that incorporates a clear brief regarding the depth of proofreading intervention required for a given project.
I do so love a style sheet — partly because it helps me make sensible decisions about what to change and what not to change, thereby ensuring my markup is on point; partly because it saves the copy-editor and the in-house project manager the time of having to answer my queries; and partly because it makes good business sense for me. Not having to ask means I don’t spend my own time scratching my head, asking questions and waiting for responses. And that’s good for my business because some of my publisher clients operate on a fixed-fee basis so my hourly rate ends up higher.
I won’t apologize for my selfishness — I’m running a business and I want to do a superb job for my clients in the fewest possible hours. Being able to work productively and efficiently is therefore a core component of my business model.
But My Publisher has a House Style…
Indeed, your publisher client may well have a house style. But we all know that house styles are fluid entities. Preferences change over time depending on who’s employed in-house. Furthermore, even the most fixed house styles sometimes have to bend in order to facilitate good author–publisher relations. That’s why the individual job-based style sheet is crucial — it moves the proofreader away from the mindset of “this particular publisher likes things done like this” to one of “this particular job needs tackling in this way.” In other words, the house style is client-centered whereas the style sheet is project-centered.
When There Isn’t a Style Sheet…
When the proofreader doesn’t know how deep she’s supposed to go, there are risks. Let’s imagine that a set of proofs lands on her desk. There’s no detailed style sheet but her publisher client had previously issued her with a house-style document. House style insists on using “that” (rather than “which”) for restrictive relative clauses. The proofs have lots of instances of the “rule” being broken.
Scenario 1: The proofreader follows house style, since she’s received no instruction not to. She doesn’t know it, but the copy-editor took a gentle touch with this project because of the author’s sensitivities. All the proofreader’s “which/that” markup has to be stetted. She’s overmarked.
Scenario 2: The proofreader takes a “leave well enough alone” approach because, in British English, this “which/that” usage is acceptable (though not always preferred). She doesn’t know it, but even though the copy-editor applied a gentle touch, the publisher project manager is a stickler who wants to override the author’s sensitivities and is happy in the knowledge that the proofreader has the house-style instructions. When the PM sees the marked-up proofs, he’s disappointed with the job because the proofreader has undermarked.
In both scenarios the proofreader is sunk, though there’s a 50–50 chance that it could have gone the other way. In reality, though, there’s a third option for the proofreader: stay alert and query.
Querying is Essential, But…
Querying is good proofreading practice, but it has its drawbacks. It slows the job down. It can be inconvenient for the copy-editor because it relates to an “old” job — as one of my copy-editor colleagues once reminded me, the page proofs I’m working on were probably copy-edited by her two months previously. Queries are an interruption to her current work schedule and to her business practice.
The proofreader may also be anxious about appearing to question the copy-editor’s decisions. Or she may not want to appear to the PM as a proofreader who needs hand-holding. A strong style sheet helps to minimize these problems.
The Really Useful Style Sheet
A standard style sheet will usually include information about the publisher’s/author’s preferences with regard to the likes of compound modifying hyphens, capitalization, spelling style, suffixes, number elision, formatting of contractions, citation style, reference style, use of serial commas, date formats, special characters used, and so on.
The really useful style sheet goes that little bit further — it gives the proofreader the heads-up about the copy-editor’s experience of the project.
Perhaps the author was particularly sensitive and wanted only a light edit; or maybe there’s a style choice that’s been made that is unusual and clashes with the publisher’s standard house style. Now let’s imagine that the author’s seemingly bizarre inconsistency with regard to capitalization of key terms needs to be retained anyway (those of you who’ve worked on philosophy books will know exactly what I mean!). Or even though the publisher is usually really pedantic about using “that” for restrictive relative clauses, the editor has allowed the use of “which” throughout the text because it was felt that extensive changes would damage the author’s voice or interrupt the flow of the argument, and that not amending the text didn’t detract from its clarity. Maybe the author was difficult, maybe the pre-edited files were a mess, maybe a tight schedule led to decisions to overlook certain pedantries. Perhaps the proofreader needs to be alerted to specific problems that absolutely do need attention, and given time and budget would have been attended to by the copy-editor in other circumstances.
The point is that the more the proofreader knows, the better the job she can do — fewer queries, an appropriate level of markup, and less head-scratching are all great outcomes. The last thing we want to do is to frustrate our busy copy-editing and project management colleagues by doing too much or too little because we didn’t know what was going on.
The Land of Forgotten Style Sheets
Interestingly, my discussions with copy-editor colleagues about this issue indicate that many editors do indeed create wonderful style sheets, with lots of juicy information that will be invaluable to the proofreader. So comprehensive are their creations that some editors consider them to be a work of editorial artistry in their own right. It takes time to create a really useful style sheet. What a pity, then, that these don’t always end up in the hands of those who’d really benefit of them. Frankly, I’d be furious if I’d gone to all that trouble, only to find that my hard work had winged its way to the Land of Forgotten Style Sheets!
Where is the Land of Forgotten Style Sheets? I’m not sure. Giving directions is tricky, but previous addresses include a pile of paper on a publisher’s desk, a cluttered email inbox belonging to a busy in-house project manager, and next to a sandwich wrapper in the trash can.
What’s to be done? One simple thing might help. If you’re an editor who makes it your business to provide comprehensive style sheets for those further down the publishing chain, please could you take just a few seconds to make it clear that the proofreader needs to be sent a copy? Sometimes that little nudge is all that’s needed.
We proofreaders need to take responsibility too. We can nudge the project manager about a missing style sheet as soon as the proofs arrive.
There’s good news…
I don’t mean for my description of the Land of Forgotten Style Sheets to be critical of publisher colleagues. My personal experience is actually rather good — I have the pleasure of working for a number of publishers who’ve set up excellent production systems to ensure that the journey from manuscript to published page is a smooth one, and that the appropriate lines of communication between the professionals involved (e.g., author, PM, copy-editor, proofreader, indexer) are in place.
The point is rather that I can understand why the style sheet gets lost in the process. I’ve worked in-house — the editorial production staff have, arguably, some of the busiest and most stressful jobs in the building. Pressures include horrendous schedules, challenging budgets, and the juggling of multiple projects, to name but a few. Instead, this is a call for us to help them out by reminding them of what we need.
Summing up
The style sheet (especially the really useful one) is a little piece of magic in a proofreader’s toolbox. It helps us do a good job that complements the hard work of the author, copy-editor and project manager, and minimizes our need for hand-holding by the in-house project manager. Copy-editors and proofreaders who take a few minutes to check that the style sheets are available, and include all the necessary information, will be investing just a little bit of extra time that will reap huge rewards.
I have always thought that a good education was one that caused the recipient of the education to think. As part of that process, reading saccharine, as opposed to bitter-herbed, books was not a way to stimulate thinking. After all, if a book simply reinforces what you already believe, what have you gained from it? What will it cause you to think about?
In some online forums, some discussions are segregated in the sense that there is a warning and you have to take affirmative action to access those discussions; they are not part of the discussions that you normally see after logging in to the forum. Usually they are discussions centering on politics, religion, sex, and violence. I agree that if you are joining a forum to learn how to edit a book or run a business, you do not expect to have to deal with discussions regarding why American politicians make Satan look like the leading contestant for the person of the year award.
But what about in the classroom? I do not mean in the primary and secondary classroom; I mean in the college classroom. Or what about in a forum on books — not on book production but on the books themselves and their literary value? Should books and reading assignments carry “trigger warnings”?
For those unfamiliar with the trigger warning controversy, let us step back a moment. A trigger warning warns a prospective reader that the book the reader is thinking about reading (or has been assigned to read) contains material that someone (such as the reader), somewhere, might somehow, someday, in some state of mind, find offensive or, worse, traumatic to read or discuss or think about or be challenged by. For example, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice would carry the trigger warning that it is anti-Semitic; Darwin’s Origin of Species would carry a warning that it contravenes the Bible’s creationism; Twain’s Huckleberry Finn would carry a warning that the book could be considered racist; Bahn’s The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art would carry a warning that it contains depictions of zoophilia; and on it goes.
The idea of the trigger warnings is to alert the reader that a book contains something that might trigger a harrowing memory, for example, of a sexual molestation, of a difficult event from the reader’s life, or cause the reader anguish (perhaps trauma) over something that affected either the reader or someone the reader knows. Basically, trigger warnings are intended to prevent traumatizing the reader by the book’s content.
I can remember reading William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” at a very young age and how that book affected me. To this day, the book is on my “books that I hope to never read again” list. I also remember the first time I read a nonfiction book about the Auschwitz concentration camp and saw photos of it and its victims — those dead and those who survived; I was deeply affected by the cruelty we can so callously inflict on each other. So it is not that I am unaware of the impact that a book can have on a person.
But what is the purpose of a college education if not to expose us to those things that make us intellectually uncomfortable? What is life without some trauma? What label could we devise that would cover all the possibilities? Why is it that we need a label, rather than to recognize that in any book there is likely to be something that will offend or cause discomfort. Consider the mainstay book of western civilization, the Bible. It includes the gamut of things that disturb most of us — rape, murder, starvation, cruelty, tyranny, savagery, and the list goes on and on. If we were to label the Bible, all we would have is a book of labels; there would be no space for the words themselves.
Coming round again to the college classroom, would we want to make education so saccharine that no book could be read unless it was a Dr. Seuss book because there is no book that isn’t offensive or traumatic to someone? How would you design a course that avoided all controversy and yet fulfilled what many believe is the function of college: teaching one to think and understand?
It seems to me that a book that causes no reaction from a reader is a book not worth reading (except when you have had a bad day dealing with cantankerous authors and seek something to read that goes in one eye and out the other without making any impression whatsoever). Such a book does not make one think about the surrounding world. Nor does it cause one to reconsider beliefs and positions fervently thought immutable. A book is a mini-university, or should be. It should include new ideas for the reader to contemplate; it should cause the reader to reevaluate long-held beliefs.
A book that carries trigger warnings would fail to fulfill the promise of education because a warned person is not only wary but takes steps to avoid what makes the person uncomfortable. We all do this, even if unconsciously, because none of us like to relive painful times in our lives. Trigger warnings carry, however, the mark of the censor. A trigger warning says that we are not mature enough or sophisticated enough to deal with life in the absence of a “parent” (“authority” figure) to guide us.
Of course, I am addressing the matter from the adult reader perspective (I do consider college students as adults, even if adults of limited experience). Once the issue is raised in the context of children and adolescents, the issue becomes less clear-cut. Yet, again, I would worry that trigger warnings would be used to censor and to prevent children and adolescents from reading books that they should read and discuss. Consider Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” or Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” or John Howard Griffin’s “Black Like Me.” Think of the warning trigger labels these books would carry. Shouldn’t these books be read by adolescents? Don’t these books raise issues that should be discussed by adolescents (and adults)?
Ultimately, the issue of having or not having a trigger warning is one that questions the abilities of individuals to determine for themselves what is to be read. How much parenting do we really need? Unanswered and unaddressed in the debate are issues such as: Will trigger warnings be required of all books? Who will determine what warnings a book requires? More importantly, how will that be determined? And the list goes on.
The how question is most intriguing. Many books are subject to library banning based on rumor — some parent, somewhere said something negative and the wildfire started. Rarely has the book to be banned been read by each of the people demanding the banning. Somewhere along the line someone will have to read the book to determine what warnings need to be applied. What about that reader’s trauma quotient?
Perhaps it will be another job for editors. What do you think?
Most users of Microsoft Word format text by selecting a paragraph and then applying a font. More advanced users apply a style. Why? Because then if they need to change the formatting of, say, level-2 headings, they can simply modify the style rather than tediously selecting each heading and applying a different font. (If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of those advanced users.) But there is a way to handle formatting that is even more powerful.
Suppose that you’ve dutifully applied styles to the various parts of a document, but then your client asks you to change the font—everywhere in the document—from Times New Roman to Adobe Garamond. You could manually modify each style, but if there are dozens of styles in use, there is a better way. That way is a macro, like this one:
Sub SetFontInAllStyles()
Dim aStyle As Style
For Each aStyle In ActiveDocument.Styles
aStyle.Font.Name = “Adobe Garamond”
Next
End Sub
Well, that was easy. Let’s look at each line of the macro (excluding the first and last lines, which simply define the beginning and end of the macro).
Dim aStyle As Style
That line dimensions (defines) a variable, aStyle, as a style. (As with all variables, I just made up the name “aStyle.”) At one point as the macro runs, aStyle might represent the style Heading 1. At another point it might represent Heading 3. But it will always represent a style.
For Each aStyle In ActiveDocument.Styles
Here’s where things get interesting. That line tells the macro to cycle through each style (represented by aStyle) in all of the styles in the active document (the document in which your cursor is currently sitting).
aStyle.Font.Name = “Adobe Garamond”
That line tells Word to set the font for the style currently being represented by aStyle to be Adobe Garamond.
Next
That line tells Word to go to the next style in the document.
When you run the macro, it will cycle through each style in the document (For Each…Next) and set Adobe Garamond as the font used in that style.
But what if you want to change the font only in heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on)? Try this:
Dim aStyle As Style
For Each aStyle In ActiveDocument.Styles
If InStr(aStyle.NameLocal, “Heading”) Then aStyle.Font.Name = “Adobe Garamond”
Next
End Sub
Here’s the line of interest:
If InStr(aStyle.NameLocal, “Heading”) Then aStyle.Font.Name = “Adobe Garamond”
The line uses a macro command we haven’t seen before, InStr, which checks to see if a specific string of text is used somewhere. In this case, it checks to see if the text “Heading” appears in the name (NameLocal) of the style currently represented by aStyle. If it does, then the name of the font used in that style is set to Adobe Garamond.
You could even specify the exact name of the style to be changed:
If aStyle.NameLocal = “Block Quote” Then aStyle.Font.Name = “Adobe Garamond”
And that should give you an idea of how to modify a bunch of styles, all at once (between “For Each” and “Next”), to use various fonts:
If aStyle.NameLocal = “Poem” Then aStyle.Font.Name = “Arial”
If aStyle.NameLocal = “Author” Then aStyle.Font.Name = “Apple Boy”
If aStyle.NameLocal = “Subtitle” Then aStyle.Font.Name = “Constantia”
Much more can be done to automate the formatting of text using macros. I hope this brief article will get you started.
How to Add Macro to Word & to the QAT
Here’s how to put this macro (or any other) into Microsoft Word so it will be available when you need it:
Copy the text of the macro, starting with the first “Sub” and ending with the last “Sub.”
Click the “View” tab on Microsoft Word’s ribbon.
Click the “Macros” button.
Type a name for the macro in the “Macro name” box — probably the name used after the first “Sub.” For this macro, that’s “CleanCellEndSpaces.”
Click the “Create” button.
Delete the “Sub [macro name]” and “End Sub” lines that Word created in the macro window. The macro window should now be completely empty (unless you already have other macros in there).
Paste the macro text at the current insertion point.
Click “File,” then “Close and Return to Microsoft Word.”
To actually use the macro:
Place your cursor at the beginning of the document.
Click the “View” tab on Microsoft Word’s ribbon.
Click the “Macros” button.
Click the name of your macro to select it.
Click the “Run” button. (If you wanted to delete the macro, you could press the “Delete” button instead.)
Here’s how to put the macro on Word’s QAT (Quick Access Toolbar):
Locate the QAT (it’s probably on the top left of your screen either above or below Word’s Ribbon interface).
Right-click the QAT.
Click “Customize Quick Access Toolbar.”
Under “Choose commands from:” click the dropdown list and select “Macros.”
Find and select your macro in the list on the left.
I am currently reading David Edmonds’ Would You Kill the Fat Man?: The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong (2013). The book focuses on what has become known as the trolley problem, which goes like this (the following is a summary of Phillippa Foot’s original thought experiment from the 1960s, which subsequently morphed into the “Fat Man” variation, as well as other variations):
The trolley is coming down the track and you are standing by a switch. If the trolley remains on the current track, it will kill five people who are tied to the track and cannot escape. If you throw the switch, the trolley will veer onto a spur on which one person is tied and will kill that one person, but the five people will be saved. Do you/should you throw the switch?
This is the conundrum of right and wrong, which underlies most religious and moral beliefs.
Reading this book made me think of editing ethics. I grant that the decisions we have to make are not of life and death, but still, they can be weighty and certainly raise the specter of morally and ethically right and wrong behavior.
Is the absence of the conundrum equivalent to saying that there is no ethical or unethical behavior, there is just behavior? Is this a conundrum for philosophers to quarrel over but that has no particular value outside the philosophical debates? As with most philosophical questions, there are only philosophical answers, any of which can be correct at a given moment in time.
I think few of us would say that editing (of all stripes, including proofreading) raises such philosophical conundrums that we grind to a halt as we consider them and discuss them with colleagues. Over the past 30 years, I have had editing-related “philosophical” discussions with colleagues only on a handful of occasions, and those discussions were rarely earth moving.
I suppose our initial foray into the conundrum is whether we are competent to handle the project being offered. This is not about our competency in general as an editor, but our competency specifically for the project in question. For example, we work alone, there are 3,000 manuscript pages to be edited; they require a “heavy” edit; the subject matter is a sub-sub-subspecialty area of nuclear physics, an area with which we have no familiarity; the manuscript is heavy in math, which we know is a weakness; the schedule is six weeks and cannot be extended, which means we would have to edit 500 manuscript pages a week, yet the best we have ever done is 300. The project is for a long-time client who pays very well (more than any other client we have) and will pay double our usual rate. Finally, if we do not accept this project, we currently have nothing else to fill the time, although it is always possible for something to come along. Also, the project still will have to be done by someone — and that someone might be even less qualified.
What do we do? Some of us will immediately decline, outlining our reasons for the client. Some of us will accept and hope that we can convince the client to extend the deadline. Some of us will simply accept and hope that we do a satisfactory job. Some of us will accept and try to find colleagues to work on the manuscript with us. Regardless of which path we take, I suspect that most of us would think more about the practical problems than the philosophical problems associated with the project offer.
But should we be so focused on the practical problems, or should we have already had a philosophical discussion about such a situation and have our moral and ethical compass already set to give an answer to the offer? My thinking tends toward the latter.
The job offer raises many of ethical questions. Should an editor accept work in unfamiliar subject areas? What makes up an unfamiliar subject area? How much depth of knowledge in a subject area does an editor need to accept an offer? (For example, do we need to have studied Jewish writings regarding the Talmud for years to be able to edit a book on Jewish philosophy that arises from the Talmud? Do we need to be able to cite the German order of battle before we agree to edit a book on the German offensive in World War I? Should we have at least a nursing degree before we edit a medical text intended for nursing students?)
Should our decision be based on schedule and our past history with regard to schedule? That is, if the schedule requires 500 edited pages per week but the most we have ever done is 300, are we morally obligated to turn down the project because we have never accomplished that speed before? Or is this one of those ethical considerations that need to be given some weight, but not much weight because we can find techniques that will speed up our editing? Which raises the question of whether we would be substituting technique for skill.
Let us not forget the money part. The offer comes with more money than usual — a doubling of our normal fee. Why? Is it not the client’s recognition of the difficulty of the project and the client’s method of incentivizing us to undertake what appears to be a difficult project? How much should the fee offered govern our decision-making process? If we were to prioritize elements of the offer, where would we place fee?
I know that some of us would say that before approaching these or any other question about the offer, they would insist on seeing a few chapters to make their own decision about the project’s difficulty. Even if chapters are chosen at random, how much can we learn from them? The two or three chapters randomly chosen could be the most difficult to edit, the longest, the shortest, the easiest to edit, or something else that would unduly influence a positive or negative reaction. Such a review could (and likely would) divert us from addressing the more important underlying ethical and moral questions.
In a sense, that is exactly the problem: We editors do not have a universal code of morality or ethics that serves as a guide to any of the editorial decisions we make, which range from whether to accept an offer to whether to bill the client for hours we didn’t actually spend on the project because we were more efficient than the client calculated we would be (in other words, the project took us 50 hours but the client expected it to take and budgeted for 75 hours. Do we bill for 50 hours or 75 hours?).
In the absence of such ethical codes, editors tend to approach the job-offer problem from the practical side rather than the philosophical side. Granted, in our instance, unlike in the trolley problem, there is no balancing of life versus death(s). And I also grant that in the trolley problem the dilemma has a cultural/religious element (substitute for the trolley problem the abortion problem and its variations) that editing will rarely face (an exception being, perhaps, the offer to edit a virulently anti-Semitic book that calls for a new genocide). Yet I think we — and our clients and profession — would gain greatly were we to have this discussion and come to a consensus on what constitutes ethical and moral behavior for an editor and what doesn’t.
The Amazon versus Hachette stories in the newspapers and the blogosphere started me thinking about Barnes & Noble yet again. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Amazon–Hachette dispute, it boils down to this: In a few months, the prohibition against agency pricing that came about as part of the settlement agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and the big publishers expires. Amazon is trying to get Hachette to agree to a new division of fees — Amazon gets more, Hachette gets less — as a sort of preemptive strike to stop the reimposition of agency pricing. For the first time in its history, Amazon is under pressure to produce large profits and it sees as one avenue to doing so receiving a larger discount from publishers. Although the fight is currently over print books, most commentators see it as a proxy for ebooks. The speculation is that if Hachette succumbs, the other publishers will follow; if Hachette prevails, agency pricing is likely to be reinstated by all of the publishers.)
As many of you know, I buy a lot of books through B&N. In May alone, I received eight hardcovers from B&N and preordered several more. In looking at my list of preorders, I find that I currently have 11 preordered hardcovers and 18 that I am thinking of preordering. (I do not preorder ebooks. I only preorder books that I want in hardcover.) Since January 1, I have purchased (and received) another 21 books from B&N.
In my fantasy world, B&N cares very much about me as a customer. In the real world, B&N cares for me as much as Amazon does, which isn’t a whole lot. Yet with the Amazon–Hachette dispute, B&N has a golden opportunity to strike a blow for its own special relationship with its customers. Alas, if history is any guide to the future, this will be another opportunity that B&N misses.
So let’s look longer term than what B&N could do tomorrow while the Amazon–Hachette dispute festers. What is it that I, as a regular customer of B&N, would like that would entice me to spend even more money at B&N (and also might be appealing enough to draw in new customers)?
A fundamental rule for all businesses is that to survive and grow you need not only new customers, but you need to retain existing customers. B&N doesn’t do a great job at either.
Both Amazon and B&N use some algorithm that, when you buy a book, says “customers who bought this book also bought”. Who cares? I don’t care what someone I don’t know bought, especially when the suggested books are so unlike what I did buy. To me, it is like the anonymous reviews or the reviews by IAteMyTongueYesterday.
Instead, I would like to be given opportunities to (a) have forthcoming books by the author automatically preordered for me with (b) a guarantee that I will pay only the lowest price at which the book is offered by B&N and (c) with the opportunity to cancel the preorder before the book is shipped. This would be particularly valuable because customers would no longer need to remember to keep checking to see whether an author has a new book coming out.
I would also like to be able to create a custom newsletter that would keep me abreast of new releases in particular areas. Now I can sign up for broad categories but I want to be able to narrowly focus. I want to be able to say, for example, “World War II history, European theater” of “Fantasy but no vampires or time travel.” I also want to be able to set the frequency. Personally, I would opt for once a month; weekly is far too often for me.
It happens that I am also a member of B&N. With the number of books that I order, it is worth the $25 annual fee to save on the shipping. But except for the shipping savings, being a member is a pretty useless thing at B&N if you shop online. (It isn’t that valuable if you shop in the stores, either.) There area no member discounts or specials online; just the saving of the shipping charges and the getting of “express” shipping, which isn’t all that express.
Now, while Amazon and Hachette (and subsequently the other big publishers) fight over terms and Amazon cuts access to Hachette books, B&N should enhance its membership — give inducements to become a member and to shop at B&N.
I recommended a long time ago that B&N cut deals with publishers to offer a very significant discount on the ebook version of a book if a customer buys the hardcover version. Or, twist it around and offer a significant discount on the hardcover version to the ebook buyer. That’s one inducement that would work with someone like me. But there are a lot of people who are uninterested in having a second copy of a book, even if in a different format.
Perhaps the way to do it is to give members reward points. One point for each dollar spent on books and ebooks, with the points redeemable for a B&N gift card or as a discount on a future purchase.
The point is that B&N needs to quickly figure out some way to immediately take advantage of the Amazon–Hachette spat. It also needs to come up with some ways of inducing book buyers who are currently buying from Amazon to buy, instead, from B&N. Although B&N will not move those who are in lock-step with Amazon, there are a lot of book buyers who are open to shopping elsewhere.
And B&N has to move because its big box competitors, like Walmart, are attempting to woo those same Amazon customers with steep discounts on Hachette books. The odds are long — very long — against B&N doing anything but blowing this opportunity, but one can hope.
An American Editor 
The Business of Editing: Walking the Line
Tags: adding comments to substantive changes, copyeditor's role, crossing the line, developmental editor's role, editor-author relationship, jeopardizing trust, substantive vs. mechanical changes, the role of trust
On another forum, a colleague raised several interesting questions, ones that we need to address. Ultimately, the questions, although paraphrased below, boil down to this:
Did I cross the line?
The questions our colleague asked were these (as distilled by me; I did not receive permission to quote directly from the message our colleague posted):
Our colleague’s message began with an example of a sentence that our colleague edited. Because I do not have permission to quote the original sentence and our colleague’s alteration, I have mimicked the original and the change:
The client pointed out to our colleague that the changes were made without any explanatory comment and asked, as an example, for justification for the change from “famine and malnutrition as a result of policies that discouraged food production” to “famine and malnutrition as a result of Stalinist farming policies.” Our colleague’s justification for describing the farm policies as “Stalinist” was that our colleague just knew it — the information came from her acquired knowledge.
Did our colleague cross any lines? How do we answer our colleague’s questions?
Because I Have Years of Editing Experience…
Unfortunately, this is the approach of many editors. Yet, it is not a valid approach to our job. No matter what the author has written — be it novel, biography, scientific treatise — when it comes to subject matter, the author is expert, even if the author is not.
The role of the copyeditor is not to developmental edit. The copyeditor’s focus is on grammar, spelling, word choice, not on rewriting. Rewriting should be incidental, an occasional occurrence. Under no circumstance should the copyeditor interject their own knowledge except in the form of a query. This is true for many reasons, not least of which is that it is the author who will ultimately be held responsible for the quality of the book. We have discussed this author–editor relationship before (see, e.g., Relationships & the Unwritten Rules and The Commandments: Thou Shall Treat Editors as Partners).
More importantly, “I just know” is not something we would accept from an author. We would require the author of a biography to have a comprehensive bibliography, to be able to cite sources for statements given as fact (opinion, of course, is a different matter). Importantly, even if we construe an author’s statement as opinion, we want it to be the author’s opinion, not the opinion of an anonymous editor whose credentials to draw the conclusion are unknown and may be nonexistent.
In the absence of provable subject matter expertise, the editor’s alterations cannot be given the status of “always reasonable” nor can they, even if reasonable, ever be given the status of blind acceptance: Clients should neither accept nor trust the editor’s judgement on items that fall outside the editor’s known expertise or outside the responsibilities for which the editor has been hired.
Because the Client Should Accept and Trust My Judgment…
This was generally addressed above but the question is really about the need to provide explanations. The need to provide an explanation should be unquestioned. Editors are suggesters not arbiters of fact. If a sentence can be better written without changing meaning or author voice, then making the change and asking the author if the change is OK is acceptable.
But it is never acceptable for the editor to add to or substitute for the author’s facts — except by way of comment. I have edited many hundreds of books in my 30 years of editing, including books in my area of educational expertise. Yet, I have made it a rule to never alter an author’s facts; I always query (e.g., “Do you think that the addition of XYZ would better represent your view?” “According to Professor Smith, ABC was caused by poor logistical planning. Do you think it is worth mentioning or discussing here as further explanation of your perspective? See Smith, xxxxx.”)
If I know something is amiss, I try to let the author know something is amiss by commenting. The one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I am not so currently knowledgeable about the topics I am editing that I can infallibly rewrite what the (expert) author has written.
Comments are always justified; uncommented substantive changes are never justified.
Because the Client Is Free to Accept or
Reject Any or All of My Edits…
This is the traditional editor excuse, yet it neglects to address a very important topic: the editor–client relationship.
First, I never think that an author wants to spend hours going over my edits. Deciding whether the change from about to approximately is justified is boring enough but after seeing the change a dozen times, the author soon learns whether such changes can be skipped over (i.e., the author evaluates the editor’s credibility). But that is not true of substantive changes.
Second, I think about the message I send the author when I make a substantive change without explanation. Am I not telling the author that I am the one who should have written the book? And why should the author have to guess at why I made the substantive change? An author will accept that I changed “famine and malnutrition as a result of policies that discouraged food production” to “famine and malnutrition as a result of Stalinist farming policies” because three paragraphs earlier the author referred to the “Stalinist farming policies” as the cause of famine and malnutrition, especially if I make the change and include an explanatory note. But the author is likely to be upset by my change in the absence of the explanation and then resistant to other suggestions and changes.
Basically, I see making substantive changes without explanation as an invitation to disaster. With the explanation, I increase my credibility as an editor; without the explanation, I risk angering the author and making the author lose faith in my ability as an editor. I also risk making the author take a “stand-your-ground” attitude toward other editorial suggestions I make.
Regardless of whether the client can accept or reject any changes the editor has made, not providing an explanation for a substantive change jeopardizes the editor’s credibility. Which brings us to the penultimate question:
What Are the Limits, If Any, to My Role as a Copyeditor?
The line between copyeditor and developmental editor is not a bright line. We discussed the roles 4.5 years ago in Editor, Editor, Everywhere an Editor, but the demarcation is worth repeating.
A developmental editor’s role is multifaceted, but it is less concerned with grammar and syntax and more concerned with the manuscript’s overall structure, as well as with the accuracy of the subject matter content. It is the developmental editor’s role to suggest other causes of an event to an author and even to rewrite sentences and paragraphs to reflect those suggestions. Yet, even the developmental editor needs to query the author about the changes being made, although such querying may be done more broadly, such as “I have rewritten the next five paragraphs to reflect the discussion of the subject found in chapter 3.”
The copyeditor’s role, on the other hand, is to focus on the mechanics of the manuscript — such things as, grammar, spelling, punctuation, conformance to a style, and consistency. Rewrites should be very limited, often to compact a sentence by removing redundancies or to ensure that, for example, material is in the present tense. It is not the copyeditor’s job to rewrite substantively. At most the copyeditor should suggest a substantive change in a comment.
In the case of our colleague, I think our colleague crosses that fine line that an editor needs to walk. Hired as a copyeditor, our colleague should not have crossed over into developmental editing without including an explanatory comment.
It is not unusual to see negative comments about editors generally. I think these comments come about as the result of numerous factors, one of which is the crossing of the line. What do you think?
Richard Adin, An American Editor
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