The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap VIII

Although it seems from the volume of the posts (this being the eighth in the series) that I have spent a lot of time on the manuscript but not gotten very far along the road, the opposite is truer: All that has gone before, with the exception of editing the reference list, took very little time. It takes longer to describe my steps than to perform them.

Each of the previous steps were necessary in my methodology as preludes to getting me to the point where I actually edit the manuscript. Now it is time to discuss some of the things done while actually editing the manuscript. I begin with reference renumbering.

Reference Renumbering

Not all manuscripts require reference renumbering, but a significant number do. The last major project I completed had 82 chapters made up of 10,000 manuscript pages and thousands of references (several chapters had more than 1000 references and many had between 500 and 900 references; the entire project had more than 21,000 references). Of those 82 chapters, 76 required reference renumbering; quite a few required renumbering beginning within the first 10 references (and one chapter had a half-dozen references that had to be inserted before reference 1).

Even if it turns out that a chapter’s references do not require renumbering, I need some way to make sure that references are called out in order; it is not unusual to have earlier references recalled out so that there is a sequence like this: 21, 22–24, 25, 26, 23, 27. I used to try to track the reference numbering and renumbering using pencil and paper; then I graduated to using an Excel spreadsheet. Both methods worked but they were cumbersome and time consuming. In addition, there wasn’t an easy way, in a chapter that required extensive renumbering, to quickly and easily track the renumbering.

Below is a sample page from a report generated by the References # Order Check macro (you can make the image, as well as other images in this essay, larger by clicking on the image). The format of the report is as follows: In the first shown entry (53,60), 53 is the original reference number as assigned by the author and found in the original reference list; 60 is the renumber value, that is, what was once numbered 53 is now renumbered as 60. As you look at the sample, you will see some numbers are followed by explanatory comments. If you would like to see the complete report, it is available for download from wordsnSync. The file is a PDF named Sample Reference Renumbering.

Reference Renumber Report

Reference # Order Check

The way I track references now is with EditTools’ Reference # Order Check macro, shown here:

The Renumbering Macro Dialog

For details on how this to use this macro, see Reference # Order Check. For purposes of this essay, there are only a couple of things to note. First, when I come to a reference callout in the text, assuming it does not need renumbering or a comment, I click on the corresponding number in the left numbering field (#A in image above). Doing so let’s me track what the next callout number should be. For example, if I have clicked on 1 to 7, I know the next numbered callout should be 8. If it is, I click 8; if instead it is 10, then I know I need to renumber. Renumbering is done by clicking in the blank field next to the number 10 in the main Renumber: field (#B in image). That will put the 10 in the Original: field (#C in image) and I enter its new number — 8 — or a comment or both in the Renumber: field (also at #C) and click Modify. The new number or the comment or both will appear in the main field (#B) opposite 10, and 8 will be removed from the left numbering field (#A). If the next callout is number 8, I repeat the renumbering process and renumber 8 as 9. And so it goes.

The Reference # Order Check macro does much more to help with numbering/renumbering, but a discussion of what else it does isn’t needed here. Take a look at the report the macro generates (see the complete Sample Reference Renumbering); I send a report to the client with every chapter/manuscript that requires reference list renumbering.

Managers on the Desktop

I do one more task before beginning actual editing: I open Bookmarks and the Managers for Toggle Word and Toggle Word Specialty. I also open Click List. I keep these open on one of my monitors (I use a three-monitor setup) because these are things I access frequently. With some projects, I also keep open the Never Spell Word Manager. In a large project, I will keep the NSW Manager open as I edit the early chapters, but with later chapters, I only open it when needed.

Bookmarks have already been discussed (see The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap IV). Click List lets me insert items with a single click. Take a look at the Click List image below. In the image, the Symbols tab is showing. Before Click List, if I needed to insert a division sign (÷), I had to open Word’s Symbol dialog, search for the symbol, and double-click it to insert it into the document. It took time — sometimes a lot of time, sometimes only a little time — to find the symbol I needed. With Click List, I do that search once, add the symbol and my own name for it using the Click List Manager, and thereafter I insert it with a single mouse click from Click List. The Click List can be used for just about anything, from a symbol (e.g., ä or ≈ or Ǻ) to a lengthy phrase (e.g., including the opening space, “ of total antigen per dose” or “References for this chapter are available at Xxxxx.com.”). Click List is an excellent example of creating the wheel once and reusing it.

Symbols Tab in Click List

Toggle Word

Of all the macros I use during editing, none is more valuable than the Toggle Word macro. The Managers for Toggle Specialty and Toggle Word are shown here:

Toggle Word and Toggle Word Specialty Managers

The Toggle macro lets me select a word or phrase or acronym/initialism and change it quickly, easily, and, most importantly, accurately. Although I can type, I still make lots of typing errors. For example, it isn’t uncommon for me to type chatper instead of chapter. In that case, autocorrect takes care of the error, but things get dicier when I need to type N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide. I may not notice a mistyping, which would be a tragedy, but even more tragic — for me — is the time I need to spend to type it, check it to make sure it is correct, and correct it if wrong. A couple of clicks is much better — quicker, easier, more accurate, and profit-enhancing.

Toggle works with tracking on, so I can undo at any time. Toggle also can give me options. For example, N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide is the chemical name for DEET. When I am editing a manuscript, my clients want acronyms and initialisms spelled out at first mention (unless the style dictates that a particular acronym/initialism does not have to be spelled out, which is usually the case with, e.g., HIV/AIDS). So, when I come across the first instance of DEET in the manuscript, I place my cursor in or I select DEET and press my shortcut key for Toggle. The following dialog then appears:

Toggle Can Offer Options

Toggle displays my options based on what I have entered in the dataset. (If there are no options, it just makes the change that is in the dataset.) It is important to note that Toggle checks all of the datasets that appear in the Toggle Manager as well as the designated Toggle Specialty dataset, not just the dataset for the topmost tab. The image of the Toggle and Toggle Specialty Managers above shows 11 datasets — one for each tab plus the specialty — and when I run Toggle, it checks all of them for the selected word and displays all of the options. I choose the option I want and click OK. The word or phrase is replaced, no typing involved.

I keep the Toggle and Toggle Specialty Managers open as I edit so I can add new words to the datasets. The idea is to create the wheel once and reuse it; Toggle is a macro that lets me do that during editing.

Hotkeys: Worth Noting & Doing

EditTools macros are intended to make editing quicker, easier, more accurate, and more profitable. Consequently, easy access to regularly used macros is important. Most of the macros in EditTools can be assigned to keyboard shortcuts or Hotkeys. This is easily done by either clicking on the Setup Hotkey button, which is generally found at the bottom of a macro’s Manager, or by clicking the Hotkeys menu in the Preferences section of the EditTools toolbar.

I have assigned Hotkeys to those macros and managers that I use frequently. Because I keep the Toggle Word Manager open as I edit, it does not have an assigned hotkey — it is opened once and left open; in contrast, the Toggle macro is assigned a hotkey because it is not a macro that is (or can be) kept open but it is accessed frequently. Examples of other macros I have assigned to hotkeys are Enhanced Search, Count, & Replace; Smart Highlighter; and Insert Query. You can (and should) customize Hotkeys to fit your needs.

Moving On

Another macro I use often during editing is Enhanced Search, Count, and Replace, which is the subject of The Business of Editing: The AAE Copyediting Roadmap IX.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

EditTools & My Editing Process: Part III

Part I introduced the preediting steps (Steps 1 to 3). Part II discussed the remaining two preediting steps (Steps 4 and 5) and then discussed the first editing step (Step 6) in my editing process, which is editing the references. Part III finishes the editing process with Step 7, which focuses on editing the main text.

Step 7: Editing the Text

I use a three-monitor desktop system for editing. When I edit the text, I have the primary document open on the first monitor, the online stylesheet open on the middle monitor, and other needed documents, such as the references, open on the right-hand monitor. I also have open several of the EditTools tools I use while editing (see below for an example), such as Bookmarks, Click List, Reference # Order Check (if the references are numbered rather than name–date style), and Toggle Specialty Manager. Once I start adding author queries using the Insert Query macro, I may add Comment Editor to the open tools mix.

Sample of EditTools Macros

I keep these tools open on the desktop because I use them often. Bookmarks are both navigational aids and tracking aids. The Reference # Order Check provides a way to track reference callouts and renumbering them if renumbering is required. Click List provides a quick-and-easy method for inserting text or symbols. Toggle Specialty Manager lets me add to the active Toggle list new project-specific terms that I encounter while editing.

As I edit, I know that decisions will need to be made. For example, should I let an acronym stand or should I replace it with its spelled-out version? If the client has a rule governing usage, I need to be able to apply it. So, for example, when I come across travel risk management (TRM), I run the ESCR (Enhanced Search, Count, & Replace) macro, shown below, to determine how many times in the document the phrase travel risk management appears and how many times TRM appears.

ESCR looks for these variations (I can add additional ones)

ESCR macro

and provides this report

ESCR Report

Using the report screen, I can make changes to the text. For example, in the above report, travel risk management appears 10 additional times in the document. I can also see that the acronym TRM is often used. Consequently, for consistency, assuming that TRM is acceptable to the client, I need to change travel risk management to TRM. Thus I type TRM in fields #1 and #2 and I check the highlight box (#3) next to TRM. I also leave TRM3 as it is, because that is different from TRM and needs to be defined and searched for separately. Clicking OK then lets the macro change all 11 instances of travel risk management to TRM with tracking on. The macro also yellow highlights the 37 instances of TRM. As I edit the document now, when I see the yellow-highlighted TRM, I know that it has already been defined earlier in the chapter and that the decision was made to use the acronym rather than the phrase. Had the report come back saying there were only two instances of TRM, then the decision might have been to use the spelled-out version instead of the acronym.

If travel risk management (TRM) is not in my Word Specialty dataset, I add it (I also add it to the online stylesheet if it is not already there), using the Acronym/Phrase entry system (shown below).

Toggle Word Acronym/Phrase entry system

In the future, if I come across an instance of TRM that needs to be spelled out, I can click Toggle Word and choose from among several options, as shown here:

Toggle Word Choice Menu

If I need to query the author or make a comment to the compositor, I use Insert Query (see below). With Insert Query, I can call upon a previously written query that I have saved, or create a brand-new query, which I can save, or not, to the dataset for future reuse.

Insert Query

If I want to alter a query for any reason, or even if I want to delete a query — whether it is located 20 pages ago or where I currently am — I use Comment Editor, shown here:

Comment Editor

Comment Editor lists all of the queries I have inserted in the document (#1). There is no limit to the number of queries Comment Editor will list. One of the nice things about Comment Editor is that I do not need to go to the page where the query is located to edit it. I select the query that I want to edit and the complete text of the query appears in the Text box (#2), where I can edit or completely rewrite it. If I want to go to the query in the manuscript, I can click Go To Comment (#3). That will take me to the query’s location. To return to where I was in the document, I click Return to Before (the name is odd but it refers to the bookmark that was inserted). I can also delete a query by selecting it and clicking Delete (#4). With Comment Editor I do not need to spend time trying to locate the query I want to modify, going to it, and then returning to where I was in the document.

As I indicated earlier, I use the Bookmarks macro as a way to track figures, tables, and text boxes. I also use it to mark items I need to return to for some reason. Unlike Word’s Bookmark feature, EditTools’ Bookmarks lets you use descriptive language. That helps greatly when, for example, you want to bookmark a sentence to recheck. With EditTools’ Bookmarks you could insert “Recheck this sentence – has TRM been mentioned?”, as shown here:

Bookmarks

I use the Bookmarks renaming function for tracking. If Figure 1 has been called out in the text and I have edited the figure and its caption, I rename the bookmark. I select the bookmark and click Rename (#1), which brings up the renaming dialog shown here:

Bookmarks Renaming Dialog

The renaming dialog tells me which bookmark I am renaming (#1). Because I have selected certain items to be the defaults (#2 and #3), the new name automatically appears in the To field (#4). I could choose a different prefix or suffix, add new ones, change the defaults, and even choose None (meaning either no prefix or no suffix is to be used). If the default is what I want, I click OK and the change is made, as shown below, but the bookmark remains in the same location.

After Renaming

When I am done editing the document, I bring the reference file back into the main document using Word’s Insert File feature. I then run one last EditTools macro, Remove All Highlighting, which is found in the Other menu on the Highlight menu, as shown here:

Remove All Highlighting

Running that macro will remove all the highlighting I have added during editing. It has no effect on Track Changes, just on the highlighting. If I need to keep certain highlighting, I instead run the Choose Highlighting To Remove macro. When I run that macro, it searches through the document to determine what highlighting colors are used in the document and lists them, as shown here:

Choose Highlighting to Remove

I select the colors I want removed and click OK.

That’s pretty much the process I follow and the way I use many of the EditTools macros. I haven’t mentioned several macros, because they are not part of my usual editing process. I do use them, just not with the frequency of those described above. Under the right circumstances, these other EditTools macros can be very useful.

If you are a user of EditTools, share your experience with EditTools and tell us which macros you use and when you use them.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

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The Commandments: Thou Shall be Efficient

It is not enough to say that an editor has to be profitable (see The Commandments: Thou Shall be Profitable); a business must also be efficient in the delivery of its goods and services. Thus the commandment: Thou shall be efficient!

Efficiency has many facets. Included under the efficiency umbrella are the steps an editor takes before editing a manuscript — the preparatory steps (see, e.g., Business of Editing: The Logistics of Large Projects). Also included are the steps an editor takes during editing to promote speed, accuracy, and consistency, as well as the steps (the planning) the editor takes to meet a schedule and those an editor takes to find and retain clients.

With today’s worldwide competition for editorial work and the resulting depression of fees — and let us not forget the rise in authors who believe they can do it all themselves, which rise is a result of the rise of ebook self-publishing — the need for editorial efficiency is greater than ever.

Two things clients look for are low price and short schedule. Everyone is in a hurry. When I started as an editor, my clients’ primary concern was getting it right — schedules were flexible. Today, as a result of the continual consolidation in the publishing industry and the rising power of the accountants, schedule is the highest priority among publishers (with low editorial and production costs a very close second). In addition, authors and publishers often do not have large reservoirs of patience for the editing process.

The pressure of low fees and short schedules means that editors need to be more efficient in order to earn a reasonable living from editing. The effective hourly rate has to be foremost in an editor’s mind (see Thinking About Money: What Freelancers Need to Understand for a discussion of the effective hourly rate). The ultimate question is: How does an editor become more efficient?

Some ways we have discussed previously, such as our discussion on macros (see, e.g., The Professional Editor: Working Effectively Online II — The Macros). But mastering macros is not enough. We must also be, for example, masters of Microsoft Word. We must also revise our approach to editing.

When we are paid by the hour, we can be less efficient than when we are paid by the page or the project, because the client is paying us without regard to efficiency, although there are limits to the number of hours for which a client will willingly pay. The problem from an editor’s perspective is that when we are paid by the hour, we are limited in our earning capacity and it becomes ever more important that we be able to fill our work week with work. If we are paid $30 and hour, all we can earn is $30 an hour and if we only work 20 hours in a week, we are paid only for those 20 hours.

In addition, there is no incentive to quickly finish a project because the next project will also pay us $30 an hour and it doesn’t matter which project is paying us as long as we are getting paid. (Of course, we are not really earning $30 an hour because that number is reduced considerably when we include the hours for which we are not being paid but which are also work hours; that is, when we calculate our effective hourly rate.)

Yet efficiency can bring some rewards even to the hourly earner. Being efficient reduces the hours we need to spend on a project and thus enables us to take on additional projects and additional clients — we can expand our base. Efficiency can help move us from being dependent on a particular client to a broad base of clients.

One aspect of efficiency is the number of reading passes an editor makes. Discussing with colleagues how they process a manuscript can be revealing. Some do multiple passes over a manuscript in an attempt to find and correct lingering errors. Others try to minimize the number of passes, especially if they are not being paid by the hour.

Limiting the number of passes to one or two is doable, depending on the type of manuscript (e.g., novel, nonfiction book, journal article), the client (e.g., whether author or publisher), the software used (e.g., PerfectIt, EditTools, specialized spell checkers), the client’s requirements, and the type of edit one is hired to perform (e.g., developmental, copyedit; see Editor, Editor, Everywhere an Editor). It is not true that every pass an editor makes over a manuscript makes the manuscript more error-free. That may be true for one, two, possibly three passes, but there comes a point when returns diminish — not because there are no errors, but because we begin to see what we expect to see, not necessarily what is really there. We become overfamiliar with the manuscript. Consequently, doing fewer passes can be both more efficient and more productive. (We, and our clients, need to accept that there really is no such thing as a 100% error-free manuscript, especially when many “errors” are subjective errors.)

Efficiency is also had by using the correct tools. Studies are very clear that using multiple monitors, for example, increases productivity and efficiency. Using two monitors increases efficiency by 50%; add a third and gain another 25%; add a fourth and gain another 5%. Basically, editing with three monitors seems to be the most efficient and productive. I know that I have found using three 24-inch rotating monitors has made it much easier for me to edit quickly, efficiently, and accurately. It allows me to, for example, drag and drop between documents, each document on its own screen. It also allows me to have my stylesheet open and before me at all times, as well research tools.

Efficiency is also found in reducing the number of keystrokes needed to process information. I have found invaluable a keyboard accessory called XKeys. I have used the Pro PS2 version for more than 10 years; it is what allows me to access many of my macros by the press of a single key. I have assigned each of the buttons on the XKeys to a key combination that I would not normally use (e.g., Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K) and I assign one of my macros to that key combination. Using Xkeys makes using macros like Toggle much more efficient.

Efficiency also means tracking one’s time carefully. An editor needs to know what areas of editing go relatively “fast” and what go “slow.” By identifying the areas that take longer to process, the editor can focus on ways to make such work go faster. More importantly, if an editor finds that she can process certain types of material faster and more accurately than other types, the editor now knows where to focus her marketing efforts.

Similarly, an editor needs to know her strengths and weaknesses. For example, I know that I am a fumble-fingered typist. Consequently, I know that if I have to type nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, I am likely to mistype it and need to correct my typing, which makes both the original typing and the correction typing inefficient. Thus I know that I can increase my efficiency by having that phrase typed correctly once in my Toggle dataset and then pressing a key combination (or, in my case, an Xkeys button) to have it automatically typed.

Efficiency is good for the editor and for the client. No client wants to pay for an editor’s learning or redoing curve, and most editors want to increase their earning power. Analyzing how you work and trying to improve on it is a fundamental part of any business.

Thus the commandment: Thou shall be efficient!

The Business of Editing: Consistency

One of the directives I regularly get from clients is that they want consistency. For example, they do not want a word spelled out sometimes and an acronym used in place of the word at other times. In books, they want consistency across chapters whenever possible.

Years ago, when I edited journal articles, each journal had a style to be applied consistently across articles, regardless of whether I edited one article or 100 articles.

This drive for consistency is likely to have been the mother of the editor’s stylesheet. The stylesheet serves multiple purposes, two being to let the editor check treatment of a term in hopes that treatment is consistent across a manuscript and for a proofreader to see what decisions the editor made (e.g., is it non-negotiable or nonnegotiable; distention or distension?) and apply those decisions where the editor may have been inconsistent.

We know as readers that consistency is important, even in fiction. I find it distracting and annoying when the heroine is “nearly six-foot tall with strawberry-blond hair and jade-colored eyes” in chapter 1 but has become “five-and-a-half feet tall with dirty-blond hair and hazel eyes that change color” in chapter 3. Going from Amazonian to ordinary in three chapters can alter a plotline significantly.

Knowing that consistency is important, what steps do editors take to ensure it? In my olden days of editing, I relied on the stylesheet; I had no other tool in my arsenal that was as facile for the purpose, especially not with the size of projects on which I generally work. The stylesheet worked well when it was small (relatively speaking), but as it grew in length, it became a cumbersome tool for ensuring consistency. It became cumbersome because of the need to check it so often, and because, in the early days, the stylesheet was handwritten, which meant not alphabetized, making finding things difficult.

So I began experimenting and found ways to automate the stylesheet using programs like Macro Express, a program I still use (but not for my stylesheet). Ultimately, I designed an online stylesheet (see Working Effectively Online V — Stylesheets for a discussion of my stylesheet), which remains open in my web browser and gives me quick and easy access. Yet, I discovered that, as much of an improvement as the online stylesheet is, it was not enough. Consequently, I created two of the macros that appear in EditTools: Never Spell Word and Toggle. Using these two macros means there are fewer inconsistencies across long manuscripts.

When I get a project from client Y, I usually know that the client wants certain things to appear in its publications, or, if not across its publications, within the particular project I am working on. For example, the client may tell me that every time I see the head REFER, it should be changed to REFERRAL, or that a common acronym such as WHO never needs to be spelled out. (Usually the directive is that “common acronyms need not be spelled out at first use” without providing a list of those common acronyms; it is part of my job as an experienced editor to recognize which acronyms will be readily understood by readers of the book.)

Never Spell Word (NSW) lets me add words and phrases to a project-specific list and apply a specific color highlight to those words and phrases so I can be consistent across chapters. For example, if I enter WHO and assign it the highlight color magenta, and run NSW on the manuscript, I know each time that I see WHO in magenta that it does not need to be spelled out. If I come across “World Health Organization (WHO)” in the text, I’ll see WHO in magenta and I’ll know to delete “World Health Organization” and the parens around WHO.

Similarly, I can enter into the list to change World Health Organization to WHO. When I run the NSW macro, not only will the change be made (with tracking on), but WHO will be highlighted to indicate to me visually that this is correct.

The advantages of NSW over similar macros are basically twofold: (a) the highlighting, which gives a visual clue; and (b) the ease with which new items can be added to the list while editing. This second point is important; it means that the list is not static and it can grow as I find things to add to it.

NSW is only a part of the consistency equation, however. Toggle is another important tool. NSW is run on a file after basic file cleanup but before editing. It is run only once on a file, although I may add to its list as I edit a file. Toggle, in contrast, is not run on a file. Instead, it is used to change a word or phrase while editing. My current Toggle list has more than 1,500 entries in it. These are the things that I do not want to change universally (i.e., correct using the NSW macro); instead, I want to decide whether to make a change as I come to the item.

Using the WHO example, again, if I need to spell out WHO the first time it is used in a chapter but not on subsequent uses, then I want the information in my Toggle macro, not in my NSW macro because NSW will change it every time and I’ll have to undo some instances, whereas Toggle will make the change only when I tell it to do so. Like NSW, Toggle can have and access multiple lists. There is a primary (or universal) main list and then there are supplemental project-specific lists that can be accessed simultaneously with the primary list.

In a Toggle list, I would enter “WHO” and ask that it be changed to “World Health Organization (WHO)”; it would appear in the Toggle list like this:

WHO | World Health Organization (WHO)

Now, when I come to WHO in the manuscript, if I want to spell it out, I place my cursor in WHO and run Toggle; it deletes WHO and enters World Health Organization (WHO). This is done with Track Changes on.

I’ve used a simple example, but Toggle can be used for both complex and simple changes. For example, an entry in my primary Toggle list is as follows:

1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine | methylphenyltetrahydropyridine (MPTP)

Toggle promotes consistency in two ways: (a) it reduces spelling errors that occur when typing a replacement and (b) it is easy to use and fast.

If you know that a client wants to avoid “due to,” it is difficult to create a universally applicable substitute. Toggle gives you as many options as you create. If a client always wants World Health Organization referred to as WHO, NSW can make that happen. It is easy to remember what a client wants when there are only a few things, but the more things a client wants and the more inconsistent an author is, the less valuable the stylesheet is to an editor and the more valuable macros like NSW and Toggle are — they increase consistency and reduce the time required to be consistent.

Postscript (added after article was published): Last night I finished a novel published by a major publisher in which, within three lines, a character’s name appeared three times and each appearance was a different spelling. If the editor had used used Never Spell Word, this would not have occurred. The editor would have entered the character’s name at its first appearance into the NSW list (or, better yet in the case of fiction, the author should have supplied a list of characters with correct name spellings and ll the names would be entered into the list before any editing began) and then as the editor ran NSW on each chapter, if the character’s name was not highlighted in green, the editor would know immediately that the name’s spelling needed to be checked. Granted that the errors occurring in such close proximity should have been caught regardless of the use of NSW, but it does point out how such things can slip by and how the proper tools can help improve consistency.