How do copyeditors work? 4 key principles of good editing

Short answer: carefully!

Long answer? Here goes!

How a copyeditor approaches their work depends on a great deal – how they were taught, their own preferences and, of course, what the work demands and what the client demands, as context is all.

I spend time each week talking to a great bunch of folks in our Cloud Club West meetings, under the aegis of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. We work in many different genres: fiction, business, academic, travel, scholarly, memoir, wine, gaming… but what is clear is that we work to the same strong underpinning principles.

Principle 1     Do no harm

Whatever the text, no copyeditor should introduce errors, and they should certainly not leave the text in a worse state than they found it.

In practice, that translates to knowing what we’re doing technically; good practices around file handling and Word skills; and sensitivity to the author’s voice, channelled through the publisher’s style guide (or client’s style guide, or other agreed guidelines on how the finished text should look).

Principle 2     If you’re not sure, check. If you are sure, check anyway

Because copyeditors spend their working lives flipping between different styles, different dictionaries and, indeed, different Englishes, it’s ingrained to check that, if we were hyphenating ‘well-being’ last week, for one client who prefers dictionary A, is it still hyphenated this week for our new client who uses dictionary B?

Publisher’s style guides vary hugely. One client I work for doesn’t allow italics to be used for emphasis, but is perfectly laid back when it comes to using e.g. instead of writing out ‘for example’ or allowing whilst and amongst. Another client is relaxed about the use of italics, but forbids e.g., whilst and amongst.

In self-preservation (most of my work is repeat jobs from clients, so it literally pays for me not to mess this up!) I’m checking and checking again that I’ve got the right house style front of mind, and I’m not blithely applying the wrong style decisions to the text.

Principle 3     Document yourself!

A good copyeditor will document their decisions about all sorts of things – minutiae to most people, but of keen interest to copyeditors, proofreaders, project managers and so on.

This takes the form of a style sheet, based on the publisher’s style but no style can cover everything. The written word, including the people producing texts, and their contexts, is far too wide-ranging for that to be possible. And then there are author preferences, series editor preferences and the current conventions for that variety of English all to be taken into consideration. If the text is scholarly, there are also the conventions of that particular field of study.

Any of these may run counter to the publisher’s style, so these decisions need to be recorded to prevent someone else down the line spotting oh, a rare serial comma or some interesting capitalisation, and ‘fixing’ it without realising that it was a conscious decision.

I send my style sheet and the accompanying word list* to the author as well as up the line to the project manager and beyond – it’s no use the author trying to reverse publisher styles that are set in stone. It’s a waste of their time, so if they know the basis of the edit, they know where they stand. Of course, where an author’s preference doesn’t mesh with the publisher’s, I let the author know that the publisher’s style is taking precedence so there are no shocks when the proofs show up.

*Word list? Yes, the record of spellings (English has so many valid variations in spelling!), capitalisation, hyphenation, use of italics and so on.

Principle 4     Meet client expectations

A good copyeditor will ensure they and the client understand what the requirements are and what work is to be carried out. They’ll agree a deadline that is achievable (and a good copyeditor will always meet that – or let their client know at the first opportunity if there’s a problem).

This means that good copyeditors are excellent planners – they can analyse a job to understand how long things will probably take, where clarification of the client’s brief is needed, and how best to convey queries to the author to get the responses in good time and without stressing anyone.

Good copyeditors are polite, flexible where they can be, firm where they need to be, considerate – and are constantly thinking about the consequences of their decisions and actions.

• How will this markup work for the client’s typesetter or designer? Is it clear, concise and easy to interpret?
• Is this wording of an author query also clear, concise and understandable? Have I made it easy for the author to answer the question accurately, and relay that answer to me?
• If I make this change, will I preserve the author’s meaning and their writing style? If I don’t, will the reader be well served?
• Is this change needed at all? Is the original good enough, even if I’d not have written it that way myself?

In summary

Good copyeditors come in all shapes, sizes, interests and skill sets, but these four underpinning principles apply to us all. When we settle down to work on your text, we’ve made sure we understand what’s being asked of us, what the context is, are ready and able to document our decisions and above all, do nothing that doesn’t improve the text to make it meet the demands of the reader and the publisher and, of course, retain the author’s voice and meaning.