As a copyeditor of humanities and social sciences, a lot of my time is spent raising queries for authors, and then dealing with their responses, updating the text accordingly.
Most authors handle this well, but some go a little, er, off-piste, shall we say? So this article takes a look at some of the kinds of (rare) responses I get that make life more difficult than it needs to be.
First, some background! Author queries (from the editor) are usually called AQs in the trade – you may see comments bubbles beginning AQ. That means these questions and comments are for you rather than, say, the typesetter or someone at the publisher.
I’ve written before on this general area, including:
- how to keep your AQs down,
- the value of having the copyeditor liaise directly with the author, and
- how I raise AQs in the first place.
You can see it’s a favourite topic!
So – those off-piste moments. Let’s take a look at some of them.
1 I’m not your student!
I’m on the clock. I’m getting paid a fixed fee to edit your book or your journal article, so time is money for me. I heave a heavy sigh, therefore, if an author decides, rather than giving me the rewrite I’ve asked for, to give me a further explanation of the context so that I can figure it out for myself. Two issues there: it takes time and you may not get the result you hoped for. To be sure you’re happy with the outcome, I then have to come back to you with my rewrite and get your approval. Even if I guessed right first time, it makes the first issue worse.
When you do this, you have put your hand in my pocket and extracted my cash, and burned it before my eyes, something I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to do.
I’m also on the clock in terms of the publisher’s deadline. If I have to raise several such queries, then figure out your answer for myself from your teaching, it may not end well. I don’t have all the time in the world, and I may have other deadlines and demands on my time, so I want to get the edit on your text (on everyone’s texts, actually) done as efficiently as possible.
So if the AQ is along the lines of ‘I find this phrase ambiguous. Do you mean A or perhaps B, or something else? Please advise’, just tell me how you want that bit to read. If it’s still not clear, I’ll come back to you to discuss. I’m always happy to learn, but this is not the right context for a teacher–student relationship! (And you’re not being paid to teach me, either, are you!?)
2 Stick to the format
If you’ve opened up the article on how I raise AQs, you’ll have seen my nifty little table, used when I’m talking directly with the author (I use comments bubbles only when my job is to raise the queries, but not to deal with the answers).
That table format works so well because it’s not just me you’re answering.
My lists of AQs and your responses go forward with the text – to the project manager, the typesetter, the proofreader and the collator to explain changes, and to stop people trying to change things back. (The collator brings all the various proofreading comments together from everyone checking the proofs and works out what to do where comments clash. They provide a combined set of changes for the typesetter to produce the next round of proofs, so you can see how they will need to work with your answers to my initial AQs.)
The table format makes it easy to see what’s been questioned, what’s been answered and what hasn’t, and we can all tick it off easily as we work through. Equally, you can see what you’ve answered and what you haven’t, and fill in the remaining gaps before returning your AQs to me.
So when I get a set of answers that are handwritten diagonally across the table, delivered by post, it’s not ideal. I have to work out what answer relates to what question, and then I have to type up the responses before I can even get to work incorporating them into the text, including making consequential changes and checking that new problems haven’t arisen.
Equally, when I get the answers typed out in narrative form in a separate document with a heavily abbreviated version of the query, that’s extra work for you, and I still need to transfer your answers into the table to be certain that everything has been answered and that the answers relate to the right AQs, and provide a coherent corrections document to go along with the text for others to use.
I’ve had the occasional author roar at me that they will not be made to fit into little boxes (not often and not recently – two or three in more than 15 years of editing, but still memorable!). Well, in Word tables, the little boxes expand as needed, so don’t feel cramped! Fortunately, it’s my experience that it’s extremely rare for AQs to become a battleground.
3 AQs are not an opportunity to rewrite or to tweak endlessly
Truly, they’re not.
The book (or article) was finished when the publisher accepted it. When you see the AQs, if they spark off new ideas, or you realise that a sentence adjacent to one with a query could do with changing, or a new paper has come out that you want to reference, I’m sorry to say it but: too bad. You are now in a world of deadlines and publishing schedules, and other people’s time.
When I get an AQ list back with no answers, but a fresh copy of the chapter with all the changes made, often untracked, I could cry. It’s not what you’ve been asked to do. It’s now creating huge problems.
I now have to edit that chapter again. Free of charge. And probably in a tearing hurry.
If the book is all in one file, I now have to extract the edited chapter and in large files that can cause instability. In any event, I need to run a compare of my edited chapter with the new version and sort out which questions have been answered, what those answers actually were, and whether any were overlooked. I also have to look at all the other changes you’ve made, and edit those. It’s possible some of your changes affect other chapters. Sometimes I throw in the towel and just do the complete re-edit. Sometimes I throw in the towel and report the issue to the publisher, who won’t be happy and may well reject your new version completely.
One author did this to me three times, because he ‘felt sure I had the time’ to edit four versions of a long chapter. (Let’s just say his confident belief was hugely misplaced.)
I had one author who, having answered my AQs, then sent a new version of the chapter, because, she reckoned, I’d ‘not done any editing yet – all I’d done was ask questions’.
It’s the process of editing that gives rise to the queries in the first place!
If you want to update your own copy of your book or chapter or article for your own purposes, that’s fine. But it’s not what you should be sending to your editor.
(It’s more than just copyeditors who suffer from this – a few months ago I edited a book in which one contributor had changed her chapter so many times both she and the volume editor totally lost track of which was the latest version, the one to go into the book.
When my AQs came out, the author realised that there was yet another updated version of her chapter that she’d not sent to anybody, and the volume editor realised he’d not included the version he’d intended when he submitted all the files to the publisher. And the author’s changes were big ones – changes to figures, large-scale changes to text, changes to the references. It was carnage, as you can imagine.)
The editing process is about more than the words. It’s preparing the file for typesetting, so a lot of technical stuff has also been happening, from cleaning up the typing in the file (spacing, tabs, missing brackets, styling the headings, quotations, lists, boxes, references and captions) to inserting all kinds of instructions to the typesetter.
The file looks very different from the last time you saw it. Getting a brand new version is extremely hard to accommodate, and includes me working for no pay, soaking up time that doesn’t exist and threatening the publishing schedule.
Publishing schedules are usually tight. If the book is timed to be released just before a conference, the consequences of an author unilaterally extending the copyediting time could be catastrophic.
How to make your editor do a happy-dance
It’s really easy, as the great majority of my authors discover. One called my method ‘genius’, many others have commented on how very easy it is to answer AQs from me, one proposed marriage for making it so painless!
There are very few principles involved, so here goes:
(a) Answer in the format requested. It’s not random but based on a lot of experience and feedback!
(b) Answer the question asked. Just like you tell your students going into an exam, read the question. Answer that. If I say something is ambiguous to me, and you can’t see the problem, refusing the rewrite leaves it still ambiguous to me. Give it a go and redraft.
(c) Answer all the questions. Otherwise I’ll be back in your inbox going thanks, but…
(d) Reread your answers before hitting Send. If the question is that Jones 2018 is missing from the references, and you send me a Jones 2019, is that because initially you used the published online ahead of print date, and now you have the publication date in an issue of the journal? Or will I be back in your inbox asking whether I’m to change the date in the text or whether you meant to send a different reference?
(e) Help me out if I make the mistake of asking you an either/or question and don’t just say ‘yes’! I try my hardest to avoid either/ors because it’s so easy to just reply ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – we’ve all done it. But the occasional one will slip through, so if it does, take pity on me and be clear in your answer.
My job is to represent the reader as I edit, sorting out awkward turns of phrase so your meaning is crystal clear and the reader doesn’t have to stop and puzzle out the language. When they have to do that, they’ve stopped taking in properly what you’re saying. And if they have to do it too often, they are much less likely to cite you in their own work.
AQs are an important way of resolving issues with the text – and answering them fully and with care helps you, helps your reader, and it definitely helps your humble editor.
