Publishers’ briefs to freelance copyeditors range from the wonderful to the woeful.
Authors’ briefs to freelance copyeditors can also range from the wonderful to the woeful but, naturally enough, frequent the lower end of the scale and are often absent.
So here are a few tips on briefing your copyeditor for each group.
Briefing advice for publishers (and pre-press companies)
OK, this is your business, and your systems are settled. Are they, though? The publishers I work with have two principal ways of conveying their wishes, which work together: their house style guide and the job-specific brief.
House style guides
In my experience, house style guides vary from a couple of pages with ‘if it’s not covered here, defer to [published guide, often Chicago, aka CMOS, even in the UK]’. That’s fine. Or there’s fifty or more pages of detail, most of which is welcome, but it can’t possibly be comprehensive and there’s no indication of where to look for the omitted items.
Now, a style guide is nothing but a collection of personal preferences, I don’t dispute it, but when I get instructed on tiny details of language (like never use ‘upon’), but instructions on how to present captions, or the maximum length of running heads are missing, it’s not helpful. Also – is the copyeditor to produce the running heads, or will you do that later, in-house?
The style guides I get sent are often headed ‘for authors’, which is fine so far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Does the typesetter want tags or styles used? Do you have a template?
Here’s a good one: is the book being printed in full colour or in b&w only? I need to know so if an author tells me that the orange line in a graph means this and the blue line means that, I can leave it if illustrations are in colour, but I need to ask the author to redraw in greyscale, and change the text to reflect that, if the book uses no colour. Or, as once happened, I needed to do alternate paragraphs for the full-colour PDF edition and the b&w print edition.
What about displayed extracts? At what length do I switch from in-line to displayed? How much freedom will you give me about that? Does the source line run on, or is it on a separate line, ranged left or ranged right?
Where do you stand on the use – or not – of serial commas? Single or double quote marks – or both, in particular circumstances?
What case are chapter titles in, and side headings?
How do you like your table of contents laid out? Do you include A heads? What about author names in edited collections? Are page numbers ranged right, or spaced away from the end of the chapter title? How much – en or em space? More?
What do your tables look like? Complete grids, minimum lines, somewhere in between? People say oh, don’t bother formatting tables, but if I don’t, how is the typesetter to see exactly how it’s to look – what headings span two columns, for instance? Some tables are require rows to be indented from subheading rows, to group data together visually – I need to show the typesetter, therefore I need to know what you want.
Does your style guide itself conform to the style guide? It gets a bit disorientating, being told one thing while seeing another. I’ve dug out of my stash one style guide that flips between sentence case and title case for headings of the same weight, and it tells the reader that, for more detail on a particular point, we should see the section called ‘Nomenclature’ – which doesn’t exist anywhere in the document.
References – oh, references. Quagmire. (I like editing references, but I also like knowing what you want.) DOIs for everything? Only DOIs? Full print detail but DOI for ahead of print articles only? How many authors in in-text citations before et al. comes into play? And is that italic, punctuated, both, neither? How is grey literature to be handled, and what about online materials? For online references, access dates for everything? Nothing? What if the author has been consistent in one direction and your preference is the other – follow author or impose house style?
Have you reviewed your style guide and template to account for the booming number of open access, digital-only journals and their articles? One press I work with a lot has no facility in its template to give article numbers rather than page ranges, despite pleas.
On this, do you want links left live, or converted to plain text?
If you put all the detail your copyeditor needs into a style guide intended for the author, one of two things will happen:
1 the author won’t read it as it’s far too long and involved, and they want to get on with getting their ideas organised on the page properly; or
2 the author will read it, and try to implement bits of it, but won’t have the skill set to do a complete and proper job of it. That’s a waste of their time, and frustrating for everyone, as the copyeditor will probably have to undo quite a bit of their work in order to produce files for typesetting that work.
Far better to write your style guide for the author, with all those things the author needs to know, that the copyeditor doesn’t, and then write a style guide for the copyeditor including all those things that copyeditors really need to know, appending the author guide so we know what they’ve been told.
Job-specific brief
When offering work, I’ll need to know the word count, the number of references, detail of the artwork, the start date and deadline and, if you’re proposing a fee, what that is.
Once I’m engaged, in an ideal world, I wouldn’t need a job-specific brief in addition to the style guide, but every job is different, so it’s best to cover things that relate to this book or journal. There are times when agreement has been made that there will be a variation from the style guide – the copyeditor needs to know at the outset!
The book I’m just finishing up as I draft this post is a case in point. House style is always, without exception ‑ize spellings. Except… not this book! This detail was omitted from the copyeditor brief, so thank heavens I’d outlined the basis for my edit when I introduced myself to the author, which gave her the opportunity to alert me to the problem. Likewise, the brief said to collect notes at the end of the book; again no: the author had agreed with her editor at the press that notes would be at the end of each chapter.
Now – imagine this had been one of those jobs where the copyeditor doesn’t get to talk to the author direct. Oops. So when you’re preparing the brief, do please check with the acquisitions editor (or whoever is steering the book or journal in your organisation) to see if there are any exceptions to be included!
Exceptions to the style guide aside, what else does the copyeditor need to know about this specific job?
1 Let’s start with language: UK or US? If UK, ‑ise or ‑ize spellings? Which dictionary should I follow?
2 Are notes to go at the end of each chapter or the end of the book? Or are we having footnotes? Do you want the notes left active in Word, or stripped out to regular text?
3 If you have different styles for different kinds of books, which version of your style is applicable to this job?
4 Do you need an abbreviations list or glossary compiling? Do I have the freedom to produce one anyway if I’m convinced it will really benefit the reader?
5 How heavy a copyedit does this particular manuscript need? What are your definitions of the levels of copyediting? Does your proffered fee reflect this?
6 Do you have a maximum and a minimum word count for the edited manuscript? I had one book a couple of years ago that was so starkly repetitive, if I’d taken out everything, nearly half of the book would have disappeared; other jobs have had so many missing references, the word count has soared. It helps to know how far I can go in either direction without upsetting the applecart.
7 How much work is to be done on the references list? Styling, only? Querying any surface problems like missing publication details or chapter page range? Verifying each reference, completing missing detail, checking that links work and replacing them if they’re defunct?
8 Is any material missing? When can the copyeditor expect it?
9 Is the author going to be away for any part of the editing period?
10 Has the author been given any undertakings about how the edit will be carried out?
11 Who is the contact point for any questions the copyeditor may have about the brief or this manuscript?
Briefing advice for authors
Until you’re experienced at hiring a copyeditor, and at assessing your writing, it’s really hard to know what a copyeditor needs to know, and how to know the facts of what to tell copyeditors you approach for quotations.
A good place to start figuring all this out is my infographic and my blog post on the five kinds of editing.
Also take a look at this post on hiring a copyeditor or proofreader, if you’re new to all this.
The basic information to include in your introductory email is what you have written (article, book, website text…); the word count; the type of material and its subject matter; the number of references, and what their word count is, too; similarly, notes; when it will be ready to send to the copyeditor; when you have to have it back by; whether it’s illustrated; and the number and kind of illustrations (photographs take a lot less work than diagrams or maps, for instance).
How is the manuscript going to be published? If you’re writing for a particular journal or publisher, let the copyeditor know, and be ready to send a copy of that journal’s or publisher’s style guide. If you’re self-publishing, is that going to be as an ebook or PDF, or as a print book?
Beyond that, the copyeditor will need to know which of the five kinds of editing you’re looking for.
You’ll also pick up ideas from the list for publishers – for instance, how much work do your references and/or notes need? Do you have a preferred spelling? Perhaps you prefer ‘focussed’ to ‘focused’. Do you want to use serial commas or not?
Supply artwork like graphs and diagrams, as well as tables, in an editable form, so typos can be corrected, and style changes made, like using proper minus signs instead of hyphens, or putting commas in thousands (or taking them out) and so on.
Have the conversation
Whether you’re a publisher, packager, old hand or new author, do be prepared to have a dialogue whilst the copyeditor settles into the job and uncovers questions. Answer the questions promptly! Establishing facts and preferences at the outset makes for a cleaner edit and a less frustrated editor.
Pro tip – if the copyeditor is asking, there’s an issue and it needs to be resolved. We see no point in raising unnecessary questions with anyone. Freelancers are very aware that time is money! We can choose a course of action for ourselves, sure, but it gives a better outcome to have the client’s input so that the edit produces what’s actually wanted.
If you’re looking to hire a copyeditor for humanities or social sciences texts, why not get in touch? Click on the Email Sue button!
