What is Copyediting?
Ah, copyediting. That catchall phrase so often used—and misused—to cover everything from proofreading to ghostwriting.
The reality is that copyediting comprises a very specific set of tasks done to a manuscript. When in doubt, start with Wikipedia:
The “five Cs” summarize the copy editor’s job: Make the copy clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent. Copy editors should Make it say what it means, and mean what it says.
Typically, copy editing involves correcting spelling, punctuation, grammar, terminology and jargon, timelines, and semantics; ensuring that the typescript adheres to the publisher’s style.
Copy editors also add any “display copy”, such as headlines and standardized headers, footers.
Copy editors are expected to ensure that the text flows, that it is sensible, fair, and accurate, and that any legal problems have been addressed. Some newspaper copy editors select stories from wire service copy.
Copy editors may shorten the text, to improve it or to fit length limits. This is particularly so in periodical publishing, where copy must be cut to fit the layout, and the text changed to ensure there are no “short lines.”
So a copyeditor begins with a stylesheet, either one used by the publisher or one that he or she creates. The stylesheet ensures consistency: one makes a decision about how to spell something, for example (as in copy editor or copyeditor!), or what one chooses to capitalize, etc.
Using this stylesheet, the copyeditor goes through the manuscript and makes sure that spelling, grammar, usage are all correct and that usage is consistent throughout. Copyediting may also include format editing—in other words, making sure that headers and subheaders are used correctly and consistently throughout the manuscript.
Copyeditors use terms that may sound like jargon to the uninitiated (as indeed does the language used in most specialized fields) but are helpful in deciding what changes to make and explaining why one is making them.
Want to learn more? Sign up for the copyediting elist published out of Indiana University and you’ll learn everything you ever wanted to know about dangling participles, poorly constucted sentences (and how to fix them!) and compound sentences. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
