The Subversive Copy Editor, Second Edition: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and ... Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) - Softcover

Saller, Carol Fisher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022624007X ISBN 13: 9780226240077

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Longtime manuscript editor and Chicago Manual of Style guru Carol Fisher Saller has negotiated many a standoff between a writer and editor refusing to compromise on the “rights” and “wrongs” of prose styling. Saller realized that when these sides squared off, it was often the reader who lost. In her search for practical strategies for keeping the peace, The Subversive Copy Editor was born. Saller’s ideas struck a chord, and the little book with big advice quickly became a must-have reference for copy editors everywhere.

In this second edition, Saller adds new chapters, on the dangers of allegiance to outdated grammar and style rules and on ways to stay current in language and technology. She expands her advice for writers on formatting manuscripts for publication, on self-editing, and on how not to be “difficult.” Saller’s own gaffes provide firsthand (and sometimes humorous) examples of exactly what not to do. The revised content reflects today’s publishing practices while retaining the self-deprecating tone and sharp humor that helped make the first edition so popular. Saller maintains that through carefulness, transparency, and flexibility, editors can build trust and cooperation with writers.

The Subversive Copy Editor brings a refreshingly levelheaded approach to the classic battle between writers and editors. This sage advice will prove useful and entertaining to anyone charged with the sometimes perilous task of improving the writing of others.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Carol Fisher Saller, now retired, was previously the editor of the Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A and a senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press. She is a regular guest editor for the Chicago Manual of Style’s Shop Talk blog. She is the author of several books for children, most recently the young adult novel Eddie’s War.

Carol Fisher Saller is editor of the Chicago Manual of Style Online's Q&A and writes the Editor's Corner for the Chicago Manual of Style's Shop Talk blog. She occasionally writes about language and writing in academe for Lingua Franca at the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the author of several books for children, most recently the young adult novel Eddie's War.

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The Subversive Copy Editor

Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)

By Carol Fisher Saller

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2016 Carol Fisher Saller
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-24007-7

Contents

Preface to the Second Edition, 
Introduction, 
PART ONE Working with the Writer, for the Reader, 
1 The Subversive Copy Editor, 
2 The Good Launch, 
3 Working for the Reader, through the Writer: Carefulness, Transparency, flexibility, 
4 When Things Get Tough: The Difficult Author, 
5 The Misguided Martyr; or, Laying Down Your Life for the Serial Comma, 
6 Dear Writers: A Chapter of Your Own, 
PART TWO Working with Your Colleagues and with Yourself, 
7 When Things Get Tough (the Sequel): The Dangerous Manuscript, 
8 Know Thy Word Processor, 
9 The Living Deadline, 
10 That Damned Village: Managing Work Relationships, 
11 The Freelancer's Quandaries, 
12 Things We Haven't Learned Yet: Keeping Up Professionally, 
13 The Zen of Copyediting, 
14 You Still Want to Be a Copy Editor? Breaking In, 
Further Reading, 
Acknowledgments, 
Footnotes, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Subversive Copy Editor

Q / In a sentence like "the authors thank Natalie and Isabel for her editorial assistance," is it grammatically correct to use the pronoun herand not their?

WHO ARE YOU?

From reading the letters to The Chicago Manual of Style Online's "Chicago Style Q&A," I'm guessing that many readers of this book are not professional copy editors. But that doesn't mean you don't copyedit. In the routines of almost any office job, a worker is likely to be responsible for a chunk of writing, and in any chunk of writing there is likely to be a problem. Solving problems with writing is what copyediting is. It includes at the very least a review of spelling, grammar, and style, and it often involves checking for accuracy, logic, structure, and elegance of expression. Years ago the periodical Copy Editor changed its name to Copyediting, for the reason that "the number of those who bear the title 'copy editor' decreases year on year." Copy Editor's editor at the time, Wendalyn Nichols, explained that "more corporations are developing custom publications, and editorial freelancers are branching out beyond the niches they could once remain in quite comfortably. Increasingly, people who edit copy must wear more than one hat." Perhaps as a result, much of the Q&A mail is from workers who aren't trained to copyedit and are looking for guidance.

Anyone who works with the words of others can benefit from advice to professional copy editors. Although I will tend to use the vocabulary I know best, that of a copy editor of book manuscripts, the same tenets can apply in the multitude of contexts where you handle work written by others: newspapers and magazines, corporate and nonprofit materials, online content, newsletters, advertisements, comic books, love letters ... well, maybe not love letters. Regardless of your title, I invite you to read on.

WHO'S THE BOSS?

When you're faced with a new chunk of writing to tame, you might settle down with your favorite dictionary, your computer open to Google or Bing, The Chicago Manual of Style or another style guide, and any other references you use to guide your editing. You might sit in an office with five sharpened pencils on your desk. Or in a basement room, with pizza oozing grease onto the hard copy. You're armed with your own training and inclinations. Maybe your Delete-key finger is itching to stab at extraneous thats; maybe you laser in on punctuation. Or maybe you're the big-picture type, ready to put paragraph 1 at the end and write the opener from scratch.

Regardless of your modus operandi, when you start in on the process of reading the words and making editorial decisions, you are going to work for someone. You'll be vying for that person's approval and striving to meet his or her standards. And that person is ... the one who hired you? Nope. The writer? Not entirely. Yourself? Not even close.

Your ultimate boss is the reader. You, your boss, and your boss's boss all work for the same person, and you all have the same goal of making that person's reading experience the best it can be. I know you saw that coming. Common sense tells us that working on behalf of the reader is not really such a terribly subversive move. After all, that is the mission of the writer and the publisher, even if only for the obvious reason that pleasing readers sells the newspaper, the book, the blog, the widgets. Reassuring and impressing readers keeps them coming back. It persuades them to believe, to invest, to buy.

Since documents have various purposes, it makes sense for editors to tailor them to suit different groups of readers. Whoever hires an editor almost certainly will have a set of rules or guidelines for the editor to follow in doing just that. And when you are obliged to work within guidelines while editing, it's likely that at some point you're going to have to butt heads with someone — whether it's the employer who sets the style or a writer who flouts it. Indeed, editing for the reader routinely involves questioning established rules of style. How could it not? The style used for an article about a photo that "broke the Internet" is not necessarily appropriate for one written about immigration reform. Although the fundamental elements of well-crafted prose are basically the same for all writing, the details are not. A word like "pre-dewatering" can be workaday jargon in a memo about waste treatment — or a witticism in a poem for the New Yorker. Numbers like seven thousand three hundred and sixty-two may look fine spelled out once in a novel but would get out of hand in a department budget. Repetition can lend emphasis or organization, or it can just be annoying. Humor doesn't always fit.

Don't be alarmed: I'm not going to suggest that you sass back to your boss, toss out your stylebook, or forget what you know about semicolons and dangling modifiers. On the contrary, I'm going to insist that you know inside and out the rules you're charged with applying and the reasons behind them. Jettisoning a style rule or tenet of good writing doesn't have to mean sacrificing excellence. Rather, it can ensure it. Examples are legion. Here's one: some style guides dictate that upon first mention a person be identified by a full name. In news articles or trade books with an international readership, say, or in school texts destined for readers of mixed abilities and attention spans, the goals are to clarify and educate. Adding Margaret to Thatcher or William to Shake speare isn't likely to patronize and will allow a broader base of readers to follow the text without confusion. In specialized or technical documents, however, directed to a narrow group of experts, a writer might prefer the shorthand of the familiar name alone. In a literary journal article about Renaissance poetry that refers to Dante in passing, adding Alighieri might reflect poorly on the writer who states the obvious.

Although it's normal to tinker with a document in order to shape it for the intended reader, you shouldn't automatically expect to make a major overhaul. Fortunately for you, most writers are likely to be better acquainted than you are with the target audience of their work, and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022624007X
• ISBN 13: 9780226240077
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 206
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar