Copyediting: Behind the red pencil

Melanie Gold is a freelance copyeditor, and recently worked on NAL’s U.S. edition of China Lake. She’s been talking about copyediting on her blog, listing her top five reference books and telling what it takes to get a job as a copyeditor.

She sums up her work this way: “[t]he publishing freelancer must love looking for needles in haystacks. That’s essentially the job. To find the typo that everyone else glossed over, to notice when a novel’s character has blond hair on p. 5 and brown hair on p. 105, and to know how a little tweak here and there will make a sentence ping.”

Melanie has generously agreed to answer a few questions for me.

What background (education, etc.) did you need to become a copyeditor/proofreader?

It’s really hard to short-answer that, but this is what I tell people: First, you need to be a “word nerd” and know Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. (If you don’t love words, you’ll be found out quickly!) You need to know the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), the copyeditor’s bible, or possibly the APA (American Psychological Association) style, depending on what areas you’re interested in (commercial, scholarly, educational).

A proofreader also has to know typesetting no-no’s, such as ladders, bad breaks, loose lines, widows, and orphans. (There’s a joke in there somewhere, but darned if I can think of one now.) So a proofreader is essentially cleaning up after everyone else, including the typesetter–but the good news is that usually it’s just fine-tuning at this stage.

Most community colleges offer courses on the basics for not much money. The most important skill you have to have, in my opinion, is a joy for details and wanting to find needles in haystacks. Because if we don’t find the mistakes, a sharp reader will. And our job is to present the author’s work in the best light possible.

Can you define those typesetter’s no-nos?

Ladder — when three hyphens or dashes appear at the ends of three consecutive lines of text.

Widow — when the last line in a paragraph appears alone at the top of a page.

Orphan — when a very short word (like “it”) appears alone on its own line at the end of a paragraph.

These are all no-can-dos because they are thought to be distracting to the reader, though rules may differ from one publishing house to another. For instance, one publisher may not mind a widow if the line takes up more than half of that line’s space on the page. Another publisher may not allow orphans in a hardcover book but will allow them in a paperback.

What’s the best part of your job?

There’s a lot that I love about what I do, but I’d have to say being my own boss is the best part. I say when, I say how much–just like Pretty Woman, minus the pretty.

What do writers do that drives you crazy when you edit a manuscript?

It irks me that some writers think copyeditors are just failed authors who want to sabotage others’ work. It’s true that some copyeditors are writers too, but writing and editing are two very different skills.

On the other hand, it drives me crazy when copyeditors try to make authors feel foolish (by writing things like HUH?! in the margins) when they find mistakes in a manuscript.

Many thanks to Melanie for taking the time to answer my questions. Playing turnaround, she asks me a few questions herself.