I always enjoy how the SfEP conference blends opportunities for reflection – on what it is to be an editor and on editorial practice – with more direct and specific chunks of learning.
Susan Greenberg – a rare academic who both is an editor and studies editing herself – opened the conference with an exploration of visibility, artistry, and power in editing. She also gave us such gems as the observation (quoted from freelance book editor Constance Hale) that editing consists of telling people they need to do ‘a shitload more work’ and trying to make them excited about it. So true.
There were many specific tips on offer at the session on legal editing. In this workshop, Lorraine Slipper gave a thorough introduction to the esoteric world of legal writing practices and citations. Despite the fact I have zero aspirations to be a legal editor, this session was well worth my time, as I often come across snippets of legal citations in my social sciences and history projects. I always prefer to be over-prepared to deal with things that are outside my core working practices, especially when I’m managing other editors who may need guidance on areas that are unfamiliar to them.
Rich Cutler’s session on graphic design and typesetting was also very useful. Having explained how graphic design is primarily a matter of communication, with ‘making it pretty’ following much later in the process, Rich moved on to typesetting, giving us some tips on how copy-editors and proofreaders can keep the role of the typesetter in mind. Ensuring your coding and styling are neat and tidy is a core thing to think about – and echoes much of my post earlier this year on how to help (and hinder) your typesetter. Rich also exhorted us to be realistic: if we (as copy-editors) can’t work out how to style an author’s crazy-complex table, why and how should the typesetter?
I particularly enjoyed John Pettigrew’s talk on the ‘tools of change’. His message was apocalyptic yet pragmatically hopeful, talking about there being an extinction event once a generation in which new practices and tech emerge and during which editors must change to survive. In an environment in which new consumption patterns (self-publishing, open access, and library closures) will affect how editing is funded, we need to focus on communicating our core skills while adapting them for new technological realities. This message was echoed in the panel on educational publishing chaired by Out of House, which encouraged freelancers to make sure their clients know about all of the skills they can offer.
At the after-dinner speech, expert in the differences between UK and US English Lynne Murphy introduced us to the concept of Americolexicophobia and to such exoticisms as the notion that in America one can have a sandwich on a bagel. And celebrity linguist and SfEP Honorary President David Crystal closed the conference with a tour of Internet English and its ramifications for what we consider a ‘text’.
The overall impression I am left with after the SfEP conference is one of optimism. Every freelance editor and proofreader I spoke with was in a positive position, whether flooded with work, productively blending editorial work with other paid and unpaid ventures, or enjoying their training. Fees and client expectations are perennial peeves (and indeed sometimes real problems), but I am excited about the ventures underway in the SfEP to enhance our profile and credibility as professional editors – and thereby our negotiating power.
As for me, I have a to-do list spanning the prosaic (streamlining my work environment) and the more ambitious (reviewing how best I invest my time for growth and development, and looking into non-editorial qualifications to complement my editorial work). More than anything, though, I’m happy to be part of this community of interesting, fun, and intelligent people – people who understand the excitement to be had from discovering cute-faced paperclips in one’s conference goody bag.
Thank you to the SfEP conference team for such an enjoyable and productive weekend.
I’m delighted, too, to be able to welcome the voices of the major India-based typesetters Aptara and SPi to this post. These typesetters handle hundreds of titles per week for many of the world’s major publishers, so they work with mark-up from huge numbers of copy-editors and proofreaders. Anitha from SPi and Shalini from Aptara have been kind enough to share their thoughts on what copy-editors and proofreaders can do to be helpful (and troublesome).
Following, then, are some suggestions based on their thoughts and on my own experiences.
Note that these observations particularly relate to the traditional print publishing workflow in which a book is copy-edited, then typeset, then proofread and then corrected (from the proofreader’s markup) by the typesetter. However, the principles here may be relevant to any work in which text is sent to a typesetter or designer to be laid out on a page or converted into an electronic product. Keep in mind, too, that clients’ needs may change in the future, for example in the direction of more structured/semantic tagging.
Note also that you should always follow your client’s instructions. Most publishers work with many typesetters and have created preferences that work across all setters, so always follow any publisher-specific instructions you have been given.
Any codes used and markup supplied should be entirely consistent. Use Word styles logically and with no messy duplicates. Or, if you’re using hard codes (e.g., <a> for an A head), strenuously avoid typos, duplicates and other confusing things. Styles and codes act as the typesetter’s map of a book. From them the typesetter generates the XML and any other coding necessary to create the various electronic formats for which the text may be destined. The copy-editing codes are the foundation of this work.
Similarly, think about other ways in which you can be consistent. If you’re using highlights or colours in Word to mark certain elements, check the colours are exactly consistent (if necessary, look at the RBG values). Two colours that look near-identical to the human eye will be treated as entirely separate categories by software.
During copy-editing, if you have been given a design template (i.e., a PDF of some sample text showing how the book will be laid out) or design instructions, follow them as closely as possible. Think about how each segment of text will actually translate into a designed element in the book. And make sure you differentiate clearly between elements, using enough codes or styles for the typesetter to intuitively understand what’s what. Otherwise, the typesetter will have to waste time working out how to shoehorn a manuscript into a design template that it doesn’t fit.
Sometimes there may be elements that don’t quite fit the design or where you need the typesetter to do something particular to ensure the content is laid out appropriately. Send the typesetter a list of these instances – don’t wait for it to be discovered on the proofs that special treatment was needed. For example, I recently had a book where displayed quotes in Welsh were immediately followed by displayed translations. The styles provided by the publisher had no facility to show that a small gap was needed between these paragraphs, so I added a <sp> code and explained to the typesetter that it signified a half-line space. There were a lot of these, and adding the extra space at proof stage would have caused text to be reflowed over page boundaries, causing extra work and possibilities for error.
When determining how to handle such exceptions, always involve your client if the content requires an entirely new design element or you’re not sure how an issue should be dealt with.
Always highlight non-standard characters in the text, and consider providing a separate list too (in which each character is explained), as typesetters can still find such lists helpful despite modern technology’s ability to handle these characters.
Both Aptara and SPi said they preferred Word styles to hard coding, as styles benefit the composition process as a whole. They can also benefit the copy-editor, as they result in a cleaner manuscript and are quicker to implement. But always follow the instructions you have been given. Hard codes have a visibility and permanence that can be beneficial. And be careful to follow any guidance supplied by your client for the use of mathematical and other special content.
If a copy-editor doesn’t notice and account for any missing material, it can cause havoc throughout the rest of the production process. Space will need to be found for missing elements, and the text will have to be reflowed accordingly (and the index may need to be meticulously updated). Then somebody will need to run extra checks to ensure running headers and contents page numbers have been correctly updated, and that there have been no knock-on effects on the text surrounding the missing element. All of this is particularly burdensome on the typesetter.
This is a controversial one. Proofreaders now have the option of using either stamps that replicate traditional proofreading marks or Acrobat’s built-in annotation tools. They can even blend the two approaches. Both Aptara and SPi strongly expressed a preference for the exclusive use of the built-in Acrobat tools, and this is a preference I tend to echo. While both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, stamps can make the processes of collation and of making corrections cumbersome and confusing. In contrast, when the full range of Acrobat’s tools is used, most corrections can be made using a single Acrobat annotation (as opposed to two or three stamps per correction), and, for more complex changes, short explanations are often more human-friendly than stamps.
However, as with everything else, your client’s preference should be your rule of law. Different workflows will be appropriate to different contexts.
As with all editorial work, consistency is key. Be consistent, follow the design, and communicate clearly about any exceptions or deviations, and the typesetter will be able to perform their magic just fine.
Do you do typesetting work? If so, what are some examples of good and bad practice that you’ve come across? Or, if you’re a copy-editor or proofreader, what feedback have you had on what works well and not so well?
Grateful thanks to Anitha (SPi) and Shalini (Aptara) for sharing their valuable insights. Thank you also to Wiley Blackwell for helpful suggestions on the post.
So how can combo boxes be used in style sheets? Well, I find that the process of compiling a style sheet can be quite time consuming. Yes, I can create a template with the main categories listed (e.g., headings capitalisation, number range elision, treatment of ellipses), but I still have to manually type out what style I have elected to follow for each category. It’s fiddly and dull.
Each of these can be plugged in as an option in your ‘headings style’ combo box.
1. Check that the Developer tab is visible in Word. If it’s not, go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon and tick the Developer option.
2. In your document, place the cursor where you want the combo box to appear. Then, on the Developer tab, find the Controls group and click the Combo Box Content Control tool.
3. You should get a rather ugly box appear in the document, looking something like this.
4. Ensure the combo box control is selected (it should be by default immediately after you add it) and click the Properties tool, back up on the Developer tab.
5. There are various options that advanced users might want to consider (e.g., applying a certain style to the entered text). However, the only essential portion of this box is the bottom section, which is where you can add, modify, delete, rename and reorder your combo box’s options. Here is what the Properties box looks like after I enter the above three options for the capitalisation of headings.
6. Repeat as necessary to create combo boxes for all the options you need for your line(s) of work.
Go forth and create combo boxes! And please comment with any creative uses you dream up.
This calculating approach can seem cold, inadequate, insensitive. As editors we might even feel we’re being disrespectful by subjecting a poignant exposition to such objective grammatical and stylistic scrutiny. It might seem to be missing the point.
But, in fact, entirely the opposite is the case. It is as respectful to ensure a text with emotional import is accurate as it is disrespectful to assume that its inherent gravitas will somehow ward off or neutralise any faux pas. In the aforementioned book on Nazi Germany, I came across ‘Auschwitz’ spelled as ‘Aushwitz’ (not by the author – by a fellow professional); a methodical approach – regardless of content – is what enables such errors to be caught. And I would argue that errors such as this should really never be missed. It would almost be like failing to notice ‘8/11’. Certain words have an iconic, hallowed status. They make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, for both emotional and practical reasons (even setting aside the possible distraction of its emotional import, clearly ‘Auschwitz’ is easy to misspell). These ‘never-to-be-misspelled’ words will of course vary according to the culture in which the editor works.
Copy-editing and proofreading require detachment and objectivity. But, by incorporating this approach into our editing, we show the respect that allows the emotional, cultural and other import of the words to shine out clear, or sit on the page with quiet solemnity, or whatever is intended. This process shows respect for the content and respect for the reader, by helping the two to come together with no grammatical obstructions or distracting typos.
One of the wonderful things about editing is that, with experience, you can do the robot thing and the human thing at the same time. At first, when you’re learning, most of your brain power is taken up with remembering the rules and working through your mental checklists. As you gain in experience, you still do these things, but they become less all-consuming, allowing you to catch the errors while reacting to the text like a normal reader – and this is good for the author and reader too, as it can only result in the editor responding more sensitively to the text.
Good editing unites respect for the ‘rules’ with respect for content. I have sat editing a Key Stage 2 history textbook with tears dripping off my chin. I have had substantial psychological epiphanies from seemingly dry literature textbooks. And I have snorted with amusement at an author’s particularly dexterous rendering of the Suarez biting incidents. But none of these reactions should distract from delivering a solid, accurate edit. By keeping our inner robot and our inner human in balance, we can ensure that, on the one hand, emotive content is spelled correctly and that, on the other, grammatical and typographical considerations never stifle what would otherwise grab us emotionally.
← Is there such a thing as authorial voice?
1. Grammar, or the disregard thereof (see also below). The conventions according to which other human beings understand punctuation marks and sentence syntax must be adhered to if your author wishes to be understood (though less so in fiction than non-fiction). For example, omitting commas after very long introductory clauses is probably going to make readers struggle. And injudiciously muddling the order of adjectives and nouns is likely going to make them abandon the endeavour entirely. For an author to have a voice at all, their text must be intelligible.
2. Inexperience. What may be a deliberate usage choice by an experienced author may be an unconscious tic by an inexperienced one. Instead of wringing your hands over a recurring issue, ask questions. Many inexperienced authors (and often experienced ones) will be grateful to have such oddities made more reader friendly.
4. Generally poor or offensive writing. Preserving an author’s voice requires that the author’s voice is worth preserving. Rambling, offensive or otherwise off-putting writing may need considerable work before it is even possible to conduct a level of edit in which preserving the author’s voice is a concern.
1. Grammar, or the disregard thereof (see also above). However much you might like certain grammar rules, as a professional editor you have to accept that others might not be so precious about them. Few grammar ‘rules’ beyond the basics are defensible if an author prefers a consistent and intelligible alternative that is suitable for the intended readership and function of the text and that does not contravene any brief you have been given.
2. Personality (or tone). An author’s text will often reflect his or her individuality. Signs of that individuality may range from colloquialism, informality, jokes or emotion on the one hand to meticulous use of displayed lists, frequent parenthetical asides or a general sense of gravitas on the other. If none of these aspects are contrary to the intended function and readership of the text, they’re probably fine. And bear in mind that your author’s personality may be a key selling point for a text. You may do serious financial damage to a project if you remove an author’s personality from their work.
3. Impersonality. Sometimes it is inappropriate to allow authors’ voices to be evident, and in such cases the ‘voice’ of the text will be impersonal (not necessarily inhuman – just not specific to any particular human author). Certain non-fiction genres (such as textbooks and reports) are usually presented as if ex nihilo: the author is just a conduit for the facts and is rarely important in his or her own right.
4. Evolution of language. Depending on the genre, it may be appropriate for the author to push the boundaries of accepted ‘correct’ language.
5. Convention. Certain genres and fields of study have particular conventions. We might think of these as their distinctive ‘voice’. These can pertain to vocabulary, syntax, spelling and any number of other things. Some of these conventions can seem odd to outsiders, but they must be respected lest you risk making the author seem ignorant to his or her peers. Editors who sometimes work in areas in which they are not specialists (of which I am one) must be sensitive to signs of these esoteric formulations.
6. A bogeyman. The above ideas notwithstanding, it is difficult to define exactly what authorial voice is. Is it really a ‘thing’ for which we must stand up in defence? There will always be the occasional editor who tramples over a manuscript in a pair of concrete wellingtons, ripping up everything that doesn’t take his or her fancy. But is this not just general bad editing? I find it hard to conceive of a good editing job that somehow ruins the author’s voice. Such an edit would automatically be bad, because the editor would have been imposing his or her preferences rather than judiciously employing rules and experience to make the text fit for purpose.
Perhaps it follows, then, that a good edit will automatically preserve authorial voice. If so, this is good news for new editors, who may experience the paralysis that comes of being afraid of the bogeyman – of being afraid of stepping over some elusive line that only the cognoscenti know. Perhaps preserving authorial voice is just about having a good basic grasp of editing technique and of the text’s genre. Perhaps it’s about being aware that there are multiple approaches to most editing questions and that you may not yet know all of those approaches. Perhaps it’s just being a good editor.
It might seem from some the above that I’m arguing for editors to leave texts largely untouched, on the basis that almost anything is excusable if done with sensitivity to the context and readership. But I’m actually arguing for the opposite: I’m arguing for new (and established) editors having confidence in their training and instincts and giving themselves the psychological freedom to use their good judgement to remove infelicities and suggest improvements where they are warranted.
Why? Because, far from finding that editors routinely meddle with authors’ work to a degree that causes upset, I more often find editors under-editing – leaving basic errors and unclear passages untouched because they are not confident enough to intervene.
The concept of preserving authorial voice is useful as long as one recognises that it is just that: a concept and not a ‘thing’. It will automatically be preserved if an editor follows his or her (reputable) training and engages the author in dialogue about suggested changes. It is not a bogeyman that should be allowed to paralyse you out of properly engaging with the text you’re editing.
1. Situation: the way this bit of text is written displeases me or makes me uncomfortable in some way.
2. Question to self: is it contrary to a truly basic rule of grammar or syntax; inconsistent; difficult to follow; misleading or ambiguous for the intended readership; unsuitable or inappropriate for the genre or intended purpose; or contrary to the brief I have been given?
Possibility 1 – no, I just personally don’t really like it: leave it alone.
Possibility 2 – I’m not sure: see what a few authorities (books or websites) have to say on the subject, or ask your client, the author or your editorial colleagues for their input or advice.
Possibility 3 – yes: change it in the least intrusive way possible, querying the author if the change is substantial enough that he or she may have an opinion on how it should be fixed. Always either explain your rationale (if appropriate) or be ready and able to explain it if queried.
Do you agree? Is authorial voice a ‘thing’? Or is it at best a convenient shorthand for a nebulous concept and at worst a potentially paralysing invention? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Never title an email ‘Index’, ‘Queries’, ‘Complete’, ‘Help please!’ or any other unspecific term. Your PM may have many projects on the go, and clearly naming your emails (e.g. ‘Kennedy indexing complete’) will help her to quickly identify them, deal with them and file them.
Similarly, never title a document simply ‘Invoice’, ‘Queries’ or ‘Index’. Identify the project and, if relevant, a version number. For example, ‘Hale copy-editing queries 2’.
Wherever possible, avoid writing about more than one project in a single email. If your client has separate email folders for each project, she will have to remember that key details of project A are filed in project B’s folder.
If a project enters a new stage, either start a new email chain or update the subject line. Don’t reply to an email headed ‘Wells copy-editing queries’ if you’re asking a question about the index.
They may just be ‘quick queries’, but receiving a separate email with a ‘quick’ one-line query three times a day is irritating and distracting. Your PM may be managing three, seven, or even twenty or more projects at once, each with their idiosyncrasies and complications, and mentally hopping between them is not easy. Help your PM by batching your queries into manageable chunks so that she can properly budget the time and brainpower to give them the attention they need.
When a brief is long, it’s only human that you’ll miss a few things. However, when a freelancer queries – or downright skips – basic or numerous aspects of a brief, it really starts to make my ears steam. What it says to me is, ‘I’m very experienced so I’m going to skim read your instructions but broadly do the same job I always do.’ Or, ‘I struggle to absorb detailed guidance but I’m not going to bother implementing a system to ensure I can’t miss or forget about an instruction.’ Determine which style points you struggle to absorb and find a method to ensure they can’t elude you.
Sometimes the style sheet you supply to your client at the end of a job can just be a list of spellings. For example, if you’ve been asked to follow a specific style (e.g. APA, Chicago or a publisher’s house style) to the letter, there is no point transcribing the manual to your style sheet.
However, in my experience it is rare for a book manuscript to be edited to this degree of conformity. More usually the instruction is to follow key points of a certain style but otherwise ‘follow author style if consistent’. In these cases, it is essential to create a detailed list of style points for the basics: acronyms and abbreviations; capitalisation; citation syntax; criteria for displaying quotes, verse and equations; dates; figure and table captions; italic and bold; lists (run-on and displayed); numbers; possessives (for words ending in s); punctuation; references; and any other styles specific to the project.
It helps you. Making yourself consider and clearly document every style decision can only lead to a higher level of consistency.
It helps the proofreader. Without a style sheet, the proofreader will have to deduce what styles have been used as she proceeds through the text. Worse, if she finds inconsistencies, she may lose confidence in the copy-editor and waste time checking the text more thoroughly than if she’d had a style sheet (even a slightly flawed one).
It helps the project manager. When the project manager is collating the various corrections into one set for the typesetter, she will need to check no corrections contradict the style implemented during copy-editing. Without a comprehensive style sheet, she will be reduced to wading through the book looking for examples of the style in question. And, if she finds an inconsistency, she will have to dig even deeper to find out what the predominant or intended style is.
It helps the budget. Without the clarity of a well-implemented style sheet, there will almost certainly be more corrections at proof stage. Typesetters may charge for higher levels of corrections. In addition, corrections may lead to text needing to be reflowed over page boundaries, meaning that if the index has already been created it may need to be updated, again potentially at extra cost.
It helps to keep the author happy. Without documentation of key copy-editing decisions, the proofreader could unwittingly reverse important points the copy-editor agreed with the author, which may provoke the author’s justified ire later on.
Bottom line: a good style sheet can make a huge difference to the enjoyment or aggravation your PM gets from the project and thereby to her satisfaction or dissatisfaction with you as the copy-editor.
Most PMs will be and should be willing to help you out if, for example, you need to get in contact with another department, have a general query about how the publisher operates or need help chasing an overdue invoice. But avoid sending PMs emails that they simply won’t be able to do anything with. I once had a freelancer of many years’ experience repeatedly email me out of the blue with vague and insubstantial book concepts a particular publisher might like to consider, forcing me to explain several times that I had no contact whatsoever with the publisher’s commissioning department. Whether your PM writes back explaining why she can’t do anything with your email, struggles valiantly to send it to someone who can, or ignores it, you will have irritated her.
‘Oops. Oh well – better next time!’ Acknowledges responsibility but gives no indication that the freelancer understands exactly what was done incorrectly or plans to take quantifiable steps to address the issue for the future. The PM is left unsure of the freelancer’s professionalism, attitude to improvement and ability to improve.
‘Here you go – I fixed it.’ If you choose to immediately send your PM a ‘fixed’ version of your work, be very sure you understand everything that needs fixing and that you fix all of it. I have several times had ‘fixed’ work sent back to me implausibly quickly with residual mistakes, which only makes you look worse.
‘That task isn’t my responsibility.’ If you choose to respond in this way, you need to be very, very sure that you have a leg to stand on. Your PM likely manages many projects and knows the publisher’s requirements for its freelancers more thoroughly than you, so she will have an excellent overview of what is within your remit. That being said, it is sadly the case that editors often aren’t briefed sufficiently (or at all), so do stand up for yourself if you believe this to be the case.
‘Your instructions weren’t clear enough.’ If this was the case, why didn’t you ask your PM to clarify the brief earlier on in the project?
It is not your PM’s responsibility to become your mentor or to directly assist with your professional development. But, if she points out an issue with your work, it is important to succinctly let her know that you acknowledge the error and to explain how you will ensure it won’t happen again.
We are all guilty of this at times, and freelancers can be particularly susceptible. In certain situations of stress or tiredness and without colleagues to bounce off, we can be prone to losing perspective and reacting emotionally when something goes wrong professionally. But too much of this can force a PM to drop a freelancer for being simply too much to handle.
If you make a mistake, a PM should understand that you may feel guilty for letting her down or causing her extra work. Some expression of your feelings of culpability is human and professionally appropriate. But try to strike a sensible balance. A rambling tome of regretful self-flagellation helps nobody and only serves to cause your PM to expend further energy calming your nerves and refocusing the discussion in a more productive direction. Start and end your email with an apology that makes clear you understand the impact of your mistake and will take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. These framing sections should take up no more than around 25 percent of your message, with the central section objectively discussing what went wrong and how you offer to fix it.
Similarly, if the situation is reversed and a personal situation is affecting your professional world, the PM will likely be sympathetic and understanding. But in all but the most dire circumstances it should be possible for you to let her know what you can and can’t achieve so she can calculate the knock-on effects and make sensible decisions for the good of the project. If you press on blindly based on emotional reasons rather than objective judgments (even well-intentioned reasons such as not wanting to let your client down), your PM won’t be impressed if catastrophe occurs and it turns out it could have been averted.
The reality is that, however good an editor you are, your client will be less likely to rehire you if dealing with you is difficult or unpleasant. But following some simple points of etiquette and always endeavouring to keep your client’s and the project’s needs in mind will make this much less likely.
Project managers, what other editorial irritations really get to you? Copy-editors and proofreaders, what strategies to you employ to ensure you avoid these or any other deadly sins of editors? Please let us know in the comments!
Just for squeaks and giggles, let’s pretend we’ve been asked to manage the production of Wikipedia and estimate the costs and time involved in putting all 2.6 billion words, or around 4.5 million articles, through the standard process of readying a book for publication.
Brace yourself: there will be maths.
The following flights of fancy will be necessarily selective. They cover only what is generally called the ‘production’ stage of producing a book. For a normal encyclopaedia, before production can start, the ‘commissioning’ process has to happen. In this process, academic editors who are experts in their fields decide what areas they want to cover and then commission articles on those subjects. The articles are then reviewed and revised until they meet the requisite quality standard.
This process alone can take many years for an encyclopaedia of normal length, but one of the few advantages of printing Wikipedia is that the articles already exist. And, assuming the publisher wanted to print Wikipedia as it is, we could skip right over assessment of article quality and checking for gaps or gluts in coverage.
‘Hooray! We’ve saved time and money before we’ve even started!’ you exclaim.
the copy-editors, indexers and proofreaders themselves will need to be of a very high calibre, able to make decisions with little guidance (but maximum communication between themselves) on innumerable style and content issues.
Still interested in managing this beast? Let’s take a closer look at what it will involve.
Let’s pick an average copy-editing speed of 2,000 words per hour (ignoring the possibility for vast variation in the quality of the text and therefore in editing speeds). That’s 1.3 million hours of editing, or 162,500 days (at eight hours’ editing per day), or 677 years (working 240 days per year).
To complete the copy-editing in anything like a reasonable timeframe, say a year, you’d therefore need upwards of 650 copy-editors – probably more than an entire country’s worth of editors with the necessary experience level. As a result, all other publishers will hate you (you’ll have swiped all the good editors). And, if the copy-editors wise up to the fact you’ve effectively handed them a monopoly, they might be tempted to put their rates up, meaning your already insane copy-editing budget will skyrocket.
Just how insane would that budget be? The UK’s Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) suggests a minimum copy-editing rate of £25.70 per hour. Many experienced editors charge more, but let’s take that figure as our ballpark number. £25.70 x 1,300,000 is approximately £33.4 million.
generating a final shiny batch of proofs for printing.
At an estimated 5 million pages, including space for images and tables, that’s another £20 million in costs.
Next we have proofreading and indexing, which happen simultaneously once the proofs have been generated by the typesetter. The SfEP suggests a minimum proofreading rate of £22 per hour. Let’s be super-optimistic and assume our copy-editors have done such a brilliant job that the proofreaders (of which, by the way, we’ll need around 270 to get the proofreading done in a year) can manage 5,000 words per hour. That’s 520,000 hours at a cost of £11.4 million.
Indexing is often charged by the page. We’ll budget £2.50 per page, which gives a cost of £12.5 million. And I’m sure you’ve noticed the pattern by now and can deduce that the number of indexers required will be similarly silly.
As an aside, most encyclopaedias have extensive sections of ‘prelims’ – introductory material such as tables of contents, lists of contributors, lists of abbreviations, and perhaps an introduction and a preface. Seeing as even a table of contents for Wikipedia would likely be around 100 volumes and that compiling (let alone attempting to print) any kind of list of contributors (around 22.8 million) would be a task of truly frightening complications, let’s give the prelims up as a bad job. No one will notice, anyway – they’ll be too busy calculating how many miles of shelving they’ll need to buy to house their new purchase.
A second group of proofreaders then has to check that the corrections have been implemented fully and without errors being introduced. Assuming the corrections were minimal, let’s hope these proofreaders can get through 100 pages an hour. At the SfEP’s suggested rate, that’s another £1.1 million of work.
Once these rounds of corrections have been completed and the final PDF proofs have been signed off by the publisher, we can proceed to printing. Wikipedia itself gives an estimate of £0.03 (US$0.05) per page for printing alone – but we’ll need to bind the books too, so let’s double the price as a rough-and-ready estimate. At 5 million pages, the printing and binding cost would therefore be a relatively modest £300,000 per copy.
A final consideration is the cost of hiring a team to manage this whole process. Sometimes publishers do this in-house, but increasingly the task is outsourced to freelancers or specialist project-management companies.
This project-management team talks to the contributors, the publisher, the expert advisers, the copy-editors, the typesetters, the illustrators, the proofreaders, the indexers and the printers and attempts to maintain a degree of sanity and direction. This team also needs to be paid – let’s say £4 per 1000 words, adding another £10.4 million to our budget.
* The estimated numbers of hours for these components are even more guesstimated than the others, as detailed calculations of typesetting and indexing times are outside my expertise. Corrections from better-informed people welcomed!
courier costs of freighting the encyclopaedia’s 17,000 volumes (roughly an entire 20-ft shipping container per copy).
The above calculations have only dealt with the unit cost – the manufacturing costs. But, unless the publisher is a charity, they’re going to want to justify this whole crazy endeavour by making some sort of profit.
However, here’s where things fall apart (if indeed they were ever stuck together). Based on the fact that a printed Wikipedia would be uselessly unwieldy and out of date before copy-editing even started – not to mention that storing it would require purchasing a small fleet of delivery lorries’ worth of shelving – the market for a printed Wikipedia would quite certainly be zero. And I do not know of any costings model that is capable of suggesting a sale price for a product with no market.
In summary, Wikipedia, despite its shortcomings, is a stupendous human achievement. Were it to be printed, in terms of the basics it could be managed much like any other encyclopaedia. But attempting to print it would be a monument to human insanity the likes of which have rarely been seen.
Have you ever been asked to work on a 2.6-billion-word book? How did it go? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? Please consider sharing your experiences below!
In a recent post I said that copy-editors and proofreaders should always ask, ask, ask if they find their client’s instructions unclear or aren’t sure what’s wanted. In this impromptu post I’d like to expand on that a little.
When editorial project managers (PMs) write briefs, they try to make them perfect. They really do. They endeavour to make them complete, unambiguous and as concise as possible.
But the reality is that they will make mistakes. Especially with more complex, bespoke books.
I recently wrote a detailed twenty-one-page brief for the copy-editors of an encyclopaedia. I started the brief almost from scratch as I was in the midst of a major overhaul of my paperwork, and inevitably the brief contained some inconsistencies, typos and ambiguities. It would be crazy if it hadn’t; after all, the very premise we editors and proofreaders build our livelihoods on is that no human being – whether publisher, author or indeed professional copy-editor or proofreader – is capable of editing their own work with a clear eye. We cannot see our own errors because we see what we think we typed, not what we actually typed.
However, my two excellent copy-editors carefully worked their way through the brief before they got stuck into the manuscript, internalising the 95 per cent of it that made sense and sending me queries on the 5 per cent where I’d come unstuck. Result: all-round clarity such that the text will be consistently edited, necessitating fewer corrections at proof stage than there might have been if the ambiguities had remained unaddressed. Plus, my template brief has been honed for future use.
In another example, a shorter book, a single minor ambiguity was not queried by the copy-editor, leading to difficult choices having to be made in an already tight schedule. A five-minute query + reply could have saved hours of reworking.
Many PMs may like to give out the impression they are infallible. As copy-editors and proofreaders, we do a certain amount of that too. It’s a valid part of being a professional: nobody trusts an editor who prevaricates about the nuts and bolts of their trade. But we’re human too: we leave typos in emails, we occasionally fail to explain things clearly enough to authors. And, most, importantly, if we are infallible, we have an infallible sense of when we might be wrong, might have made a mistake or might not know the whole answer to a problem. Project managers should be the same.
If they’re not, knock them off their perch (politely!). Traditional thinking would say that this is risky: I’ve often picked up on a lingering attitude – even fear – that challenging PMs irritates them and risks them not engaging your services again. But be more charitable: faced with a genuine ambiguity in the instructions they’ve written, most PMs aren’t anything like that egotistical (and do you really want to be working with one who is?). Even if you do currently feel stuck working for clients who refuse to admit their fallibility, what you should fear most is misinterpreting the brief (making assumptions, not judgements) and either doing unwanted work or leaving undone what the PM wanted done.
In my copy-editing and proofreading work, I can’t recall ever asking a valid question of a PM and receiving a frosty response, so let’s squash this myth of unapproachable infallibility and allow PMs to be human.
What are your experiences with querying project managers? Do you think PMs benefit from or lose out from the myth of their infallibility? Do you even agree that such a myth exists?
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Editorial Pick ’n’ Mix is an eclectic weekly roundup of five tips or news items relevant to publishing, copy-editing and proofreading. The premise is that only a few minutes of semi-targeted reading every day of the (working) week will inevitably expand your editorial brain with new perspectives, ideas, resources and skills. Take a look at my recent post on professionalism – the inspiration for Editorial Pick ’n’ Mix – for more tips on how to boost that all-important asset.
New Hart’s Rules, the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors and the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary, published by Oxford University Press, are now out in their second editions (confusingly, these are now the second of the ‘new’ editions). OUP are trumpeting that the new-new editions have been ‘updated for the twenty-first century’ in collaboration with professional copy-editors and proofreaders. Officially they’re not published until 28 August but Amazon seem to have copies already. They are also available online for a subscription from Oxford Dictionaries.
This one is cheating a little as I didn’t have to go online to find it – an invitation just landed in my inbox. A new ‘all-in-one publishing solution’ going by the name of Reedsy is about to be launched. It offers authors a marketplace of ‘experienced professionals vetted by their peers and selected by [Reedsy]’. Only approved, experienced freelancers will be allowed to advertise and after every collaboration authors will be able to leave a review. One to watch for experienced copy-editors, proofreaders and designers.
It turns out there is such a thing as a sustainable font – in other words, a font that uses less ink. Eco fonts have gaps in the letters that are visible in large sizes but invisible at around 10pts and below. It’s worth clicking on the link to see this new eco font as the gaps create an unusually decorative – almost Art Deco – vibe with a strong character that may equally attract and repel potential users.
Last week I linked to a review of a service designed to speed up the styling of references. But this manifesto would do away with all such esoteric variations altogether and furthermore make massive changes to how texts cite and quote other works. There is a great deal to digest in this piece, some of it (currently) idealistic and untested but much of it sound and sensible. All editors who encounter citations should be aware that change may be afoot.
A potentially useful feature in Windows Explorer – adding a column to show the word counts of documents – unfortunately can’t be trusted. The word counts shown in Windows Explorer are all 80–90 percent of the true values.