Editing Explained

I’ve been working on a new project this week–copyediting another author’s manuscript. I’m really enjoying getting into the fine detail this entails. (Can you introduce a line of dialog with a colon? Does the cat say “mrow” or mrow? Do we talk about the duke of Mantua or the Duke of Mantua?)

It led me to think that I might explain a bit about the different types of editing a book goes through.

1. Editing. This is the stuff people generally think of when they think of a book editor. An editor looks at the shape of the overall book–the plot arc, the character development, whether the climax is satisfying or falls flat. She’ll also niggle about word choice, repetition, sentence structure, and that kind of thing.

2. Copyediting. This is the final stage before the a manuscript goes to design. It’s a very careful, detailed look to make sure the manuscript conforms to grammatical standards and standard spelling and house style. Where do the commas go? Should that be a colon or a semicolon? If a character flips through a pile of paper, is she rifling or riffling? A copyeditor also checks consistency (does a character have red hair in chapter three and brown hair in chapter seventeen?) and chronology (oops, the author accidentally put forty-seven days in September).

3. Proofreading. The final stage of all. A proofreader checks over a manuscript once it has been designed. In the old days, when books were actually set in type, a proofreader was checking to be sure that the printer had not introduced errors during this process. Now, when books are produced electronically, a proofreader serves as a final set of eyes to check those pesky commas and to verify that all of the copyeditor’s changes actually got made and that the formatting didn’t go wonky during the change from manuscript to book.

I like to think of it this way. The editor makes sure the book is good, the copyeditor makes sure it is correct and consistent, and the proofreader makes sure no little details were missed.

(FYI: Yes, you can use the colon, but do it sparingly. Either “mrow” or mrow, just be consistent. The Duke of Mantua. The character who flips through the papers is riffling.)