I Don’t Make the Rules: What Copyediting Is and Isn’t

It’s no secret that a lot of people aren’t sure what copyeditors do. Even when you know the value I provide, sometimes the nature of my work means I can’t always give you the answers you want as a writer.

See, the thing about language is that it’s messy. People come to editors often looking for answers, but the truth is that the answer is, more often than not, “It depends.” Or my favourite, “Either is correct. Just be consistent!”

That’s my job, you see. More than anything else—more than correcting spelling or grammar, even—a copyeditor enforces consistency.

Indeed, I’ll even go so far as to assert that consistency matters more than correctness—though for the record, I think correctness matters a whole lot too!

So let’s look at some of the decisions copyeditors often have to make for their clients.

Spelling: More than the dictionary

You would think, of all the tasks a copyeditor has, checking spelling is the easiest.

Nope. In some ways I think it might be the hardest?

I only work in English (many copyeditors are multilingual, and I marvel!). But English itself, as we well know, is several languages in a colonial trenchcoat. My mother tongue is Canadian English, but my clients might be using American English or British English. So my first question is, what dictionary do you want me to use?

Many questions of spelling can be resolved simply by looking up the word in the chosen dictionary, sure. But it isn’t always so simple.

Recently I had a manuscript where the writer used toward and towards with nearly equal frequency. So balanced! I broke the tie in favour of toward—because it’s slightly favoured in Canadian English—but I made a note in my editing letter that if the client really liked towards we could go with that instead.

At the end of the day, you are the boss. But like any boss, you shouldn’t have to make all the decisions yourself.

Punctuation problems

One of my favourite punctuation marks is the ellipsis. It’s just so versatile, almost as versatile as another favourite, the em dash.

While many people just type three consecutive periods, there is a Unicode ellipsis character: … or U+2026. Indeed, many programs, including Google Docs where I’m composing this draft, will convert three consecutive periods into an ellipsis character for you!

Some people use three spaced periods (which is consistent with Chicago style).

Again, there’s no right or wrong here; you can choose any of these ways of writing an ellipsis, but you need to be consistent. If you don’t have a strong preference, then I pick.

In the same way, I’m going to make sure it’s a.m. and p.m. or AM and PM but never mixed. It’s either US or U.S., not both (unless we’re talking headlines versus body in AP style)!

Don’t even get me started on hyphenating compound modifiers.

Refer to the manual—except when you disagree with it

Of course, copyeditors have a very powerful tool when it comes to enforcing consistency: the style manual.

Style manuals help create a consistent mechanical style of writing for authors within the same organization or field.

Some of my clients have a particular style I need to use. This could be an in-house style guide/sheet, or it could be a complete style manual like the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Stylebook.

Other times, clients don’t really care. And that’s ok! In that case, I pick a style manual that I think is appropriate for the form of writing. Often that’s Chicago, but for pithier projects like a blog post, I might default to AP.

For the most part, “follow the style manual” allows me to offload much of the cognitive effort of copyediting.

However, the more I get familiar with the ins and outs of the various styles, the more I come to disagree with some of them. This is often personal preference—as I mentioned before, Chicago style likes three spaced periods for ellipses. I understand where this comes from, but I just think that’s silly when there’s a complete Unicode character ready for use.

Whenever I make a decision contrary to a project’s style manual guidance, I always note it, and I explain why. Transparency is key in my approach to editing.

Ask Me Anything

I often tell people, “My job as your copyeditor is to sweat the small stuff so you don’t have to.”

Writing is hard enough without worrying about consistency on top of it. That’s why you should hire me as your copyeditor when you’re ready to polish before publication.

And if you have questions—whether you’re a current client, a prospective client, or just someone reading this on LinkedIn, I’m happy to help you find answers. I’m not a Magic 8 Ball—I’ll never come up “ask me again later”!