EditAmerica
The
Ultimate Editorial Source
115 Jacobs Creek Road
Ewing, NJ 08628
Phone: 609-882-5852
Fax: 609-882-5851
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.editamerica.com
Standards of the past at the speed of the future
Proofreader's and Copy Editor's Skills and Responsibilities
The proofreader's and copy editor's tasks are most important and time-consuming. After a copy editor reviews and edits a document, the marked-up corrections get keyed in. After that, a proofreader reads the revised, updated version against the original version to ensure that all of the marked corrections on the original got interpreted and input both correctly and in the right places in the document, that the marked corrections were not misinterpreted, and that none of the corrections got overlooked or skipped. At EditAmerica.com, the tasks of freelance editing and freelance proofreading require freelance editors' and freelance proofreaders' close attention to a document's every detail, a thorough knowledge of what to look for and of the style to be followed, and the ability to make quick, logical, and defensible decisions.
To begin with, proofreaders and editors are thoroughly familiar with and comfortable applying the universally accepted editorial and typographic marks and symbols-as described in The Chicago Manual of Style and summarized under proofreader's marks in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary-that are commonly understood by compositors working in English.
The editorial function comprises two processes: mechanical editing and substantive editing. Mechanical editing involves a close reading, with an eye on consistency of capitalization, spelling, and hyphenation; on agreement of verbs and subjects; on scores of other matters of syntax; on punctuation, such as beginning and ending quotation marks and parentheses; on the correct number of ellipsis points (it varies!); on numbers given either as figures or as words; and on hundreds of other, similar details of grammatical and typographic style.
In addition to regularizing those details of style, both the copy editor and the proofreader are expected to catch infelicities of expression that mar an author's prose and impede communication. Such matters include but are by no means limited to dangling participles, misplaced modifiers, mixed metaphors, unclear antecedents, unintentional redundancies, faulty attempts at parallel construction, mistaken junction, overuse of an author's pet word or phrase, unintentional repetition of words, race or gender or geographic bias, and hyphenating in the predicate-unless, of course, the hyphenated term is an entry in the dictionary and therefore permanently hyphenated in every grammatical case.
The second, nonmechanical,
process-substantive editing-involves editors' and proofreaders' rewriting,
reorganizing, or suggesting more-effective ways to present material.
o Editors and proofreaders identify by instinct and learn from experience
how much of these kinds of changes to make on a particular document.
o Experienced editors and proofreaders recognize, and do not tamper with,
an author's unusual figures of speech or idiomatic usage.
o They preserve the author's voice with a view toward the faithful reproduction
of the author's manuscript.
o They silently correct inconsistencies, misusages, and misspellings solely
for the purpose of clarifying the unclear.
o They know when to make an editorial change or simply suggest it.
o They know when to delete a repetition or merely point it out to the
author.
o They respect an author's right to expect conscientious, intelligent
editorial help.
o They never make queries that sound stupid, naive, or pedantic or that
seem to reflect upon an author's scholarly ability or powers of interpretation.
o And they handle untold and unsung other matters of mechanics, substance,
and style.
