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Advanced Copy-Editing: New Course Launching May 2009

 

February 2009

 

 

We interviewed Margaret Aherne, the tutor of our new course on Advanced Copy-Editing ....

Too many people think that copy-editing is simply a matter of checking spelling and grammar – and they can’t see why copy-editors are still needed in this day and age when we have spellcheckers on our computers. However, there is so much more to it. A good copy-editor will work on behalf of four people: the typesetter, for whom they will mark up the script and make the ordering of components clear; the client, for whom they will apply house style and check for legal issues that could cause problems (such as libel and infringement of copyright); the author, whose reputation is at stake and whose work must therefore be free from factual error and anything that might lose them the respect of the reader, such as a flippant tone; and finally – but perhaps most important – the final reader of the work, for whom the copy-editor will ensure that the text flows and is free from anything that might distract from enjoyment of the book and the learning gained from it. It’s a beautiful craft and I’m proud to be associated with it.

 

As for the skills required: I’ve always maintained that the main attributes of a good copy-editor are paranoia and cynicism! You have to be constantly questioning: has the author contradicted their own argument? Does the illustration really show what the description in the text says it shows? Take nothing for granted – check, check and check again.

 

Perhaps the best way of illustrating the difference that a good copy-editor can make to a project is to show what happens when you don’t have good copy-editing. There is a series of lavishly illustrated transport books that I’d love to collect – but they’re so full of grammatical errors, misspellings, unclear sentence constructions and out-and-out mistakes, such as a picture being wrongly labelled, that I can’t bear to read them (and I’m not the only one). So that publisher is losing out on a potential market because the product is so unfinished. It gives the impression that the publisher couldn’t really care less about either the product or the purchaser of that product, which I find insulting.

 

Authors of complicated academic texts are so immersed in the intricacies of their theory that they sometimes don’t fully appreciate the basics of presentation – such as making sure that a numbered sequence is correct. For example, we might have a linguistics book full of numbered examples that are referred to in the main text; if the numbering sequence skips or repeats, it becomes less and less clear which examples are being referred to, which is crucial for following the argument. Copy-editors are vital for attending to such down-to-earth matters, leaving authors free to concentrate on the “higher” matters. One of my loveliest authors, a retired professor of English, made several mistakes in both numerical sequencing and alphabetical ordering, which were gently brought to his attention for checking when he vetted the copy-edited script; he said, “I’m non-numeric and unalphabetic: that’s how I got to be a professor – there’s nowt else they can do with you!” Another author likened the copy-editor to a midwife, helping to bring his offspring into the world fit and healthy.

 

My eyesight wasn’t good enough for me to be a train driver – yes, really! – so I gave up that particular fantasy for something that I’ve always been good at: preparing and polishing the written word. I’ve always been freelance, which was a struggle at first: I started in the mid-1980s after graduating from university, taught myself from Judith Butcher’s Copy-editing, and had a couple of lucky breaks by talking to the right person at the right time and making contacts in the academic publishing world through my university tutors. I took publishers’ proofreading tests and passed them, then learned a huge amount about copy-editing through proofreading against copy – you soon pick up on what is good editing and what isn’t. After a while I worked my way up to become a freelance project manager, which I love – it’s wonderful building my little “stable” of freelance copy-editors, proofreaders and indexers, all of whom I so enjoy working with. In the last few years I’ve also been a tutor on the PTC’s Basic Proofreading by Distance Learning course and I organise training courses for the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, of whom I’m a founder member. How I wish these courses had been in place when I started out! Both the tuition and the comradeship and support networks would have been invaluable to me as I struggled alone in my little office, never quite sure whether I was doing things properly. Today’s newcomers have a wonderful array of training courses to welcome them into our circle.

 

As for what I enjoy about the work, that has to be seeing the finished product and knowing how much intervention and hard work it took to make it good. It’s wonderful to experience the gratitude of your authors. In the acknowledgements of one of the most challenging books of my whole career, I’m credited in Irish – fulsomely, so I’m told, but my knowledge of Irish isn’t quite up to understanding it, so I hope it doesn’t say anything that I wouldn’t want published.

 

Things change all the time: the methods of copy-editing (on paper or on screen), typesetting (keying from hard copy or setting from electronic files) and proofreading (marking up paper proofs or doing it electronically); the internal set-up within publishing houses (more and more tasks are being sent out of house – not just copy-editing and proofreading but project management also); the fact that some work is now being outsourced to full service suppliers overseas, who often then recruit native-language copy-editors in the UK. Things are so different from when my grandfather was an editor back in the 1950s. We have to keep abreast of change if we’re to maintain our position within the ranks of editorial “suppliers” who offer what the client wants – it all comes down to that. If we don’t provide the kind of service they want, they’ll look elsewhere. We have a duty to ourselves to keep our skills up to date and fresh.

 

Margaret Aherne will be holding the first Advanced Copy-Editing masterclass on 27 May 2009 and then again on 25 November 2009, on behalf of the Publishing Training Centre, at Book House in Wandsworth. See the Advanced Copy-Editing course page for more details.

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