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The Copy Editor's (Life)Style Guide: Maintaining Your Joy (and Sanity) in a Rapidly Changing Profession by Jamaal Pittman

I heard about this book through Editors Canada’s academic book club last February. Part memoir and part how-to guide, this short, readable book tells the story of how the author came to copy editing, and more importantly, how he found his niche. On the how-to side, he gives valuable guidance on navigating the job of an in-house editor: communicating with your co-workers to manage expectations on projects, saying the right things in your emails (and sending those emails to the right people), and writing clear markup and comments.

An important topic in this book is protecting your personal life and maintaining your enjoyment of the work. Copy editing is a job that tends to get focused on avoiding mistakes, and Pittman offers some valuable perspective on keeping your eye on the positive aspect of the job: having an opportunity to improve the document. And speaking of focusing on the positive, the author takes a generous and forgiving attitude when he writes about a work relationship that didn’t go well, and I appreciate his compassion for himself and others.

As copy editors, we should feel a sense of privilege, not pressure.

As a freelance editor, I found that some parts of the book weren’t that relevant to my work situation, such as getting jobs through a recruiter and dealing with an in-house manager. But overall, I found plenty to keep me interested.

Contents

1. Foreword
2. Why This Book
3. (You’re Probably Wondering) How I Got Here
4. Welcome to the Hotel . . . Arizona?
5. Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road (Hello, Golden State)
6. The Comeback
7. The Incredible, Indelible . . . Deadline
8. Marking Up Copy the Right Way
9. Weird Science: The Art of the Handoff
10. Editors Just Wanna Have Fun
11. Self-Care and the Elusive Work-Life Balance
12. Finding Your Joy Right at “Home”
13. The Job Hunt: Tools to Get You Ready
14. AI: Fear and Loathing in Cyberspace
15. I Believe in You (and Me)
16. Acknowledgments

Related reading: The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller, The Editor’s Companion by Janet Mackenzie (review).

Published April 2024. Buy at lulu.com.

Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer

I picked up Dreyer’s English because I noticed the words “Copy chief of Random House” on the cover and was further intrigued when I cracked it open and found a mention of Words into Type, a venerable editing reference. I found that the book is a pleasure to read, does an amazingly complete job of covering standard copy editing knowledge, and as a bonus, conveys a lot of insight into the copy editor’s role and job in editing fiction and creative nonfiction.

Every book on how to write has to take a certain philosophical stance on how prescriptivist to be. Dreyer takes a fairly pragmatic approach. As the copy chief of Random House, he talks to authors, and he hears from readers. He respects authors’ ownership of their works, but knows that authors don’t want to get floods of letters from readers about grammar and usage matters that the author hadn’t even noticed. He doesn’t try to sweep back the tide of general usage, but he also trusts his own taste and judgment.

In thirteen chapters, the book covers the gamut of copy editing knowledge, including “The Stuff in the Front”:

• Tricky grammar points
• Treatment of numbers
• Cleaning out needless words
• Which non-rules to ignore
• Punctuation

“The Stuff in the Back” includes useful notes on commonly misspelled words^* and common usage errors, as well as some miscellaneous points, including a discussion of “the habit of inauthentically attributing wisecracks, purported profundities, inspirational doggerel, and other bits of refrigerator-door wisdom to famous people.” From your lips to God’s ears, Mr. Dreyer. A useful part of the book is a set of things to watch out for in fiction, such as checking sunrise and sunset times, or anachronisms with postal codes and phone numbers to watch out for.

Reviewed from a library copy.

^*I consider myself to be a good speller, but some of these (“elegiac”) gave me qualms. I couldn’t resist doing a computer-wide search for the misspelling elegaic, but to my relief, it didn’t turn up in any old editing projects, only in a published magazine not edited by me.

Trauma-informed editing with Iva Cheung

At a recent meeting of the Editors’ Association of Canada, Iva Cheung, a researcher in knowledge translation and exchange, presented on trauma-informed editing. Here are a few notes based on her talk.

What is trauma?

There are various definitions of trauma. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM), defines it in terms of being exposed to death, serious injury, or sexual violence, but other sources use a wider definition that acknowledges that many forms of violence, abuse, or other experiences that overwhelm a person’s ability to cope can result in trauma. I personally think of trauma as a psychological injury. Like bodily injuries, some psychological injuries heal on their own; others require health care intervention; many injuries have lasting consequences.

What is trauma-informed care?

Trauma-informed care is an approach within health care that recognizes the widespread incidence and impact of trauma and tries to integrate knowledge about trauma into practices to avoid re-traumatizing the patient. According to the Trauma-Informed Care Implementation Resource Center, the principles of trauma-informed care are:

• Safety: staff and patients feel physically and psychologically safe
• Trustworthiness and transparency: decisions are made with transparency
• Peer support: people with shared experiences are incorporated into the organization
• Collaboration: power differences are reduced with shared decision-making
• Empowerment: building on strengths
• Humility and responsiveness: biases and stereotypes are recognized and addressed

Trauma can have a variety of effects related to stress, not all of which are obvious. For example, lack of confidence in the ability to achieve goals or difficulty in navigating relationships. Stress is particularly likely to be caused by things that:

• Are new or unpredictable
• Threaten the ego (make a person feel their competence is questioned)
• Produce a sense of not having control

Writing for audiences who may have experienced trauma

When writing for audiences who may have experienced trauma, there are some measures you can take to reduce the risk of unintentionally harming someone. 

Clearly describe the document’s contents

The most basic way to protect people is to be clear about what is in the document, for example with a content note. A good table of contents and clear headings also help readers avoid any sections that may be a problem for them. Keep in mind that images tend to have a greater impact than text descriptions, so are more likely to cause harm. 

Guidelines for content notes:

• Don’t be too general, like the television warning “may be disturbing to some viewers.”
• Don’t be too specific about the content, or you can replicate the harmful content. Say, for example, that the material describes a serious injury, or discusses sexual violence, but don’t give details.

Topics to consider writing content notes for:

• Death
• Abuse
• Suicide
• Colonialism and genocide
• Sexual violence

If a document contains discussion of topics that are likely to be very upsetting to some readers, you can add references to resources such as crisis lines. You can also offer the reader options, such as a text document instead of a video. You can provide a way to return to the material later or view it in short chunks.

What about trigger warnings? A trigger is a stimulus that prompts a memory. In some cases this can lead to retraumatization. Trigger warnings warn readers of potentially triggering material, but the term “trigger” gets used in various ways, so it may not be clear. It also casts a negative light on the material. The word “warning” also implies that the material is dangerous, which can cause people to anticipate stress. For these reasons, you may choose to use the wording “content note” instead.

Use anti-oppressive publishing practices

Your documents will be less likely to cause harm if you use anti-oppressive practices. This is a big topic in itself, but for a start:

• Use respectful terms that affirm people’s humanity
• Watch out for stigmatizing language
• Present authentic voices
• Make sure a variety of people are represented in the document, or acknowledge that the document doesn’t deal with all experiences
• Watch out for appropriation
• Consider having an authenticity or sensitivity reading of the document and incorporating your reader’s feedback

Working with authors who may have trauma

If you consider the stressors mentioned before (new, unpredictable, threatens ego, sense of no control), you can address these risks with the four c’s:

• Consent: Get the author’s consent for changes; don’t make hidden changes.
• Control: Ask the author how they want to handle the work; give them input on tracking changes, what software to use, how to communicate with their editor.
• Collaboration: Give the author input in decisions.
• Communication: Let the author know ahead of time what your publishing process is. Let them know what opportunities to collaborate they will have and what their choices are. Let them know how you incorporated their input. 

When to apply trauma-informed editing

Some people suggest that 75 percent of people in Canada will experience trauma in their lives, even using the restrictive DSM definition. About 9 percent will develop post-traumatic stress disorder. That suggests that a lot of people at any given time have psychological injuries. And looking at the measures for trauma-informed publishing, you can see that they provide benefits for everyone: documents that state clearly what is in them, that show awareness about mental health resources where appropriate, and that use respectful language; a publishing process that emphasizes great communication and respectful collaboration with authors. It makes sense to maintain awareness of trauma-informed editing practices throughout our work.

Resources

• https://www.brusheducation.ca/books/elements-of-indigenous-style
• https://consciousstyleguide.com
• https://raimeygallant.com/2020/02/18/responsiblestyleguides
• https://www.rachelfudge.com/style-guides
• https://www.rabbitwitharedpen.com/conscious-language-toolkit-for-editors

Recipes into Type: A Handbook for Cookbook Writers and Editors

Recipes into Type, by Joan Whitman and Dolores Simon (HarperCollins, 1993), is the standard text on cookbook editing. It’s got detailed advice on all of the tricky aspects of writing a recipe: choosing a good title, what to put in the headnote, what to include in the ingredients list, writing a good recipe method, what to cross-reference and what not to, and what to put in a recipe note. It also goes into detail about the recipe-specific copy editing considerations: punctuation, numbers, and capitalization. The chapters on indexing, manuscript preparation, and design are not directed so much at editors, but the indexing chapter in particular is helpful to understand why the index is done the way it is. Chapter 9, Useful Information, contains various container sizes, US–metric conversions, British and US cooking terms, cooking temperatures, recommended amounts for servings, and substitutions, and the word list has the authors’ recommend spelling and capitalization for a variety of food words. Anyone modernizing an old recipe might find items like egg size conversions or oven temperature conversions (fairly hot: 400°F, British gas mark 6) very helpful.

Contents

1. Setting Up a Recipe
2. The Language of Recipes
3. Punctuation
4. Numbers
5. Capitalization
6. Indexing
7. Preparation of the Manuscript
8. Format and Typography
9. Useful Information
10. Word List

As a copy editor, I find that numbers and capitalization are a very tricky area where authors and editors can take a variety of approaches. A cookbook combines narrative text in the book introduction and the recipe introductions with more technical and number-intensive text in the ingredients list and recipe method, and deciding which numbers to spell out where requires some thought. On the other hand, spelling out numbers in one place and using figures in another looks inconsistent. There are also decisions to be made about whether recipe titles are capitalized when cross-referenced elsewhere in the text, and how sub-recipes are capitalized. Recipes into Type describes the various styles and how to apply them. For some guidelines on the endless questions about which cheeses and wines to capitalize, Recipes into Type quotes the “Wines without Caps” instalment of On Language for some general guidelines.

The book is getting old, and shows its age in the chapters on design and preparation of the manuscript, but the information in the other chapters is still relevant, and the conventions for ingredients lists, recipe methods, and capitalization match what I currently see people using. Now, did I edit or proofread more than forty cookbooks before I read this book? Yes, I did. I was able to get by with the publisher’s house style guides, and the work done by the in-house editors always laid a solid base for my copy edit. However, if you are working for a self-publishing author, or for a publisher who does not specialize in cookbook publishing, or if you would like to dig a little more deeply into best practices for recipe writing, I think this book will be extremely useful.