Perfectionism and editing: getting unstuck

Photo by unukorno. Some rights reserved.

I recently attended an Editors Canada webinar “Taming the Inner Perfectionist” by Suzy Bills. Perfectionism is common among editors. It has its good side: motivation to do great work, and its bad side: fear of failure. Bills’s webinar outlined a wise strategy for setting realistic expectations and at the same time supporting yourself so that you can do the best work possible.

As I listened, the discussion of how perfectionism can lead to procrastination made me think about what makes me feel “stuck” on a project. I find that editing insecurity sometimes strikes at the start and finish of the project, and it can lead to inefficiency. At the start of the project, sometimes I find it difficult to prioritize all of the tasks, or I feel as if I have to decide every possible style issue before starting to edit the first page. At the end of the project, I’m tempted to re-check my work or I worry that I’ve forgotten to do something.

Getting started

My two main strategies for getting going on a new project when I’m feeling some uncertainty are building momentum and reducing the pressure. This is how I build momentum:

• Start with housekeeping tasks such as adding the client and project to my spreadsheet and time tracking software. These routine tasks are soothing, make me feel I’m making progress, and build confidence by reminding me of my past successes.
• Start a project notes document with any special instructions from the client. This is a way to break the project down into tasks and gives me confidence that I won’t forget a crucial requirement.
• Do easy tasks in the manuscript, such as removing extra spaces and paragraph breaks, setting the correct styles, and formatting the body text and headings. Again, these are easy tasks that make progress. Not only does it make sense to do them first, but they also give me a sense of familiarity with the manuscript.

To reduce the pressure, I often do the following:

• Tell myself that I’ll return to the first chapter to check my work and make sure it is consistent with the editing in the rest of the manuscript.
• Write down tasks to do later and questions to answer later on a to-do list in the project notes file. This keeps me from getting bogged down with too many decisions, and writing a note frees me to forget about it for now. I find that many decisions are easier to make once I’ve seen more of the manuscript, so putting off some style decisions seems to be more efficient in the long run.
• If I feel I’m working very slowly on a particular task or section of the manuscript, I turn off my work timer to remove the pressure to work “fast enough.” Once I finish the task, I can judge how much time I think it should have taken and log that.

Delivering the work

At the end of the project, it can be hard to let go. At this point, being systematic about making sure I’ve met all of the job requirements builds my confidence that I’m delivering good work. I use notes and to-do lists to keep things from falling through the cracks.

• I check my project notes file or the client’s original email to make sure I’ve done everything they asked for and to check for special instructions about delivery (and invoicing).
• Most importantly, I go through my to-do list in the project notes file to make sure all tasks are completed. At a minimum, my to-do list generally has reminders to check the table of contents, reread all of the track changes comments, and do a final spell check. Ticking off the items gives me confidence that the work is finished.
• Other checklists: the client may have a house checklist, especially for proofreading. I also have a standard checklist for proofreading that I go through.

Different editors will have their own strategies, but for me, these habits help get me moving on intimidating projects, manage decision fatigue while I’m working, and reduce delivery anxiety at the end. You can’t be perfect, but supporting yourself so you can do your best work will improve the quality of your work and your satisfaction in doing it.

Editorial fingerprints

Ideally, editing is invisible. Typos are corrected, small errors of fact pointed out, plot howlers averted, and the end result is a seamless, polished work that doesn’t betray any hint of multiple minds at work. Usually when I read books that I didn’t work on, I see text that seems to have sprung fully formed out of the author’s mind, but once in a while I see, not a scar exactly, but perhaps a band-aid.

In an excellently edited, smart, well-written thriller, the protagonist releases the safety catch on his Glock. Aha! I said. The Glock doesn’t have a safety catch. But a few pages later, there’s a passing reference to the gun being “modified.” What do you think? Author’s original vision or editorial band-aid?

I laughed out loud when I came across a sentence in another book that read, “Some people say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.” I bet there was a query on that manuscript that said, “Actually, [Albert Einstein/Mother Teresa/Benjamin Franklin/Leonardo da Vinci] probably didn’t say this. This quote seems to be attributed to various people without any evidence. I’ve edited to read ‘some people say’ instead. OK?” Dubious quote provenances are the bane of fact checking.

And on rare occasions, a disagreement bursts right out into the open. On the copyright page of Garner on Language and Writing, the eight-line American Bar Association policy statement is supplemented by an exemplary plain language rewrite titled “How Bryan Garner wanted the statement to read.”

From Garner on Language and Writing by Bryan Garner.

Or even worse:

Photo posted by @AcademiaObscura on Twitter.

How can I protect my work before sending it for editing?

Sometimes writers ask how they can protect their intellectual property before sending it to an editor. Register the copyright? Write a contract? Here’s what I tell them.

Choose an editor you trust

The most important thing is to choose an editor you trust and feel comfortable with. Your editor is bound by professional ethics to respect your privacy and your ownership of the manuscript. Make sure the person you’re thinking of hiring is a legitimate practitioner. Do an online search for their name and contact information and make sure their information checks out. Make sure their communications with you sound reasonable. You can also discuss the work on the phone, ask for references, see if the editor’s LinkedIn connections look believable, and find out if they belong to a professional organization.

Put your expectations in writing

Although a good editor will respect your ownership rights, there’s no harm in writing a simple letter of agreement or contract that states that the editor cannot share the manuscript with any third party without your explicit permission and that you retain full rights. Editors Canada has a sample editing contract that you could add this to.

Use good computer security

As well as taking precautions to make sure you don’t lose your work to a computer crash, you should also consider computer security. If you are very concerned about security, consider encrypting your manuscript before you store it in a cloud storage service or send it via email.

Understand that you already have copyright protection

It’s important to understand that under Canadian and U.S. law,* you automatically have copyright on your manuscript as soon as your work is written down. Although you can register your work with the Copyright Board of Canada, you don’t need to do that to secure your rights. (If you do decide to register your work, it probably makes more sense to register at the time that you publish, when the manuscript is in its final form and you are releasing it into the wild.)
*In all countries that are members of the Berne Convention, copyright comes into being automatically, without the creator having to register their work.

Erasable pens for proofreading

I’ve started proofreading with Pilot Frixion erasable pens recently. Unlike the messy erasable pens of the eighties, these ones work like a dream, without spreading eraser rubbings or wearing out the paper. These pens work with heat: as you rub the plastic knob on the back of the pen over the ink, it produces heat that makes the ink transparent.

I particularly like the red pen for proofreading on paper. I prefer pen over pencil for proofreading because it shows up better and is clear and sharp for making small marks. The problem has always been trying to keep things tidy when I can’t erase my marks. I was very fond of the Bic Wite-Out correction tape for covering up mistakes, but erasing them is far better.

So far I’ve tried the blue 0.7 mm Frixion Ball and the red 0.5 mm Frixion Point, and I like them both. The colour of the ink is nice, and they use a gel ink that isn’t greasy and doesn’t run or smudge. I don’t know whether anyone has had a problem with the ink fading under hot conditions (like a car dashboard in the sun), or whether the erased marks can be made to show again, but I haven’t noticed any problems with durability.

Edit: So it turns out that if you leave a freshly microwaved cup of tea sitting on your notebook, you can in fact erase your ink wholesale. This is a little disconcerting—what if someone puts my proofed manuscript down on a radiator and bleaches out two hundred pages’ worth of edits? The thought gives me the willies. A quick experiment with the freezer suggests that recently erased marks become visible again when exposed to cold, which is pretty worrying too: what if a cold trip on a FedEx airplane makes all of my erased marks visible again?

“When to use bad English” with James Harbeck (Editors Canada Conference 2015)

James Harbeck gave a great talk on when to use “bad” English. Bad English in this case means nonstandard English: ungrammatical constructions, jargon, slang, and vulgarity. And the first lesson for editors is that you should use bad English when it’s not bad. Some of the rules taught in the past never had much basis in logic, grammar, or common usage, and are now widely dismissed as superstitions. So go ahead: split infinitives and end your sentences with prepositions.

James has posted a writeup of his talk on his blog Sesquiotica.

Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers by Scott Norton

In developmental editing, an editor works with an author to shape the structure and content of a manuscript. This can start early in the writing process, or it might begin once a draft of the manuscript is finished. Developmental editing is done more often with non-fiction books, where the emphasis is on the author’s subject matter expertise rather than writing expertise, and it is generally done to improve the book’s quality and effectiveness at reaching its target readership.

I think developmental editing is the most difficult, although potentially the most rewarding, form of editing. It takes insight and creativity to find a theme or a narrative thread that will make the facts come alive. And it takes the greatest tact and communication with the author.

Contents

1. Concept: Shaping the proposal
2. Content: Assessing potential
3. Thesis: Finding the hook
4. Narrative: Tailoring the timeline
5. Exposition: Deploying the argument
6. Plan: Drafting a blueprint
7. Rhythm: Setting the pace
8. Transitions: Filling in the blanks
9. Style: Training the voice
10. Display: Dressing up the text

Scott Norton takes a lot of the guesswork out of this process by breaking it into separate tasks (see the contents listed in the sidebar). Each chapter has a case history to demonstrate the techniques being discussed. Structure is a constant theme, and the case studies typically use the initial and revised table of contents as a starting point for the editing. There’s valuable discussion on deciding how to approach the material, how to present it, what aspects to emphasize, and whether to order material according to a timeline or by following an argument.

The detailed case histories make the book come alive. Each case history is developed as the chapter progresses, and it shows the table of contents of a manuscript before and after editing, which neatly summarizes the changes. Although the author-editor relationship doesn’t get a chapter of its own, the case histories illustrate a variety of ways this can go.

At a little over 200 pages, the book isn’t unmanageably long, and it’s an attractively published small paperback that you can keep as a reference book without breaking your bookshelf. The further reading section at the end is a thoughtful collection of other good books on related topics with a short description of what each book offers.

Related reading

This article by John McPhee on structure discusses the choice between chronology and theme and describes how stuck a writer can get without a framework.

Reviewed from my own copy of the book.

When to capitalize “the”

I find capitalization one of the trickier areas of copy editing. As you try to be consistent, it’s easy to slide down a slippery slope of increasing capitalization until your document looks like the product of a Victorian letter writer.

One question that causes a lot of problems is the question of capitalizing the definite article with proper nouns. Should you write “he went to The University of British Columbia” or “to the University of British Columbia”? Is the article part of their name?

Luckily the style guides have some helpful advice. The Canadian Press Stylebook, 16th ed., has a useful entry on page 287, and The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed., also deals with this topic.

Titles of works starting with “the”

In general, include the article and capitalize it:
The Taming of the Shrew
“The Lottery”

For periodicals, Chicago suggests lowercasing the article and not italicizing it, even if it is part of the official title: the New Yorker.

Canadian Press style capitalizes “the” when it is part of the name: The New Yorker (no italics because this is a newspaper style), but it uses a lowercase article for names of almanacs, the Bible, dictionaries, directories, handbooks, and so on.

Sometimes you can drop a leading “a” “an” or ”the” in a book title if it doesn’t fit the syntax of the sentence (CMOS 8.169):
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew

“The” before a proper noun

The article is almost always lowercased:
the Supreme Court
the Panama Canal
the Constitution
the Beatles
the University of British Columbia

Some specific types of proper nouns

• Places

  Lowercase the article except in a city name that contains “the” (CMOS 8.45):
  the Netherlands
  The Hague

• Institutions and companies

  Chicago says that a “the” preceding the name, even if it’s part of the official name, is lowercased in running text (CMOS 8.68).
  the University of Chicago

• Associations and unions

  Same again: lowercase “the” even if it’s part of the official name (CMOS 8.70).
  the League of Women Voters

Changes in capitalization styles

These are recommendations from two specific style guides. Organizations have their own house styles for capitalization that may deviate from the guidelines I’ve quoted here, so check your house style.

When to hyphenate

Hyphenation is one of the trickier aspects of writing and editing. As with other language choices, feelings can run high, and unusual hyphenation can stop a reader cold (“Violetpurple”? “violetpurple”? Would it have killed him to use a hyphen?^*).

Here are some guidelines you can use to make quick, reasonable decisions about hyphenation.

1. When the term appears in the dictionary, use the form in the dictionary.
2. Use the guidelines in the style manual for the project. Generally, I use The Chicago Manual of Style, which has a detailed table of hyphenation guidelines available online.
3. If there’s no guidance from the dictionary or style manual, apply general guidelines to make a choice and enter it in the project style sheet so it gets applied consistently. The most basic rules of thumb are as follows:
   • Compound modifiers before a noun are usually hyphenated (“full-length section”) before but not after the noun (“the section is full length”).
   • Adverbs ending in -ly usually don’t need a hyphen (“a smartly dressed person”) because there’s no ambiguity.

Looking at the resources in steps 1 and 2 first helps you conform with generally accepted practices, which usually helps make the text as easy to understand and “unsurprising” to the reader as possible.

When you’re making decisions about hyphenation, try to avoid getting bogged down on the “logic” or “rightness” of one choice over another. Let your goal be to avoid ambiguity and avoid distracting your reader with unusual formations.

^*In the case of literary fiction written by experts, of course, just about anything goes. There’s really nothing wrong with “violetpurple”; it’s not ambiguous or unclear. I find it surprising and therefore distracting, but I expect that this author considered it the most straightforward way of writing what he meant, and that’s fair enough.

Editing fiction: The author-editor relationship

I attended a workshop recently on fiction editing, taught by Caroline Adderson. One of the best parts was getting her perspective on what makes for good author-editor communication. Here are some things she talked about.

Be enthusiastic

The author has worked on this book for years. They want to hear that you like it.

• Say that you like the book.
• Show that you care about the book and are committed to making it a success.
• If you’re given a manuscript to work on that you don’t like, find something positive to say about it.
• Hearing the editor say things like “I’m really excited to be working on this project” means a lot to the author.

The process of working together

A meet and greet phone call is helpful to establish rapport. Don’t leave the author in suspense. Tell them when you’ll start work, and let them know if there’s a delay so they aren’t left wondering whether you’re working on it yet, and what you think. When you do start work, let the author know and, again, say something positive about the manuscript so far (“I love the first chapter”).

Asking for changes

• Always show respect for the author’s hard work first. Start by talking about what you liked.
• Don’t follow a positive statement with “but.” It will cancel out the positive value of what came before.
• Don’t let your comments take on the tone of telling the author where they’re going wrong; explain that you had trouble understanding something and ask if they can make it clearer.
• Be very specific. Refer to exact spots in the manuscript and explain clearly what you think could be done differently. It’s even better if you can refer to another spot in the manuscript where the author has done what you’re asking for.
• Suggest the change in a query instead of making it yourself. Marking up the text, even with track changes, comes across as far more heavy-handed than asking for the change in a comment.

Photo by Qbert88. Some rights reserved.

A good writer wants to write a good book

A good writer cares most about producing a good book, so if you phrase your suggestions as ways to improve the manuscript, not the writer, the writer will find it easier to get on board. When you suggest that material be cut, soften the pain by emphasizing that the material is good, it’s just not right for the manuscript. You can suggest that the material be saved and used somewhere else.

Caroline said, “When you have a wonderful editor, you write the book for the editor.”

More on the author-editor relationship

• Some further thoughts on nonviolent editing
• Review of Author & Editor: A Working Guide (a book that Caroline quoted from in the course)
• Review of The Artful Edit, about self-editing and working with editors

Referring to foreign place names in English

Picture: Google Maps

When referring to places in other countries, here’s a question I came across recently. When a foreign place name contains a geographical descriptor, like “lake” or “mountain,” should you keep the name as is, or split out the generic descriptor?

I was editing an article that referred to the Wörthersee, in Austria. As it stood, the copy referred to “Lake Wörthersee,” but a reader who speaks a little German might know that See is German for “lake,” and find that wording redundant.

A fellow editor who used to work for a news service in Japan told me that their house style was to replace the Japanese suffix for the geographical entity with the English word: Fujisan would become “Mount Fuji.”

The Chicago Manual of Style recommends leaving out the English term: “the Rio Grande” not “the Rio Grande River.” (Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., 8.54 “Foreign terms for geographic entities.”)

For the Wörthersee, I chose “Lake Wörther” instead of “the Wörthersee,” since a) it isn’t a very well-known place, so I didn’t think changing the name would cause confusion; and b) the German for “lake” isn’t that widely known. Based on the same considerations, I would leave Rio Grande, which is more widely known to North American readers, as is instead of changing it to “the Grande River.”

What changes can you safely make to a URL?

URLs don’t look so good in running text: they start with an incomprehensible code, they contain strange-looking punctation, and they run together all-lowercase words that are next to impossible to read. To try to make them look a little nicer, you may be tempted to leave some parts off and gussy up the rest with some camel casing. But how do you know what you can safely change and what will break the link? Here is what you can and cannot safely change.

Parts of a URL

Without getting into too much detail, the structure of a URL is something like this:

protocol	subdomain	domain name	TLD	path
http://		paulgraham	.com	/hp.html
http://	philip.	greenspun	.com	/panda
http://	philip.	greenspun	.com	/images/pcd0803/florence-bike-6.4.jpg

For our purposes, when I say “hostname,” I mean the domain name including any subdomains (plus the second-level domain if present) plus the top-level domain (TLD). For example, google.com, scholar.google.com, or cra.gc.ca: everything that comes before the first slash.

Editing the URL

So there you are, faced with lots of unsightly and incomprehensible “http”s and forward slashes. How can you make these URLs fit into your text a little better?

Removing the protocol descriptor

Can you remove the http://? Yes.
http://www.google.com = www.google.com

The http in the URL stands for “hypertext transfer protocol,” which is the protocol used by the World Wide Web. It’s there to tell your browser that you are asking for a web page and that the browser should use the HTTP protocol as opposed to, say, FTP (file transfer protocol). But it’s reasonable to expect that any browser is going to assume HTTP as a default, so feel free to leave this off.

If the protocol descriptor is anything but http:// (for example https:// or ftp://) you should leave it in. Otherwise, browsers will assume that it’s an HTTP request and because it isn’t really, the request will fail (if you’re lucky, the server will be kind enough to redirect the request to the right URL, but it’s not a good idea to rely on this).

Changing capitalization

Can you add or remove capitalization? Sometimes. In the hostname, yes:
paulgraham.com = PaulGraham.com
but in the path, no.
slate.me/tbFnWs ≠ slate.me/tbfnws

For the hostname, it’s OK to have a house style that puts capital letters in the hostname (Scholar.Google.com), or even uses camel casing (OurCompany.com). However, the capitalization in the path (the section after the first slash) should not be changed: slate.me/tbFnWs is not the same as slate.me/tbfnws.

The reason is in the way that URLs are processed. The first thing that happens after you type in a URL and press Enter is that your browser sends a request out to the internet. DNS servers accept this request and translate the hostname (philip.greenspun.com) into an IP address (64.95.64.40), which is the address of the server that will have the files you’re looking for. Once the request reaches the server at 64.95.64.40, the server uses the path part of the URL to look through its file system and return the file you requested (/images/pcd0803/florence-bike-6.4.jpg). Only some web servers take the case of the path into account, but you shouldn’t assume that it won’t matter.

As a matter of style, use capital letters very sparingly. Traditionally URLs are all lowercase, and to the purist, capitalization looks funny. Keep your caps for the beginnings of words (PaulGraham.com) and never capitalize the whole URL or the top-level domain name (.com, .ca, etc.).

Removing the www

Can you add or remove a www on the beginning of a URL? No. At least, only sometimes.
www.pashley.co.uk ≠ pashley.co.uk

The www is a subdomain, just as the scholar in scholar.google.com is. If you take the subdomain designation off, for example to change www.google.com to google.com, you are changing the domain name.

OK, I admit that most (almost all) servers are configured to treat a domain name with and without the www subdomain designation the same way by forwarding traffic from one to the other, so you can usually get away with changing this. But it’s important to understand that if you add or remove a www it’s not the same domain name. If you are determined to add or remove a www, test the new form of the URL to make sure it works.

Try the URLs above and see what happens. The version without the www is invalid. If it works for you, you might be using a browser with aggressive “domain guessing.” That’s fine, but it’s far from every browser that does that: my versions of Chrome and Firefox won’t guess the URL in the above example. By the way, I’m not holding up the above sites as an example of bad design or configuration. I think it’s fine to accept only one version of your domain name, but editor beware.

Removing a terminal slash

Can you remove a slash from the end of a URL? Yes.

The final slash in each of these URLs can be omitted: www.google.com/ or philip.greenspun.com/panda/.

Edit, October 2022: I used to say that there was no web server in the world that wasn’t configured to behave as if there was a slash on the end of the URL, but I found one. Surprisingly, https://www.vlada.gov.sk/koalicia-vita-schvalenie-reformy-nemocnic/ behaves differently from https://www.vlada.gov.sk/koalicia-vita-schvalenie-reformy-nemocnic, and the latter gives a 404 not found error. So I have to amend my advice here to say that it’s almost always OK to remove the final slash.

But don’t these changes only affect people who use out-of-date browsers?

The pitfalls I’ve described above result from the way the DNS servers and web servers on the internet work, not the features of the user’s browser. However, some browsers use “domain guessing” to try other forms of a URL if the first request fails, so they’re more likely to be able to work around missing information in a URL. To make sure the URLs you print works for all your readers, be conservative about how you change them.

Red Pencil in the Woods highlights

Last week I was at Red Pencil in the Woods in Seattle (Kenmore), put on by the Northwest Independent Editors Guild. It was a great event: the cost was very reasonable, the Bastyr University campus was beautiful, and the program was well choosen and presented. I will definitely look out for the next one.

Conference highlights

Carol Saller: “Finding Our Way: Writing and Editing in the New Publishing Landscape”

This was the keynote speech by Carol Saller, the Subversive Copy Editor and senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press. She referred to a report from the Association of American Publishers using BookStats that seemed to show that revenues for print overall were increasing. She also went through an overview of the different kinds of publishing available:

• Conventional: publisher pays production costs, writer gets percentage of the net revenue. A large number of copies of the book are printed together.
• Print on demand (POD): a printing technique that makes it practical to print small batches of books.
• Self-publishing: the author handles the whole production process. See CreateSpace, which provides a collection of online tools, both free and paid, to set up a book.
• Subsidy publishing: the author and publisher split the cost of production and the author gets a higher percentage of the royalties than in a conventional publishing system.

E-book panel

A panel on e-books that discussed some of the advantages of e-books (authors can continue to sell books that would otherwise not be kept in print) and some of the technical challenges of the formats. Not all e-book publishers eat their own dog food.

How to write an effective book proposal by Jennifer Worick and Kerry Colburn

See how to write an effective book proposal for a summary of this presentation.

Carol Saller on subversive copy editing

The last session of the day was Carol Saller again, talking about her philosophy for harmonious copy editing: carefulness, transparency, flexibility.

• Carefulness: Before you change something, make sure that it should be changed. An example of lack of carefulness would be meticulously changing every single instance of a misspelling that turns out to be a special term commonly used in the field. To make sure you do no harm, use Google to search for terms that look odd, and if you see an error repeated consistently, query it.
• Transparency: Show your changes. Explain to the author ahead of time what changes they can expect, and if you’re using a word processor, track your changes. Explaining your changes, showing them, and making it easy to roll them back builds trust with the author.
• Flexibility: This is the subversive part. Some styles are really pretty arbitrary (for instance, whether you put a comma between the author and date in a citation). If an author wants to do something that is against the house style but isn’t actually going to hurt readability, maybe it’s OK.

Other notes about the conference

• Kyra Freestar’s conference notes at The Editor’s POV. Includes some follow-up and notes on the keynote speech about the future of publishing and the panel on e-books.

Subtleties of Scientific Style by Matthew Stevens

One of the fundamental features of science is the furtherance of knowledge. Poor writing is an impediment to this. A good illustration of this point is a paper by Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty published in 1944 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, which established that DNA was the substance that transmitted genetic information. Although it paved the way for James Watson and Francis Crick’s milestone paper in 1953 in Nature (171: 737–738) establishing the structure of DNA, it was not widely read or appreciated. Author Randy Moore has argued that the way it was written was the main reason for this (Journal of College Science Teaching 1994 November: 114–121). In comparison with Watson and Crick’s paper, it is (as Moore wrote) hesitant, extremely dense, verbose, highly detailed, abstract, impersonal and dull. We’ve all heard of Watson and Crick. Who has heard of Avery, MacLeod and McCarty?

—Matthew Stevens, Subtleties of Scientific Style, p. 46

I always took it for granted that academic papers had to be hard to read. (The reason usually cited is that the authors have to pack an enormous amount of information into the shortest space possible.) The introduction could conceivably be a work of art, but the methods and materials section with its centrifuging at 20,000 g and resuspending, that pretty much has to be a slog, right? Well, after seeing Stevens’s examples of how text can be improved by using the appropriate voice, putting steps in logical order, disentangling parallelism and rearranging sentences (to put subject and verb at the front of a long sentence, for example), I have new hope.

Subtleties of Scientific Style is a fairly short (85 pages), very readable book that doesn’t try to be a comprehensive style guide. Instead, Stevens assumes that his readers know the basics of editing, and he focuses on specific considerations for science writing. He starts with a discussion of substantive editing, and describes how to do a truly thorough editing job (involving seven passes). He then goes on to address various common errors in usage and content, and describes ways to improve expression and visual presentation. Finally, the appendices contain useful notes on Unicode and special characters.

If you’ve done any academic editing, you’re sure to recognize a lot of the problems he discusses: one of my favourites is the discussion of the word “respectively.” I too have had my brain twisted by authors who connected two lists of different length with “respectively.” (“Plants A and B were yellow and green, respectively”: OK. “Plants A, B, and C were yellow and green, respectively”: not OK.) I’ll be going back to this book again to refresh my memory and pick up new points.

Where to get it

The publisher is ScienceScape Editing, Thornleigh, Australia, but their website doesn’t seem to exist anymore. The book is available for download in PDF, and I believe it is the author’s intention to make the electronic copy available for free. Reviewed from the free PDF.

Screenwriters can teach you a lot about fiction editing

I’m not a big movie watcher. When people ask me “Have you seen—,” the answer is usually “no.” Why then the interest in screenwriting? Because I am fascinated by stories, and good screenwriters know how to tell a story. (They also write a pretty good how-to book.) Here are some books on the subject, as well as an introductory note or two on writing screenplays. Thanks to Melva McLean for information about screenplay structure, scriptwriting software, where to find scripts online, and the screenwriting gurus (but any errors are mine!).

The screenplay format

Don’t mess with the format: twelve-point Courier on standard letter-sized paper. Character names and scene headings are in all caps, dialogue and action in upper and lower case.

Screenplay style guide

The Hollywood Standard by Christopher Riley.

Screenplay writing software

Celtx is a commonly used tool. It handles the formatting for you and saves you a lot of typing. A “movie” project will store the script, the novel, and the schedule, and integrates the screenplay with the schedule so that you can see which locations and characters are needed on which days. Best of all, there are a number of sample projects loaded, including the Wonderful Wizard of Oz screenplay and novel. Besides the movie project, there are a number of other project types, including novel and comic book.

I hear Final Draft is good too. Demo version available.

Sample scripts

Unlike novels, which tend to be guarded by their copyright holder, screenplays are often made available online. Fill your boots. I just hope you like monospaced fonts.
Simply Scripts
Script-O-Rama

How to structure a screenplay

This is where the gold is. How long should a screenplay be? What makes a satisfying story arc? Where does the climax go? How soon should the inciting incident come? Following the right structure in developing your story is essential to creating a satisfying experience for the viewer.

Of the authors I list below, Blake Snyder is the one who provides the most step-by-step formula for putting together a movie. Just to give you an idea, here’s a rough outline of a script, mostly based on Snyder’s beat sheet:

• Length: about 90–120 pages. The rule of thumb is that one page of script comes out to about a minute of screen time.
• Three acts: Act 1 introduces the situation; Act 2 complicates the situation; Act 3 resolves the situation.
• Inciting incident (page 12 in a 110-page script): If it’s a murder mystery, a corpse has to be found. If it’s a love story, the lovers have to meet. In a hero’s journey story, the hero is presented with the call to action.
• The transition into Act 2: The hero accepts the call, or something else happens to turn the plot in a new direction.
• Fun and games, first half of Act 2: Action that results from the premise of the story. Most of the stuff that’s in the trailer comes from this part of the movie.
• Second half of Act 2: Complications build until the crisis.
• Transition into Act 3: Hero confronts their demons and turns the situation around using tools and lessons from earlier in the story.
• Act 3: Climax and resolution.

See “Three Acts or What?” for a nice comparison of the Syd Field, Blake Snyder, and hero’s journey story structures.

Books about screenwriting

• Save the Cat!: The Last Book On Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need—Blake Snyder. He has a nice list of genres and screenwriting devices (like the title “save the cat” trick), always with examples, and then discusses in detail his plan on how to set up the three-act structure that he believes is essential to delivering a satisfying experience. I certainly notice the structure he describes jumping out at me in movies like Avatar and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. A very fun book.
• Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting—Robert McKee. Excellent book. McKee is another script guru who consults and runs workshops. He’s also got a good list of screenwriting resources on his website.
• The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting—Syd Field. Interesting, not as fun as Blake Snyder’s book, but it covers some different points, including more on the nuts and bolts of selling scripts.
• Adventures in the Screen Trade—William Goldman. Very entertaining. An analysis of the workings of the movie industry, from what makes a star (it’s someone who will bring people in to see the movie open) to the role of producers (he hasn’t the foggiest, although he knows they’re essential). There’s also plenty of concrete advice on screenwriting: how to write beginnings, how to write endings, how to protect the star—and how to protect your soul.
• The Great Movies—Roger Ebert. He goes through about 100 movies that he thinks are important and talks about why they’re good and what they mean to him.

“Theory and Practice of Editing New Yorker Articles”

“Theory and Practice of Editing New Yorker Articles” is a short document written in 1937 by Wolcott Gibbs, fiction editor at the New Yorker as an internal style guide. Very funny in a deadpan way.

2. Word “said” is O.K. Efforts to avoid repetition by inserting “grunted,” “snorted,” etc., are waste motion and offend the pure in heart.

Usage: the AP Style Guide on women, girls, females, and ladies

There’s so much to say about how to write about specific groups of people with respect. I find that the style guide of the Associated Press (AP) has a lot of useful information. Here are some notes, in line with AP style, on writing about women.

Use “woman” as a noun, and “female” as an adjective. Don’t use “lady” unless you’d use “gentleman” for a man in the same context. (“This drug may cause beard growth in women.” “She will be the first female president.” “A lady never tells.”)

Referring to someone as “a female something” is fine, but referring to someone just as a “female” is depersonalizing. In everyday speech it tends to have a derogatory sound: “He arrived with some female or other in tow.” In medical writing it’s not rude, but it has a jargony sound: “Our study showed that 38% of females experienced . . .” In some contexts, perhaps if you’re referring to women of all ages, you might choose to use “females” instead of writing something like “female infants, girls, and women,” but wherever possible, I would stick to “women,” “girls,” etc.

I can’t say that using “woman” as an adjective (“Stress fractures are more common in women runners”) is wrong, because I see good writers doing it all the time, but find it unesthetic. AP style is to use female as the adjective and woman as the noun. Maybe people are aware of the negative connotations of using “female” as a noun, and overcorrect by not using the word at all. Don’t worry, it’s OK to say that someone is female (if they identify as female; see the GLAAD Media Reference Guide and recent editions of the AP stylebook for some notes on writing about transgender people).

“Lady” for “woman” is . . . unnecessary? patronizing? Perhaps AP says it best: “Lady may be used when it is a courtesy title or when a specific reference to fine manners is appropriate without patronizing overtones” (Associated Press Stylebook 2013).

Also worth mentioning is another guideline from AP: use “girl” only up until the eighteenth birthday. For adults, use “woman” or “young woman.”

Nonviolent editing: Delivering editorial criticism with tact

One of the challenges of editing is to point out faults, or possible faults, in a manuscript without crushing the author’s ego or making them want to send you a turd in the mail. Here are some thoughts from some articles I read recently.

Delivering criticism that the author will listen to

Emphasize that you are only speaking for yourself

Andrew Burt, founder and moderator of Critique.org, where writers trade feedback, has a couple of thoughtful articles on how to write a critique so that the author will be most likely to listen to your message. One of his main points is that it’s important to always emphasize that what you’re offering is your opinion and may not be true for everyone. Interestingly, he also recommends against citing authorities. Referring to someone else’s guidelines can seem attractive because it distances you from the bad news (“Hey, don’t blame me, but so-and-so says you should do this differently”), but unless you’re referring to a set of guidelines that the author is required to follow, such as a style guide, Burt is probably right when he says it comes across as another way of saying, “I’m right, and you’re wrong.”
See “The Diplomatic Critiquer” and “Critiquing the Wild Writer: It’s Not What You Say, but How You Say It.”

Express the effect, not the cause

In The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist, “How to Break the News,” Thomas McCormack says, “Always, when citing a fault, first express the effect, not the cause.” So instead of saying, “I felt the protagonist was a very unlikeable character,” in which case the writer may say “I meant to do that!” you say, “I found myself wanting the protagonist to fail because they were not very likeable.” The writer is less likely to say that was their intent. Looking for the consequence of the supposed fault also helps the editor go beyond enforcing rules for the sake of rules.

Nonviolent communication

Critique.org mentions How to Win Friends and Influence People as a source of ideas on how to communicate effectively, and I think the principles of nonviolent communication also offer some useful techniques for presenting criticism in its most productive form.

Softening the blow when manuscript editing

So far we’ve looked at some ideas about how to offer critiques. What about reducing the shock of getting an edited manuscript back and seeing a red line through every third word?

Remind the writer that your edits are only warnings and suggestions, presented for consideration

Editorial Anonymous, in “How to Respond to Copyeditors’ Marks,” suggests to writers that they try to see the edits as warnings and suggestions that help them make informed decisions about how to produce the effects they’re aiming for, and not as judgmental pronouncements.

If you’re using track changes, show the writer the untracked version first

One of the nice things about editing digital documents is that there are some techniques available for making the writer’s first contact with the edited product a little less upsetting.

As pointed out by the Subversive Copy Editor in her excellent book, you can send the writer one copy of the manuscript with all changes accepted and suggest that they look at that version first. Once the writer sees that the writing is still their own, they’ll be in a better frame of mind to look at the individual edits.

If it’s only a suggestion, write a comment rather than making the change

When editing with track changes, you have practically unlimited room to write queries. Of course it’s overkill to comment every time you change a spelling to conform to the house style, but comments are great for warnings and suggestions. If you’re not absolutely sure that the author is using the wrong word, write a comment. Highlighting the word “mistress” and writing a comment (“To my mind, ‘mistress’ carries connotations of a certain type of relationship . . .”) and finishing with a suggestion (“Would ‘girlfriend’ be a better description of Fred’s relationship with Penny?”) explains your reasoning and gives the writer the choice between graciously accepting your suggestion or saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

About typing two spaces after a period

Using the double spaces

This article in Slate can say it for me: we recommend against putting two spaces after a period. From an editor’s perspective, I’ll say that the first thing I do with a new manuscript is to replace all multiple spaces with single spaces.

If you’re deciding what style to use for a document you’re producing, keep in mind that the two-space style is fragile, in that it’s much harder to find and correct extra spaces or missing spaces. With the one-space style, you can get rid of accidental extra spaces with a single search and replace operation. But with the two-space style, you have to use a much more complicated search, since you require two spaces after a sentence-ending period but not after i.e., e.g., ellipsis points, etc.). If you display your text justified instead of left-aligned, it will be really hard to tell whether each word gap contains the right number of spaces.

Removing the double spaces

To process a manuscript that has extra spaces (I always do this on receiving a manuscript and again before delivery because it’s easy for extra spaces to creep in), use search and replace to search for “  ” (just type two spaces into the search box) and replace with “ ” (one space in the replace box). I always choose the “Replace all” option to change them all at once, and then run it again until there are no more multiple spaces found.