Author Archives: Maria Langer

Copy Editing – Part II: My Experience with Copy Editors

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My experiences with copy editors.

This is the second installment of my series about copy editing. As I discuss in Part I, part of this series is a rant based on 15 years of accumulated frustration. This Part is where I blow steam.

Stet!Copy Editors and My Work

I have to start out by saying that my work is usually not very heavily edited. I take that to mean that one or more of the following are true (or is that is true? I never said my grammar was perfect.):

  • I know how to write. Seems funny to even make that statement. It’s pretty obvious that I know how to write when I’ve been doing it for a living for so long.
  • My publishers have a limited budget for copy editing. This might be true with my “packaged” books — those are the ones I write, lay out, and submit as InDesign files, TIFFs, and PDFs. But I don’t think that’s the case with my more traditionally produced books.
  • The copy editors I get don’t know what they’re doing. For the most part, I don’t believe this is true. How can they be copy editors when they don’t know what they’re doing?

So I tend to believe it’s the first reason more than the others.

But the reason doesn’t really matter. Any writer can tell you that they’d rather see their work lightly copy edited than heavily copy edited. The reason: the percentage of original words, sentences, and paragraphs that “survive” the editing process. Light editing means more of the author’s original work remains intact. Heavy editing means that less of the author’s original work remains intact. It’s as simple as that.

[I need to make a disclosure here. I am guilty of being a heavy-handed editor. I’ve worked with co-authors on three occasions. On two of them, I had final say over the text that would become the content. In both cases, I tried to change the co-author’s “voice” to match mine. Voice is a sort of writing style that comes across in sentence construction, etc. In one case, the co-author didn’t give a hoot; he was just glad that someone was going through the text and making the style consistent. In the other case, the co-author was rather upset and offended. In both cases, I did what I did to make the book better. Or at least better in my opinion. Whether I made it better or worse is something we’ll never know. In any case, I’ve decided that it’s probably best if I stay away from the co-author role.]

Ten Editions, Ten Experiences

I just completed the tenth edition of one of my books. Each revision begins with the previous edition’s text and edits it so it covers the current software product. Some years, less than 5% of the book’s content changes. Yet for the first few years, the book was sprinkled with copy edits — I could see them because we use Microsoft Word to prepare the manuscript and the revision feature is turned on throughout.

Every year’s editor — because there have been 8 of them over 10 editions — had a different “pet change.” For example, one editor didn’t like where I put words like “only” and would invariably move them to another part of the sentence. I’d read the sentence both ways and either way worked for me — although it obviously sounded more natural to me the way I’d originally written it. Another editor liked to add commas. That didn’t matter much, because the next year’s editor liked to remove commas. One year’s editor decided that all the names of menu commands, dialogs, and options within the software should be in title case, no matter how it was presented in the software. So the Show color for Background image check box would become the Show Color For Background Image check box. One editor rolled up her sleeves and rewrote a bunch sentences that the previous editions’ editors had either fiddled with themselves or left as is. The most recent editor decided to introduce italics to some text that had never had it before.

How I Felt about It

Each year — the book is revised annually, every summer — my attitude toward the copy edits changed.

At first I didn’t mind so much, although I got seriously peeved when the production editor for the first edition started making changes to content that we’d all already agreed on. (That’s another story and not a happy one, although I did get the last laugh.)

Then, as I saw the current year editor change things that the previous year’s editor had changed so it was what I’d originally written (or pretty close to it), I started complaining. I could do that since the book’s very first edition had become a bestseller and the publisher wanted to keep me happy. (Don’t try this for your first book, kids.) The copy editor on that edition tuned things down a notch.

But the following year it was back to what I consider “changes for the sake of making changes.” I got fed up, blew a gasket, and decided that I didn’t care about the changes. I’d just rubber-stamp everything. And I did for two or three years.

But then I started caring again, right around the time I got a good editor two years in a row. (Where is she now? Come back!)

Last year’s editor wasn’t bad, although he did ask a lot of questions that seemed designed to point out errors in my text rather than just fix them. For example, “The art shows that the dialog is called Colors, not Color as you have indicated here. You also called it Colors in five other places. Should I make the change here?” Uh, yeah. Isn’t that what you’re here for? Of course, I didn’t say that. I just thought it. Loudly, in my head. If he would have just made the change, I would have seen it with the revision marks and would have checked it and would have realized his edit was correct.

This Year

This year’s copy editor absolutely wigged me out. Her orders were supposed to be to edit the text that has changed. Remember, the majority of the book is exactly the same as it was the previous year. This year, about 20% of the text changed. That means she only had to look at 20% of the manuscript — the part with all the colored revision marks. Yet she insisted on copy editing the whole thing. She inserted a bunch of commas, which I really don’t care about. (Next year’s editor will pull them back out and I won’t care about that, either.)

But she also decided that all occurrences of Web should be web and that some terms, menu commands, feature names, and dialog options should be italicized. The problem with this is consistency — there wasn’t any. A command name on one page would be in normal type and the same command name on the next page might be in italics.

I freaked and I complained to the project editor. The formatting was wrong and inconsistent, I’d have to undo every wrong change she’d made while reviewing the edits. It was annoying and time-consuming and I had another (dare I say it?) more important book lined up after this one to write.

The PE clarified the instructions to the CE. The CE continued to make the same changes. I freaked again. I couldn’t get the PE on the phone, so I wrote a nasty e-mail to the CE. (I’d thrown my back out the day before and was in incredible pain, but still had to work on the book to meet the deadline, so I was pretty cranky. I wrote the e-mail just before heading out to the chiropractor.) I got scolded by the PE. I defended my complaints. The PE talked to the CE again. And then the CE stopped reviewing anything except the edits (as she should have been from the start). And guess what? In three of the remaining 12 chapters, she had absolutely no changes.

Now tell me, what does that say to you?

More to Come…

In Part III of this series, I’ll tell you what that said to me. Until then, if you want to share copy editor horror stories, the Comments link or form is a good place to do it.

Copyright for Writers and Bloggers – Part III: Fair Use and Public Domain

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What’s fair? Use common sense.

In the first article of this series (Part I: Why Copyright is Important), I discussed the importance of copyrights to authors. In the second article (Part II: Creative Commons), I tell you about the Creative Commons license I use to protect the work on this site.

In this last article of the series, I explain the concept of fair use — or attempt to, anyway — and how it enables you to quote copyrighted works for certain purposes.

CopyrightFair Use

Now here’s a good question. What if you want to use one of my articles on your AdSense-supported Web site? Obviously, that’s in violation of my Creative Commons license. But what if you’re satisfied using only a part of it?

That’s where Fair Use comes into play. Fair use allows you to take a portion of copyright-protected material and use it provided the use meets the definition of “fair” as set forth by the Copyright Act of 1976:

…the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

You can read more about this on Wikipedia.

Fair Use is Common Sense

Fair use, of course, is ruled upon by judges when copyright infringement cases get to court. But you can keep yourself out of court — and be a good member of the blogging community — by using common sense and thinking through the use you have in mind.

For example, suppose you want to use portions of this article as part of a college course you’re teaching about copyright in the Internet age. You could print the article and share it as a handout with your students. Of course, you should also credit me as the author. That’s common courtesy in the writing world.

Or suppose you want to blog about this article as part of your own opinion piece about copyright. You could take a quote from my article and use it to make one of your points — or to present one of my points that you want to argue. (Be gentle, please.) For fair use, you’d have to limit the amount of material you used so it’s only a portion of the entire piece. You should also include my byline and a link back to my article — that’s common courtesy in the blogging world.

Both of these uses would be considered fair. What’s not fair is using a work in a way that would reduce demand or marketability for it — like reproducing it in whole on your Web site without a link back to the original. Or using it to make money by providing content on a site that exists primarily to generate advertising revenue.

Public Domain

There’s one more thing I want to mention here.

If you don’t care about how people use your work, you can release it into the public domain. This essentially means that you’re giving up all rights to it and people can do with it what they want.

If you find a work that’s in the public domain — including classic novels that are out-of-copyright — you can use them pretty much anyway you like. But let your conscience be your guide. Do you really want to claim that that passage from Mark Twain’s Roughing It was really penned by you?

Just remember, there’s nothing in this blog — or in most others — that’s in the public domain. Respect the author’s copyrights, whether they’re a standard copyright “All Rights Reserved” notice, a Creative Common’s license, or something less formal. It’s not just courtesy. It’s the law.

What Do You Think?

Got something to say about this? Use the Comments link or form for this post to get it off your chest.

Bald Eagle

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Not endangered anymore…and I can see why.

At the end of our trip to Alaska in June 2007, Mike and I stopped for a few days in the Seattle, WA, area where Mike’s cousin, Rick, lives. Rick took us northwest for a day trip, where we went island hopping via ferry. During our travels, we stopped at the northern part of Deception Pass State Park on Fidalgo Island, where we went for a walk.

There was a bald eagle perched at the top of a pine tree. Normally, this would have floored us, but we’d just come from 10 days in Alaska, where eagles are considered nuisance birds, like pigeons or seagulls. Still, it looked like a good opportunity to get a photo of an eagle doing sometime more interesting than waiting for the fishermen to dump their garbage. So I raised my camera, which (fortunately) had a 200 mm lens on it, focused, and waited for something interesting to happen.

ImageThe bird took off and I caught him in flight.

The photo isn’t perfect, but it is, by far, the nicest picture of a bald eagle I got while on vacation.

We saw a lot of bald eagles in captivity in Alaska. They were all injured birds that would never return to the wild. They were beautiful animals — quite large and very majestic looking. But those small, close-set eyes and sharp beak and claws were enough to remind anyone that these are birds of prey. Not a coincidence, I think, for the national bird of this country.

But I’m not complaining — it could have been worse. As you may know, Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird.

NPR Playback

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An excellent podcast for those interested in history.

Last October, National Public Radio (NPR) began a new monthly series called Playback. Each month, the show explores the stories that were making news on NPR 25 years before.

NPR PlaybackI’d heard commercials for the podcast on the other NPR podcasts I listen to, but never got around to checking this one out. This past week, I found NPR Playback on iTunes and subscribed.

The show is hosted by Kerry Thompson. She introduces segments with a few facts and plays actual news stories and interviews from those days. Some segments include current-day interviews with NPR reporters who were covering the story back then. Each monthly 20- to 30-minute episode is an amazing look back at the past, brought into perspective by the events that came afterward.

For me, however, I think it’s more interesting. 25 years ago, I was just getting out of college, starting my new and independent life. News was going on around me, but I was only 21 and how many 21-year-olds really think much about world events? Playback brings these events back to the forefront of my memory and gives me the information I need to think about them as an adult with a more fine-tuned sense of what’s going on in the world, what’s wrong, and what’s right. I can think about these events the way I would have if I’d been 46 back then. It’s helping me understand what the world was like in the early 80s and why it has become what it is today.

I can’t say enough positive things about this podcast. If you’re interested in history and world events, give it a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

You can learn more on the NPR Playback page of the NPR Podcast Directory, on NPR.org.

Copy Editing – Part I: What Is Copy Editing?

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Copy editing — an important part of the publishing process.

Prepare yourself for the usual author rant — but with a difference. This one is coming from an author who just completed her 69th book. An author who has worked with about eight different publishers and dozens of copy editors over the course of 15 years.

So no, this isn’t a newbie writer griping about a heavy-handed editor on her first or second book. It’s coming from someone who has been doing this for a long time and feels as if she’s “seen it all.”

I’ve taken this topic and split it into three parts. In this part, I’ll start off with an introduction to the topic of copy editing and tell you what I believe it should be.

Stet!What is Copy Editing?

The purpose of copy editing should be to ensure that the original text is:

  • Free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Note the use of the word “error” here; that’ll be important later in this discussion.
  • Consistent with a publisher style guide. A style guide, in the world of publishing, is a document that sets forth usage in those gray areas. I’m talking about capitalization issues such as web vs. Web, hyphenation issues such as email vs. e-mail, and design issues such as boldfacing figure references.
  • Clear and easy to understand. This usually involves breaking up long or complex sentences or possibly rearranging sentence components.
  • Unlikely to be misinterpreted. For example, when you say the “Color in pop-up menu,” do you mean a pop-up menu named “Color in” or are you talking about color in a pop-up menu?
  • Consistent with the writing style of the established book or series. This only comes into play when you’re writing for a series that has a predefined format and style. For example, Visual QuickStart Guides (VQSes) tend to be short and to the point, so I don’t have room for personal stories, as I do in other books. VQSes also have level 2 headings that begin with the word “To” and are followed by numbered steps, each of which presents a single task. (I could list about a dozen style issues specific to a VQS, but you get the idea.)

Flowers for AlgernonOf course, what you’re writing should determine how much of the above is required. If you’re writing a novel much of this may not apply at all. Consider the book, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The book’s first person narrator is a retarded man. The book is in journal format and the first few chapters are so full of spelling and punctuation errors (or omissions) that the book is difficult to read. But that’s because of the author’s choices and the method he uses to communicate. Would you expect a retarded man to have perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation? Of course not. The author is using the character’s shortcomings as a writer to make his character more real — as well a to drive home the changes in the character as the story progresses. This technique was used again more recently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which featured an autistic first-person narrator. If a copy editor had done a thorough job on the grammar or punctuation in either of these two books, he would have altered the characters. The same can be said for dialog in most novels, since few people speak using perfect grammar.

So copy editing of fiction is a different subject — one I’m not addressing here. I’m discussing copy editing of non-fiction, primarily technical or how-to books, since that’s where my experience is.

More to Come…

This is the first part of my discussion of copy editing. There are at least two more parts to go. In the next part, I’ll rant a bit about my experiences with one particular book over the ten-year course of its life (so far). You’d think that after 10 years, the process would be trouble-free…

Why not take a moment to tell us what you think copy editing should be. How do you expect it to change or improve your writing? Use the comments link or form to share your thoughts.