Copyeditor’s marks. Going over the edited manuscript of Rework we just got back from the publisher. Never realized how much copyeditors really have a language of their own.
You’re reading Signal v. Noise, a publication about the web by Basecamp since 1999. Happy !
Copyeditor’s marks. Going over the edited manuscript of Rework we just got back from the publisher. Never realized how much copyeditors really have a language of their own.
Chad Burt
on 26 Aug 09Link to rework goes to an admin page.
Happy
on 26 Aug 09Do you have to do the editing per their marks, or do they send it to you to keep you in the loop?
Ed
on 26 Aug 09So what happens when they want to indicate underlined text? They’ve already used the underline to mean italic or case changes..
ML
on 26 Aug 09@Chad: Thanks, fixed.
@Happy: We have to decide whether to keep their edits or not.
@Ed: Not sure. We don’t have any underlined text in the book. I know that to italicize something is indicated by an underlined word followed by “ital” inside a circle. Maybe it’s similar for underline.
Brent Royal-Gordon
on 26 Aug 09Ed: You don’t. The things you would underline in handwriting (like book titles) are italicized in print. It’s a much more pervasive convention than you usually realize.
NatalieMac
on 26 Aug 09I believe that SGML (and ultimately HTML) has its roots in this type of hand markup.
When you think about it, making these kinds of marks on a document typed on a typewriter isn’t so different from wrapping some tags around plain text.
EH
on 26 Aug 09Following on to NatalieMac, it was just this and my knowledge of copyediting marks that made HTML so easy for me to understand back in the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a causal connection there.
Brian Armstrong
on 27 Aug 09Haven’t they ever heard of MS Word’s “track changes” gosh!
Or wiki/diff it? I’m joking a bit, but still…seems a little surprising this is still done by hand. Brian
JF
on 27 Aug 09Brian: We all used Word (or Pages) track changes to write the book, but I actually have come to appreciate the hand written copyeditor’s marks for grammar and style. They seem to convey a lot more information than just making the change in Word does.
Christophe Franco
on 27 Aug 09Brian : this work is done by hand because it is done on a printed copy of the text… not on screen.
Jeremy Lecour
on 27 Aug 09Here is a more readable and complete list of proofing marks : http://www.designerstoolbox.com/designresources/proofing/
This discussion is closed.