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In Defense of Proofreader Marks

lindaktaylor2 Comments

I recall it vividly. I was just out of college at my first job working for a small publisher (ETA–Evangelical Training Association that does basic books about the Christian faith). The company hired me as an assistant editor. I was green, knew nothing about the publishing industry, and very little about editing and proofreading.

(Now, after forty years in the industry, I teach everything I didn’t know to my Professional Writing students so that they don’t have the same experience I did. I want them to hit the ground running in any new job with solid understanding of what’s needed.)

But I digress.

Mind you, this was the mid-1980s. No computers and fancy Microsoft Word programs. No fun little “comments” added to Word documents. No squiggly lines on a document pointing out misspellings and potential grammatical problems.

No. This was printed galleys (long printed pages of a book on big sheets of paper) and red pens.

This was where I learned on the job.

As I began proofreading our galleys, revising a sentence to update it meant dutifully crossing out the offending sentence and then writing the revision neatly in the margin. (Thankfully, I have neat writing.) So far so good.

Deleting a stray comma meant marking out the comma, running the red line across to the margin, and writing “delete comma.”

Removing a word meant crossing out the word, running the red line across to the margin, and writing “delete word.”

Capitalizing a currently uncapitalized word meant circling the offending letter, running the red line across to the margin, and writing “capitalize.”

Two words that should be one meant circling the word, running the red line across to the margin, and explaining that “the two words should be one word.”

I’m sure you’re seeing a theme … lots and lots of red lines, lots of explanatory words.

Here’s what I remember vividly. After I had been working on my first set of galleys for several days, the office manager / editor / person-who-knew-more-than-me stepped into my office with a sheet of paper. She had seen my proofreading pages and was coming to the rescue.

She handed me a sheet of paper neatly laid out with what I came to discover were proofreading marks. A squiggle to delete. Three lines to capitalize. Carets from above or below for insertions. Sideways parentheses to close up the space between words or letters. A hashtag symbol to insert a space. She patiently explained to me that these magical marks would replace my explanatory scribbles.

Smooth, clean, easy.

I’m attaching a sheet with proofreader marks that I use in my classes. It’s free for you to download here.

proofreading-marksDownload

And yes, I still teach my students how to read and use proofreader marks. Is that a waste of time? I don’t think so for a couple reasons:

  • Not everything is copyedited or proofread electronically (either as Word documents or PDFs). Knowing proofreader marks allows you to quickly and easily show what needs to be done if you’re handed physical copy to work with.
  • Sometimes you’ll be working with older folks who know these markings and maybe not the Microsoft Word tools. If you’re handed a physical copy with these markings all over it and it’s your responsibility to incorporate them, you’ll know exactly what to do. (I once had a student message me in a panic. He was at his internship and his boss had done just that — handed him a proofread piece all done with proofreader marks, and it was his job to incorporate the corrections into the Word document on his computer. “Can you send me that sheet of symbols?” he asked. I like to think I saved the day.)

And if you’re interested in a little fun, enjoy these “lesser-known editing symbols” courtesy of Brian A. Klems. The photo below is from his post. (And seriously, sometimes these are just what a proofreader needs.)

All credit to Brian A. Klems

So yes, I still think proofreader marks are valuable to know and valuable training for anyone who seeks to become an editor.

Now Tell Me about You

lindaktaylor11 Comments

Okay readers, who are you out there? A few of you I know personally; many of you follow me (thank you!) even though we’ve never met.

Remember when we used to do those “25 Things about Me” lists on Facebook? I retrieved mine recently and updated it a bit. So here are 25 things about me. Does anything resonate with you? Then tell me more about YOU in the comments.

  1. I am for standing for the National Anthem. Hand over heart. Men with hats off.

    red dress
    Me in my little red dress, early 1960s.

    Military saluting. Always. Every time. Everywhere.

  2. I’m a born again Christian who loves Jesus and am trying to learn to love as Jesus loves.
  3. I enjoy singing old hymns. What poetry! What amazing theology embedded in those works of art. They fill my soul.
  4. Politics—be involved but don’t let the antics of politicians ruin your day. Don’t let your mood be determined by them. The beauty of the American system is that we have a chance to vote out the people we don’t like and vote in the people we do. In the meantime, enjoy life. I’ve seen enough politicians come and go in my lifetime to know that nothing is permanent.
  5. I like living in a place where the seasons change. Each has its own magic.
  6. I love pecan pie.
  7. There really is nothing like an excellent cup of coffee with just the right amount of cream.
  8. I am blessed to have a loving family and have prayed to build a loving home where family and friends can visit and feel comfortable and cared for.
  9. I am blessed to have a job I love and freelance work that I find just as exciting.
  10. I feel strongly about grammar mistakes, but not enough to be annoying.
  11. I love words—how they look, how they sound, how they go together. I’m constantly astounded that a finite number of words can be combined to create masterpieces or drivel. And I’m constantly attempting to make my writing better so mine isn’t drivel. Good books fuel me. Writing calms my anxious heart.
  12. I enjoy organizing . . . anything. I feel good when it (whatever it is) is organized. I hyperventilate in office supply stores.
  13. One of my favorite movies is Napoleon Dynamite. And give me Mystery Science Theater any day of the week.
  14. Memes. Funny memes.
  15. I got engaged to my husband in a hot air balloon.
  16. I’m completely craft impaired. I don’t get the point of cross stitching or scrapbooking or card stamping. But I love it when other people do it. I’m amazed, frankly.
  17. I am also sports impaired. I never made a sports team I tried out for. I stopped trying after I knocked out my dad’s front tooth with my elbow practicing for the girls’ basketball team tryouts. (And no, didn’t make that team either.)
  18. I love public speaking. I hear it’s the #1 fear of most people, so what’s wrong with this picture?
  19. Pets have a huge place in my heart. We have a Shih Tzu and a few cats who found us in the country — willing suckers who fed them and soon housed them.

    china
    My husband and I in China at the astonishing Great Wall.
  20. I’ve been all over Europe (Germany [lived there for my 4 high school years], Switzerland, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, Monaco, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Iceland, even Liechtenstein) and also to China. I still want to visit Scotland, Ireland, and Greece.
  21. I’m an MK—military kid, specifically an Air Force brat. When people ask me where I grew up, I say “everywhere.” I am proud of my amazing parents.
  22. I love my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces (and their various significant others). She’s 11 years younger than me (and we’re the only two), so it’s awesome that we’re friends.
  23. I like to do laundry.
  24. I think my kids are awesome—interesting, talented, self-confident. They’re miles ahead of where I was at their age.
  25. Oh, and did I mention my grandkids?

So now tell me about you! One thing, five things, 25 things! I want to get to know you.

From Manuscript to Book: As It Happened (Typesetting and Proofreading Phase)

lindaktaylor4 Comments

One thing (among many) that I love about our Professional Writing program at Taylor University is that the students get such a thorough and well-rounded education in the world of publishing.

Here’s what I mean: After the students in my “Manuscript to Book: How It Happens” class finished their copyediting passes on their manuscripts (which included style tags, along with general language and punctuation cleanup), they then took those manuscripts to the layout and design lab.

As part of the Professional Writing major, students are required to take classes in “Digital IMG-20160426-00896Tools: Photoshop” and “Digital Tools: InDesign.” This makes them quadruple threats for any job in publishing because they know what it means to work with the words, but they also know what goes on in the design and typesetting phase where the books are created from the manuscript.

So each took one of the styled manuscripts, flowed it onto a template, and typeset a book. For three class periods we met in the layout and design lab and they worked on the manuscripts–deciding on fonts, chapter starts (recto only or recto/verso), leading, kerning, watching for widows and orphans (those random single words or lines at the top or bottom of a page), placing folios and running heads, and generally working to lay out a pleasing book within the page count target.

After they completed laying out the typeset pages, the teams chose one to turn into a PDF, and the PDF then moved on to the next team to do the proofreading pass.

In proofreading, the students work with the PDF tools to mark errors that either were IMG-20160426-00895missed in the copyediting phase or showed up in typesetting. They first do a visual check of all the pages — looking that the margins are even, that the folios and running heads are placed correctly, that everything looks right. Only then do they go back and begin to read every letter on every page.

After a few days of this proofreading practice, we met together, looked at the PDFs on the screen, and talked about what they had noted as errors.

Again, this is one of the phases that takes a different kind of skill. At this point, no one wants the proofreader’s opinion of the book or the arc of the story. And really the proofreader should not be revising sentences. Instead, he or she should really only fix true errors (which can, indeed, happen at the sentence level; for instance, if there’s a dangling modifier, the proofreader should fix it).

IMG-20160426-00898Proofreaders need to enjoy the hunt – searching for and correcting errors. It takes a special “eye” to do this, one that can be trained with practice. (I recall many years ago when I was doing freelance proofreading on galleys, the editor at the publishing house would often say, “I can’t believe you found those errors!” I took this as a compliment.)

As our “final exam,” the students went back to the styletagged manuscripts and learned how to create ebooks.

So there we have it. My students took manuscripts and turned them into books. Now they know how it happens! They felt that actually working through the steps as would happen in a real publishing house had been extremely valuable in the learning process.

I think so, too!

 

 

 

Why I Love Literary Citizenship

lindaktaylor3 Comments

Much is being written lately on the topic of literary citizenship. Since this was the topic of my Master’s final research paper, I thought I’d go ahead and weigh in with my two cents. (I could write 50 pages, but I already did that. Let’s see if I can condense my thoughts here into a readable blog post!)

I just happened upon this term in the last couple of years–but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. You see, I’ve worked in publishing for thirty years and went back to school with the hopes of teaching at the college level. As I sat under Cathy Day, she (thankfully) talked to her students about what’s out there in the real world–how to join the literary world, how to get published, how to organize submissions, how to handle rejection, and how to find their “tribes” once they leave the cocoon of a university writing program–everything I already knew was extremely important for writers to understand.

I was thrilled that she talked about this because too often (I feel) creative writing programs focus only on craft without giving students the tools to know what to do with their writing. Yes, I get it. You have to first be a good writer, no, an excellent writer. That’s a given. Roxane Gay puts it this way:

You’re not going to become a better writer by focusing more on getting your writing published than writing work that merits publication. You won’t become a better writer by resenting the success of others or spending most of your time indulging in conspiracy theories about publishing. Yes, sometimes the game is rigged, but mostly it is not. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the wrong things when so much information about writers and what they’re doing or could be doing is readily available via social networks, blogs, and the like.

So of course, being great writers is step one, and I don’t advise that writers let themselves get distracted by the marketing side at the expense of their product. But, after thirty years in publishing, I come at this with a different perspective, and so I maintain that students should be taught what to do with their writing. How to research the literary magazines or the online sites or the commercial magazines or the book publishers that might be interested in their kind of writing. How to write query letters. How to approach an agent. How to create a book proposal. That’s all part of learning to write.

Because, in the end, while writing can indeed be an end in itself, most of us write because we want people to read what we wrote. We want to share it.

And I’m sure it’s my years in publishing talking, but I’ve sat on the other side of the table, needing to help authors understand the importance of marketing their own books.

I know, what a pain after doing all the work of actually writing the book to have to be burdened with actually doing the marketing, too. Isn’t the publisher supposed to do that? That’s the question Becky Tuch asks and precisely why she detests literary citizenship.

But I understand the business side of publishing; it is a business after all and, if it doesn’t make money, none of us gets published. And yes, all those big-name authors get all of the marketing dollars and the rest of us are left pretty much to fend for ourselves, but there’s a reason for that as well. There’s a statistic in Christian publishing that says 9 percent of the authors sell 80 percent of the books. That means that 9 percent of writers are pretty much carrying their publishing houses. So let them have the marketing dollars! In secular publishing, the number may be similar–and we can be sure that it is indeed the big names who get taken care of. Those authors help keep their companies open, which then allows them to take a chance on little ol’ me.

But here’s the deal–literary citizenship is not to be entered into because you want to sell your books. Instead, it’s about joining Renaissance Fairethe literary world because that’s who you are. Just as you might identify with those who join the worlds of ComiCon or Renaissance Faires because you have an affinity for comics and superheroes or feathered caps and falconry, so you join the world of Words and Books as a literary citizen because that’s who you are. You join with like-minded people to talk about what you love best.

The side effect of being “neighborly” in that world (by doing what many lit cit blog posts have discussed regarding ways to be literary citizens) is that when your article or book is published, you can naturally talk about it with those who care–and who will, in turn, talk about it with others. That’s where the “marketing” part actually begins to happen.

But literary citizenship doesn’t start there. It doesn’t start with “marketing” or “selling.” It’s not all about us. It’s not all about “gimme” as in “gimme your attention–me me me” as David Ebenbach describes in his article, Literary Citizenship Does Not Mean Gimme. Instead, it’s about joining a world of word lovers–reading, appreciating, talking about, and sharing one another’s work.

So let’s not hate literary citizenship, let’s embrace it because, in essence, it’s who we are. Let’s come together in this world of Words and Books enjoying what we love most and making sure it continues for all of us for a long, long time.

 

 

The Process of Publishing: An Exercise

lindaktaylor5 Comments

When I teach my editing class, I always like to begin early with an exercise. The entire class becomes a publishing company, and we walk a manuscript through the process. Since I teach my students about content editing, copyediting, and proofreading, I want them to understand where those steps fall in the process of a book going from the author to the shelves.

I usually have about 15 students in my class and I print different jobs onto index cards. They each draw a card, and we then move all the desks and sit in a circle.

First order of business, we decide on a name for our company. We usually end up with something like “Sleepy Sloth Publishing” or “Little Turtles Publishing”–for some reason the name often has an animal theme.

Then we talk through each step, and the person holding the card is to play that role and ask the questions he/she thinks would be asked in this part of the book process.

(1) Author–Whoever gets this card needs to determine what his or her book is about and give it a title. One time I had “The History of the Orange”–a nonfiction book about . . . oranges. That’s what we’ll go with for the purposes of this post. A young man gets the author card and wants to write about oranges.

 

orange

 

(2) Acquisitions Editor–As luck would have it, this author went to a writers conference where an AE (hold up your card) was looking for nonfiction books about fruit. She is thrilled that this author has come with this book proposal about the history of oranges. What does the AE ask? My AE with the card thinks a little bit–maybe an AE wants to know who the target audience is (men? women? age range?), the book’s tone (humor? tongue in cheek? reference?), and approximately how long it is (word count helps the AE consider placement and cost calculation). Let’s say this is a book targeted to adults that will be about 128 pages with a humorous tone. The AE wants to know why this author is such an expert and has such interest in oranges. The author explains that he grew up in an orange grove and has been making OJ all his life. (Sometimes an agent is in this role–I put that person at the end of my exercise, but he/she could very well be right at the start.)

I explain that all of this information is important for the AE to take back to the publishing house. Just because the AE likes it only means the book has passed the first hurdle. The AE now needs to sell the idea to the pub board (publishing board).

(3) CEO (as part of pub board)–In many houses (especially smaller ones), the CEO may be on the pub board as the keeper of the ethos of the publishing house. Does the book fit with the mission statement? Does it fit into the kind of books they do? (In Christian publishing, theological bent matters heavily when considering manuscripts.)

(4) CFO (as part of pub board)–Numbers guy. What does he ask? Will the book need any special treatments (is it going to have color pictures throughout–that will affect the cost of the printing and paper). What is the advance to the author? How many books will be in the first print run? What should be the selling price? A pro forma helps to then determine if and how the book can make money for the publishing house.

(5) Salesman (as part of pub board)–There actually may be several–the Amazon person, the big box store person, the independent bookstore person. But they all have the same question–especially with unknown authors. What kind of platform does the author have? (Author answers that he has 10,000 followers on Twitter and a blog and newsletter all about oranges with 20,000 subscribers.) The salespeople are impressed since they know that this author can get the word out about his book and get a following.

So I tell the group to assume that the book has passed this hurdle and is cleared to be published. Next will come the AE calling the author, the author rejoicing (little dance), the arrival of the contract and hopefully the advance check. Next, the author must finish the book by a particular due date.

Publish

(6) Editorial director–Once the manuscript arrives, an editorial director will set the schedule for all of the following steps in order to keep the project moving through the system in order to meet the to-printer date. (In large houses, there may be several different people doing these roles with varying titles. In small houses, there might be one person who then uses several freelancers.)

(7) Designer–The editorial director will get the designer started on interior and cover designs. These take time (and the designer has other projects as well), so getting him started now is important. What does the designer need to know? My student with the “Designer” card wonders about how big the book is (trim size and page count), whether or not there are photos and are they black/white or color, and the target audience and tone. The designer creates a template (often in InDesign) into which the typesetter will flow the Word document manuscript.

(8) Content editor–This person looks at the big picture and helps to shape the book (perhaps the author’s chapter 3 should really be chapter 1 as it is a better beginning). I discuss more about the three different types of editing in this post. After back and forth with the author, the manuscript is finalized and sent on to …

(9) Copyeditor–Again, I discuss what this means in above linked post. The copyeditor fact checks, reads for clarity, queries as needed, makes the manuscript follow house style guidelines, and generally tries to make the manuscript readable and clean.

(10) Editorial assistant–This may even be an intern–or this person may not exist at all in a small house. But the copyeditor needs someone to help with taking the copyedited manuscript and creating the front matter (title page, copyright page, Table of Contents, dedication page, etc.) and making sure the back matter pieces are in place (appendix, index, endnotes).

(11) Typesetter/Compositor–The typesetter receives the manuscript from editorial and the book’s design template from the designer and puts them together. What does he need to know? He needs to know the page count, whether all of the chapters have to start on recto (right) pages or if they can also start verso (left), what is to be in the running heads, does the book start at page 1 or are there roman numerals in the front matter? If there are photos, he’ll need to have those (in separate files such as gif or bmp) and know where to place them. He lays out the pages to avoid widows and orphans (single words or short lines standing alone at the top or bottom of a page).

(12) Proofreader–Again, I discuss this further here. The proofreader takes the pdf of the typeset pages–meaning this is exactly how the book will appear. My proofreader checks the Table of Contents and adds page numbers as they appear in the book, and then he reads every word carefully.

(13) Printer–The final completed pdf is uploaded to the printer. Hopefully the date it arrives is the same date the editorial director put on the calendar months earlier. The printer sets press time for each book, and that’s why it is so important to never be late. The printer is given the poundage of the paper (for instance, much higher weight if this book is full of color photos so the pages can handle the ink, as opposed to a straight text book).

(14) Bookstore owner–This person needs to know why she should purchase the book to sell in her store. Fortunately, she loves this publishing company, the salesman has made a compelling case, and so she orders several to sell.

(15) Agent–Because the book has become a best-seller, this agent comes knocking hoping to represent the author in his next great work–and the cycle begins again.

My students come away from this little exercise with more understanding of how what they learn to do as editors fits in to the entire process of creating a book.

 

Orange photo: By Figiu (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons