An Editor’s Playlist: Nick Cave’s “Song of Joy”

I listen to a lot of music through the course of my days, and I certainly listen to a lot of it as I edit. I have specific songs and playlists and artists for certain editing tasks. What I listen to when I am reading is very different from what I listen to as I’m double-checking my work right before sending the manuscript back. I even have specific songs I listen to just for working on citations.

If I’ve done any editing over the years for you, rest assured that there’s a good chance I was listening to murder ballads and/or Nick Cave in the latter stages of editing.

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Are You In Or Out on Wordle?

Have you succumbed to Wordle? If you’re one of the uninitiated, it’s a daily word game where you have 6 chances to solve a 5-letter word.

I resisted for quite a while. I’m just naturally suspicious of trends. I don’t think this is necessarily a good or bad quality. It’s just the way I am.

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“What Is Editing?”–Author Coaching

Writing a book can be a lonely, frustrating, and time-consuming endeavor. A lot of writers finish their manuscript and think all the hard work is over before realizing that publishing a book can be just as lonely, frustrating, and time-consuming.

But neither writing nor publishing have to be any of those things!

A good editor can help, as can a good author coach.

Not sure what an author coach is or how they can help you? Read on to find out!

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“What Is Editing?”–Citation Editing and Permissions Editing

I really like citations, more than is probably normal. I’m not really sure why, but I’ve always enjoyed reading them, writing them, editing them, formatting them. When I worked at the writing center, my coworkers called me Citation Potentate for being the resident citation guru, and I still consider that nickname one of my proudest achievements.

Even when I’m reading for fun, my first stop when I pick up a nonfiction book is the back to scope out the bibliography and notes. Never judge a book by its cover but do judge it by its bibliography and notes.

This interest in citation works out well as an editor because, well, most people don’t like citations as much as I do. And I understand why—the ins and outs of bibliographies and endnotes/footnotes can be convoluted and confusing.

So, how can an editor help you with your citations and sources? Read on to learn more about citation editing and permissions editing.

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“What Is Editing?”–Proofreading

Outside of editing/publishing circles, people usually use “proofreading” as a synonym for copyediting. They say they want someone to proof their paper or manuscript or memo, but what they really want is someone to correct their grammar and punctuation. Most of the time, the other person interprets it as copyediting, but this is not really proofreading.

When you ask an editor to proofread something for you, that’s a very specific form of editing that you are requesting.

So, exactly what is proofreading and why is it something I don’t generally do as an editor?

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“What Is Editing?”–Line Editing and Copyediting

Last time, we talked about higher-order concerns—all those big-picture aspects of a manuscript, such as organization, theme, argumentation—but this time we’re looking at the editing services that address lower-order concerns. Essentially, these are any and all sentence-level issues: style, grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

As I mentioned in my last post, when I worked at a college writing center, most of our student clients were far more interested in getting feedback on lower-order concerns than higher-order concerns, so we often had to guide them toward seeing the value in talking about things other than commas. We certainly talked about rogue commas, too, but not at the expense of larger issues in their papers.

I’ve not personally encountered this issue as an editor. Most of the authors I work with are well aware of how valuable it is to receive feedback on both higher-order and lower-order concerns and don’t need to be convinced of the merits of either one. They’re more likely to be unsure of exactly what each service entails and when they need it.

It can be a little overwhelming to wade through, so this post is going to talk about the two most common ways editors address lower-order concerns in manuscripts—line editing and copyediting.

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My 2021 in Books

I always get reflective about my year in reading in late December, and I thought it might be a nice change of pace to take a brief break from the “What Is Editing” series to share some of what I’ve been reading this year.

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“What is Editing?”–Manuscript Critiques and Developmental Editing

When I worked as a writing tutor in a college writing center, we made a distinction between what we called higher-order concerns and lower-order concerns in the student papers we saw. Higher-order concerns were all the fundamental non-sentence-level issues we identified.

They were the big-picture aspects of the paper—everything from weak/incoherent arguments to meandering organization. Sometimes, the paper simply did not fulfil the intended purpose of the assignment. At the writing center, we prioritized evaluating these aspects of the papers.

Invariably, however, students were most focused on lower-order concerns—grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, etc.—when they came in to see us. Part of our job was, with the student’s permission, drawing their attention to the higher-order concerns because a paper could be competently written, even well written, from a prose standpoint and still have significant problems. Many students were appreciative of the feedback, even though it wasn’t what they’d ever considered as a potential problem. 

As an editor, I’ve found that my author clients tend to seek out feedback on higher-order concerns much more proactively than the students I tutored. However, it can still be a confusing process to navigate. This post talks about two of the most common ways that editors look at higher-order concerns in manuscripts—developmental editing and manuscript critiques.

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