Category Dear Carol

Hi Carol,
I’m in the processing of copy editing a 1,000-page textbook that is due in two batches. I’ve already sent in the first batch of chapters, and as I’m editing the second batch of chapters, I’m coming across errors I missed in the first batch. I’ve already sent a list of close to twenty errors (although some were related, such as the same word misspelled twice) that I missed to my project manager, but I’m still coming across more. Another person is doing the proofreading for this project so I won’t have the opportunity to fix these mistakes myself. Is there a certain number of errors, perhaps based on the number of pages, that copy editors miss and that is expected?

I received an email from an author over the weekend. He was very unhappy with the job I did editing his book manuscript and writes that I did “too thorough” a job, changing sentences that did not need to be changed, and in the process, introduced some typographical errors and some content errors. I will not say that this is untrue. My question is how do you come back from that?

Dear Carol, In general, would you agree that a copy editor should avoid making changes to the text unless a documentable style change and/or grammatical error has occured? What are your thoughts on using queries (in the comments) to attract the author’s attention to my suggestions?

Dear Carol, I am an experienced proofreader and beginner copyeditor who would like to work with academic publishers. I would like to get started with journals and move into books. Do you think this is a good approach?

Dear Carol, Everything has changed with the advent of e-books. As a new e-book creator, I’m confused about indexes. It would seem that the traditional (item name, page number) format wouldn’t work in an e-book, simply because of the lack of page numbers. However, I’m a huge fan of indexes. What’s the scoop Copy Editor?

Dear Carol: I am sometimes asked to mentor corporate communicators new to the field.

Hi, Carol: Hyphens are my nemesis! I specialize in economics papers, and professors use concepts with numerous adjectives. Case in point is “short sale rule.” I left this unhyphenated because a “short sale” is a well-known trading term and there…

Dear Carol: I have been writing for more than 12 years, first as a reporter for a newspaper, then in public relations and communications. I have done some proofreading recently for an academic publisher on the side, and would like…

Dear Carol: Do freelancers really follow house style? Do we do things that drive project editors crazy? A very good friend who hires freelancers (and used to hire me) recently commented that all freelancers send in terrible work. She’s an…