6 Tabs I Always Have Open as I Copyedit
These references are my constant companions
Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes when a copy editor polishes your content? It’s mostly reading a sentence three times and sometimes going back to read it a fourth; pondering; and looking things up.
As editor Crystal Shelley of Rabbit with a Red Pen once said, “Editing is just looking things up until you die.”
Photo by
on
What are editors looking up?
correct style (e.g., does the client want it to appear as 10 or as ten, as colour or color; do they use accent marks or no; do they like the ellipsis character mark or the three periods plus three spaces)
correct spelling
dates and job titles, etc. (to confirm them, in a sort of light fact check)
obscure grammar rules we don’t know off the top of our head or want to double-check for a tricky situation
definitions of words to make sure the writer has used them well
The list goes on.
To look up that stuff as I copyedit, I always have these six tabs open:
The Chicago Manual of Style or The Associated Press Style Book
clients’ house editorial style guide
site:website.com and “X”
The Chicago Manual of Style hyphenation guide
online search engine
‘The Chicago Manual of Style’ or ‘The Associated Press Style Book’
The two most typical style guides my clients use. Depending on the project, I’ll have one of them open for reference (I subscribe to the online versions). These resources offer guidance on everything from grammar, punctuation, and formatting to the correct usage of numbers, abbreviations, capitalization, and more.
Clients’ house editorial style guide
Many clients—though not all—use a house style guide in addition to one of the industry-wide guides above. I love when a client has an editorial style guide, but for clients who don’t, I can easily create one. These house guides contain specific preferences and brand-related language use that enables me to tailor the copyediting process to each client.
site:website.com and “X”
This online search engine technique comes in super handy mainly when a client doesn’t have a house style guide, and even when they do.
Typing site:website.com into a search enginerestricts the search results to only pages from the specified website. To search for a specific word or phrase, I add it in quotation marks after site:website.com and the word and: e.g., site:website.com and “X” searches for the exact word or phrase “X” on that site.
I use this tool to quickly find out how a client has typically styled a word or phrase on their website. It’s a great way to determine how a publication or organization has most commonly styled a word—even if the staff themselves aren’t sure. For example, imagine my client is The Daily News Bites, and the newspaper has a house style guide, but it doesn’t specify to use healthcare or health care as a noun. I can search site:dailynewsbites.com and “health care” as well as site:dailynewsbites.com and “healthcare” to see which style the newspaper uses most often (and then I can add that preference to the style guide I make for the client).
To use this tool successfully, I need a search engine that lists the number of search results so I can determine which style is most common.
That’s the entire reason I stopped using Google Search and now use Microsoft Bing. I’d love to use a data-privacy search engine like DuckDuckGo (I did use Neeva before it went belly up), but again, seeing the number of search results is critical, and DuckDuckGo doesn’t allow that.
https://x.com/PristineEditing/status/1483573898973220870
Merriam-Webster
My go-to dictionary. In May 2024, AP style made M-W its official primary dictionary, which means I can use M-W for all of my clients, whether they use Chicago or AP style.
I most often use Merriam-Webster to:
check hyphenations
see if a foreign word is listed (if a foreign word appears in M-W, it doesn’t need to be italicized, as is common style for foreign words — although there are exceptions to that)
clarify the precise meaning of a word in context to make sure the writer’s word choice is accurate
The ‘Chicago Manual of Style’ hyphenation guide
Half the time I’m searching for a word in Merriam-Webster, it’s simply to check if a word is hyphenated or not. This guide provides clear rules for hyphenation (for Chicago style, that is), ensuring uniformity of style throughout a document.
Online search engine
I’m constantly searching for nouns and proper nouns—company names, historical figures, scientific terms, etc.—to check that they’re spelled correctly and in the correct case (e.g., capitalized or lowercase).
This often leads to a little fact-checking too. In looking up the spelling of a politician’s name, for example, I’ve occasionally caught a writer calling that politician a senator when they’re a House representative.
Similar to site:website.com and “X” above, I often use an online search engine to determine which style for a word or phrase is the most used (and therefore the most SEO-friendly). For example, if I want to determine whether school teacher or schoolteacher is more common, I add quotation marks around each term in the search: e.g., “school teacher” and “schoolteacher.” Microsoft Bing tells me that school teacher has 36,200,000 results while schoolteacher has 138,000 results.
So, there you have it! These six tabs are my trusty crew when it comes to copyediting. Having these resources readily available allows me to ensure my clients’ content adheres to the highest editorial standards.
Do you have any questions about these resources or the copyediting process in general? Feel free to leave a comment below.
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Hi, I’m Jaime, editor and owner of Pristine Editing LLC. To get to know me better, and for more editing tips, sign up for my quarterly email newsletter! You can also follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram. And don’t miss out on my free style guide template.
The Simple 5-Step Process of Working with Me
Finding the right freelancer to work with can be a grueling process with a lot of unknowns. Will this person be able to deliver what I need? Is she actually an expert in copyediting and proofreading? Is she self-motivated and reliable, or will I have to check in constantly to make sure she’s meeting deadlines?
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Hi, I’m Jaime, editor and owner of Pristine Editing LLC. To get to know me better, and for more editing tips, sign up for my quarterly email newsletter! You can also follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram. And don’t miss out on my free style guide template.