Friends who teach on the college level sometimes ask me if I have to "correct" a lot of "mistakes" in scholarly texts. Certainly I do correct any errors that have slipped into the text, but much of what I do as a copy editor has nothing to do with mistakes. It's more a question of "translating" the text from one set of conventions to another.

For example, a scholar in the humanities would probably follow MLA style in preparing a dissertation. Once the dissertation is rewritten as a book and accepted for publication, the manuscript will very likely need to follow a different style guide. Even if the scholar makes a good attempt to reformat documentation into the endnote style that the Chicago Manual of Style, for example, suggests, a few remnants of the original MLA style will probably remain. It's not that the MLA style is "wrong." It's simply not the style that the publisher follows.

I don't think, "Ah-ha! Another mistake!" I'm more likely to think, as I reformat the documentation, "Oh, another one slipped through. Glad I caught it." To be absolutely honest, I'm thinking something along the lines of "Change period to comma; insert parentheses." If I stopped to congratulate myself every time I make the text consistent, the editing process would take much too long.

This kind of reformatting was especially important when I edited a collection of essays by several authors. Experts in a variety of fields submitted chapters to the book; the disciplines represented included urban planning, journalism, psychology, communications, and literature. The scholars had formatted their original articles according to the conventions of their different disciplines. Some had used endnotes, some had used footnotes, and some had used parenthetical citations within the text. But retaining all those styles within one book would have been distracting at best and confusing at worst. So I "translated" documentation according to one system, in this case, parenthetic citations. None of these changes were "corrections" of "mistakes."

The result of the editing is a text that is consistent throughout so that readers can concentrate on the research and insights of the authors.

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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Occasionally, an author will notice discrepancies in the editing choices of different books on a subject. Which one is right? Which example should the manuscript I'm now editing follow? If the author as an expert in the field doesn't have a clear preference and if either option is acceptable according to the style guide we're using, I usually reply, "Don't worry. As long as your text is consistent, you'll be OK."

Why this emphasis on consistency? When something is consistent, it becomes invisible. If a phrase (editor in chief? editor-in-chief?) is hyphenated or not all the way through a text, the reader picks on what, not how: readers focus on the concept of the phrase and not on the way it's been edited. The editing becomes a distraction only when the same phrase appears in different ways throughout the book.

Copyediting often reminds me of housekeeping. When it's done well, it's invisible. When a house has been beautifully cleaned, guests notice the decor or the view from the window or the other guests invited to the party. Only when housekeeping has not been done well do visitors think about it, noticing the unswept floor or the piles of unfolded laundry. In the same way, when all the "little stuff" of a manuscript is consistent, readers pay attention to what is being said rather than how it appears on the page.

My husband tells me that this principle applies also the the role of the umpire at a baseball game. When the ump makes a good call, it's just part of the flow of the game. If he makes a bad call, the fans boo. The manager and ump may get in a shouting match. If the ump makes a really bad call, a brawl may break out.

Bad editing rarely results in punches being thrown. But my goal, ultimately, is to be a good editor: I want to make my work invisible — so that the ideas and voice of the author are the only things capturing the reader's attention.

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Why would a scholar, especially a professor of English, need a copy editor? People with PhDs generally teach, research, read, and write most of the time. Surely a scholar is a good writer.

I suggest that all writers who are about to be published need a copy editor. It’s a question of focus.

A scholar has “big picture” focus. He or she spends months, even years, doing research to develop an argument that adds to the literature on a particular subject. Caught in the exciting but lengthy process of presenting this argument, the scholar is probably not going to notice whether a phrase is consistently hyphenated throughout all chapters. But readers will expect the scholar to be an expert in the field and may even turn to the book to confirm how a term should be written: if the published text is inconsistent, the scholar looks indecisive or uninformed.

As a copy editor, I have “little picture” focus. My job isn’t to present a scholarly argument. It’s to make sure, among other things,

• that no spelling or grammatical errors have slipped into the text while the author had eyes focused on the big picture;
• that the table of contents accurately reflects the titles as they appear at the beginning of the chapters;
• that titles of subsections within a chapter have parallel structure (why is one subheading a verb phrase when all other subheadings are noun phrases?);
• that information given in notes matches that given in the bibliography (is the cited author’s name Anne Smith or Ann Smithe?);
• that notes or in-text citations are punctuated correctly and consistently;
• that no other errors and inconsistencies have crept into the book.

In terms of “other errors,” it’s not my job as copy editor to analyze the soundness of the book’s argument; but it certainly is my job to flag the author’s attention about obvious factual mistakes (Bucharest is not the capital of Hungary) or problems with logic. I’m an attentive reader. If I become confused or distracted, probably other readers will too.

A copy editor is also well versed in publishing conventions. In an article edited according to the MLA Manual of Style, a percentage appears as a number and symbol: 5%. But in a book edited according to the Chicago Manual of Style, the bible of most publishers of scholarly books, the word rather than the symbol is used: 5 percent. For newspaper articles and news releases following AP style, titles of books appear in quotation marks. A scholarly book would set the same titles in italics. If inappropriate conventions are used for a particular publication, it won’t look professional, even if readers can’t figure out exactly why. Both author and publisher will look less than first-rate.

The good news is that the scholar doesn’t need to be distracted with this kind of “little picture” detail. That’s the job of the copy editor.

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This will be a place where I can share my experiences as an editor, with the hope that these experiences can serve writers being published -- or seeking to be published.