A round of editing starts when one person receives the manuscript. It ends when they transfer the file to someone else. A pass is when the person moves through the manuscript. It could be a complete pass from start to finish, or a more bouncy pass as they jump back and forth, fixing global or repeated problems in different parts of the text.
One round of copyediting may involve multiple passes through the text.
When I edit a manuscript, there are usually three rounds:
1. The edit
2. Author’s review round
3. Resolving queries and final cleanup
Here’s a more detailed description of what the whole process typically looks like when you work with me.
1. The Edit
During this round, I make several passes, moving straight through the manuscript or sometimes hopping around a bit.
First pass: The “bonbon” read
I sit in a comfy chair and just read the whole manuscript from start to finish. This lets me know what to expect, where the key moments are, and maybe make some notes about things to check on the next pass. Sometimes I use Word’s read aloud tool to read the manuscript to me so I can focus on the content and not get distracted by the errors I will fix later. I pinched the name for this round from Amy J Schneider’s book, The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction.
Second pass: Pre-flight cleanup
I run some light cleanup macros to fix things like extraneous spaces, and to apply paragraph styles and make sure the heading hierarchy makes sense. This will allow me to jump around more easily in the next pass. It also makes it easier for the designer to do the layout later.
I might also run some analysis macros to find out what your preferences are for things like Oxford commas, or macros that make my job easier, like changing the font to something that makes it easier to spot typos, or checking all the proper nouns are consistently spelled, or highlighting all the italics so I can check for rogue italic commas.
Third pass: Close read
I read the text very closely, fixing things as I go. Occasionally I might notice an error that is repeated throughout the book, and I’ll jump around and fix it everywhere that it occurs. In the style sheet, I keep track of the choices you’ve made. I also track things like the timeline, character descriptions, and the facts you’ve established in the world you’ve created. If necessary, I may do some light fact-checking of common-sense things. It can be hard not to fall down the rabbit hole when that gets too interesting!
Fourth pass: Quick cleanup
During this pass, I prepare the manuscript for your author’s review round. I make sure my questions to you are clear and that the suggestions I’ve made are tactful and sensitive, and easy for you to understand. This is the end of the first round.
2. Author’s Review Round
This round begins when I send the file back to you, and ends when you send it back to me. The purpose of this round is to make sure your voice is heard. You have a chance to disagree with me! My edits are suggestions, after all. It’s your book.
During this round, you should be checking the comments I’ve left for you and making decisions about them if necessary. Some comments might ask you to rephrase something, or perhaps check on a fact that may be erroneous.
If you do disagree with me on something (or preferred how it was before) you can just write “STET” in a comment. That’ll let me know to revert my changes. Then you send this copy of the file back to me.
3. Resolving Queries and Final Cleanup
I make the changes you’ve asked for in the previous round, or where you’ve replied to my queries, and then run some cleanup macros to catch any lingering inconsistencies.
If you’ve done some more extensive revisions during the review stage, I might recommend another round of editing (or maybe just a round of editing the new parts). That way those new sections can be edited to the same standard as the rest of the project. However, this can add to the timeline or budget for the project, and there are likely to be more lingering errors.
The best way to avoid that is to follow the publishing process completely and methodically, with a solid developmental edit and line edit tackling any extensive revisions before we even begin the copyediting stage. Finally, a good proofread can catch those lingering errors so the final product is polished and as good as it can be.
Here’s a handy guide to the publishing process, and what to do when.
Now that you’re completely satisfied with the editing, I remove the markup and comments from the text. That way you don’t have to wrestle with unfamiliar Word buttons. Instead, you get a clean copy, ready for the designer or typesetter. If you’re working with a publisher, I might pass it straight to them. And we’re done!
Why do it this way?
When we’re working on a big file like a novel, every time it changes hands, there’s a chance for errors to creep in, so we don’t want to have it going back and forth too often. That’s why I prefer to work on the whole manuscript at once, rather than sending individual chapters back and forth.
It can be more efficient and more accurate to do multiple passes, focusing on a different problem each time. Following an organized system of passes and rounds like this helps me ensure I’m attending to every issue in the manuscript while avoiding or preventing new errors.
You could compare this to how an art restorer works on a damaged painting: they methodically perform tasks in a certain order, such as stabilizing the picture, removing old varnish, and cleaning, applying an isolation layer, filling in gaps, retouching. They’ll pass over the whole painting several times at each step, but occasionally hop around to fix things in different places.
Read more about how an art restoration expert helped me become a better editor.
