Online Review of Online Copyedit (Using Track Changes)
prepared by Publication Services
This is your last opportunity to make textual changes to your book. It is also an excellent opportunity to positively influence its quality.
Your book is being edited online in MS Word, using the Track Changes feature. The edited manuscript shows keymarking (or templated styles) and editorial deletions and additions. The edits show up online in some color other than black.
Online Editing Conventions
Material deleted by the copyeditor displays with strikethrough, as in the following example:
| The man man was chosen to be chairman. |
The second man is lined through to show that your copyeditor has deleted it. Strikethrough can make it a bit difficult to discern deletions of hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes, so particular attention should be paid when they seem to be deleted.
Material added by the copyeditor displays with underline, as in this example:
| The man was chosen to be chairman. |
The word “man” is underlined to show that the copyeditor added it. You can put your mouse arrow on an addition or deletion to see who made the change. Our changes should say “Copy Editor”.
Many editorial changes show both deletions and additions, as in this example:
| The tree which that was standing by the well was blew blown down. |
(Note that a vertical bar in the margin shows that there has been a change to the text.) In the preceding example, “that” replaces “which” because the construction should be restrictive. The word “blew” is replaced by “was blown” to show that the tree was the recipient of the action that occurred.
When an entire paragraph or sentence is moved for better organization, the strikethrough and underlining can appear a bit daunting. If you see what appears to be an extensive deletion or addition, please look for its complement in the place to which or from which it was moved.
Track Changes
Before you make any changes or additions to a chapter file, please ensure that Word's Track Changes feature is turned on. See the tutorial Tracking Changes in MS Word 2000 and 2002 provided in this set of files. It is essential that you not accept or reject changes your copyeditor made. Instead, explain right in the text what it is you want or don't want.
Author Queries
In online editing, author queries often appear in square brackets. An example is
| [AU: should this be singular or plural? CE]. |
“AU” stands for author. “CE” stands for copyeditor.
Please pay special attention to these author queries from your copyeditor. Resolve each author query, providing detailed instructions to the copyeditor as to what you want done. Put your responses in square brackets next to the queries they resolve. Address the copyeditor as “CE” and sign your input with “AU” (for author). Unanswered or unresolved author queries are very costly because they require additional communication with the author. Such unresolved queries often stop or delay book production (typesetting), putting the book's schedule and publication date in serious jeopardy.