Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Review

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Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) ReviewI heard about Scott Norton's Developmental Editing from a classmate--a colleague of the author--in Berkeley's Professional Sequence in Editing. I had never before heard the term "developmental editing," but immediately ordered the book, which I rarely do without the benefit of supporting reviews (since the book was just coming out, there were none at the time). My first response: This is an extraordinary book, and should be added to any short list of essential resources for editing, publishing, and writing.

As defined by Scott Norton, developmental editing is distinct from copyediting and substantive editing. The copyeditor deals with the nuts and bolts of clarity, cohesion, consistency, and correctness (the "4 Cs" according to Amy Einsohn's The Copyeditor's Handbook), while the substantive editor has license to revise at the word, sentence, and paragraph levels.

The developmental editor (DE) operates at the nexus of art, craft, and the market realities of today's hyper-competitive publishing industry. The DE simultaneously serves three constituencies: as first advocate for the reader; as protector of message and voice for the author; as field operative for the publisher, enhancing its reputation while maximizing the book's market prospects. Ideally the DE is brought on board very early on. More often, the DE will be tasked with improving or even rescuing an existing manuscript by applying Scott's developmental blueprint, which also forms the structure of his book: Assuming the author has provided a manuscript with "good bones," the DE first discovers and draws out the most compelling concept. That concept is then narrowed to a sharp thesis, and supporting content is restructured into a rhythmic balance of engaging narrative in service to a cogent argument. Stylistic intervention ensures the author's voice is expressed with clarity and an appropriate tone, while running text is supported with complementary display elements.
In practice, the boundaries between discrete editing tasks are leaky, and don't lend themselves well to tightly prescribed divisions of labor. Still, I like Scott's definition, which he tempers with the acknowledgment that the DE will frequently dip into the inkwells of copyeditor or substantive editor--or even at times the ghostwriter.
The first book-length treatment devoted exclusively to its eponymous subject, Developmental Editing is close to perfect in accomplishing its stated goals: defining the DE's role, prescribing the DE's methodologies, and making a case for the DE's value proposition in publishing's economic equation. Scott accomplishes these goals by spiking the book with the DNA of its own principles, which are prescriptive without being formulaic. Developmental Editing features a clear concept, a sharp thesis, a logical structure, comprehensive yet balanced content, elegant expression, and inventive storytelling (the book's expository framework is punctuated with supporting fictional narratives). And while the book focuses on developing nonfiction books, its methodologies could be applied in some measure to just about any type of writing.
Scott Norton's Developmental Editing should have a broad audience, since it would profit anyone in the publishing industry. For those hoping to enter the industry or move up its food chain, the book is a best-practices manual. Writers can apply its principles to bring sharper focus to the start of any new writing project, or--when a publisher's developmental budget is strained--to self-diagnose problems in an existing manuscript, pushing the work past the tipping point that favors publication.Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Overview

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The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself) (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Review

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The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself) (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Review.
Reviewed by C.J.Singh
While teaching courses in editing at UC Berkeley extension, I always assigned The Chicago Manual of Style and Richard Lanham's Revising Prose (5th Edition) for the introductory course. For the advanced course, we studied Joseph Williams's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (ninth edition) . As noted in my detailed reviews of the two latter books, most students found them excellent. I'm sure they'd be just as enthusiastic about "The Subversive Editor" by Carol Fisher Saller. In fact, I'd place this book near the top of the reading list for anyone interested in learning how to edit. Saller, a senior mansucript editor at the University of Chicago Press, also edits "The Chicago Manual of Style Online's Q&A." Written with charming wit, her brief book presents numerous tips. For several samples from the book, please read on.
Introducing her book, Saller writes: "Although people outside the Press address us `Dear style goddesses' and assume we are experts on everything in the `Manual,' most of the time I feel more like the pathetic little person behind the curtain in `The Wizard of Oz.' It's only because I'm surrounded and protected by knowledgeable and generous coworkers that I can assemble the authoritative front that appears in the Q&A" (p. xi).
From the Q&A: "Q/ Oh, English-language gurus, is it ever proper to put a question mark and an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence in formal writing?" (p. 31). "A/ In formal writing, we allow a question mark and an exclamation only in the event that the author was being physically assaulted while writing. Otherwise, no" (p. 43).
On serial commas: "A/ Well, if you don't allow the serial comma at all, you will be stuck with situations like the following hypothetical dedication page that our managing editor likes to cite: 'With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope'" (p. 70).
Know Thy Word Processor: "Q/ Is there an accepted practice for use of emoticons that include an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parentheses?" (p. 71). "A/ Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons. I'm afraid CMOS is unlikely to treat their styling . . . But I kind of like that double-chin effect" (p. 79). Included in the above chapter is a footnote: "Hilary Powers has written a gem of a guide, 'Making Word Work for You: An Editor's Intro to a Tool of the Trade.' You can download it inexpensively at...." (p. 72). I did. Thanks.
On Associated Press Stylebook: "Minimizing word count must be another goal for newspapers: have you noticed their avoidance of 'that' even when it's needed? 'They maintained the house for years was a haven for crackheads.' It drives me crazy" (p. 28).
Saller's use of "subversive" in the title is a bit of a teaser. "Editor's first loyalty is to the audience of the work you're editing: that is, the reader. . . . Common sense tells us that working on behalf of the reader is not really a terribly subversive move" (p. 4).
To learn the basics of the editing craft, I recommend: For a review of grammar, Constance Hale's "Sin and Syntax"; for an introduction to the Chicago manual, do the exercises in a self-teaching book such as Amy Einsohn's "The Copyeditor's Handbook"; and, for upgrading your skill in copyediting, peruse regularly "The Chicago Manual of Style Online's Q&A," edited by Saller. -- C J SinghThe Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself) (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Overview

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The Chicago Manual of Style Review

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The Chicago Manual of Style ReviewThe Chicago Manual of Style has always been a steady companion. It discusses every imaginable style question to the point of exhaustion and speaks with the authority of the nation's largest academic press and the country's most academically serious university. The University of Chicago Press is not burdened by the scholarly dubiousness that plagues the MLA, which happens to publish a competing style guide.
This edition of the Manual of Style includes a number of improvements and additions. The Chicago manual has finally spoken on citing electronic publications, and even includes advice on assembling manuscripts for electronic journals. Flow charts in the back give broad overviews of the publishing process. The index seems easier to use than the index in the last edition, and the chapters are arranged more thoughtfully. Most striking upon first picking up the 15th edition is its stunning graphic design--not only is it beautiful, but it helps readability by highlighting examples and making sections easier to find. The manual includes some information on editing foreign-language publications. As always, the manual includes some very subtle humor in its sentence structure, verbiage, and choice of examples.
The Chicago Manual of Style is also equiped to be an arbiter of many a college dining hall argument on language, with extensive chapters on grammar and usage.
I heartily recommend the Chicago Manual of Style to anyone who ever finds himself with a question on some detail of English style.The Chicago Manual of Style Overview

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A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Review

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A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) ReviewThe 7th edition of Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers features significant new material, a more user-friendly arrangement, much-needed rules for online resources, and an eye-friendly, two-tone typeset format.
Editors Booth, Colomb, and Williams have adapted material from their The Craft of Research and inserted it as Part I of the 7th edition. Researchers now get both a style guide and a research guide in one book.
The three-part format for the 7th edition also makes it easier to navigate. Part I is the new research guide; Part II is the rules for source citation; Part III is the style guide. In the 6th edition, the first chapter was a guide to the parts of a research paper which then had to be compared to the formats and sample layouts in the last chapter. The new edition combines all this material together in Appendix A along with instructions that are updated to reflect common word processor settings. And the index at the back of the volume now references items by page number rather than chapter and section, a great improvement in my opinion.
The 7th edition brings Turabian up-to-date by including rules and examples for citing online sources. Part II also separates the instructions for notes/bibliography style from the instructions for parenthetical/reference list style. What had been a completely separate chapter for citing public documents is now helpfully included with the rest of the citation rules. Part II of edition 7 now includes over 100 pages of citation examples compared to the 26 pages in chapter 11 of the 6th edition.
One weakness that is not corrected in the new edition is that Turabian's official stance for encyclopedias and other reference works is still that they should only be cited in notes. (17.5.3, p.191) Nothing acknowledges the difficulties of citing scholarly encyclopedia or dictionary references where signed articles are the norm. One can, however, adapt the instructions for edited collections on p.179 to sufficiently cite academic reference works.
Finally, the blue-and-black typesetting makes it much easier to distinguish in-text examples and to move one's eye from section to section.
It is fitting that the 7th edition has been published on the 20th anniversary of Kate Turabian's death. The many improvements in this edition will ensure its place on student bookshelves for years to come.A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Overview

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The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition Review

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The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition ReviewThe new version is certainly worth the purchase price! They've added an entire new section on electronic publishing, updated capitalization rules (web [lowercase] is now acceptable), made things more consistent, and speaking of consistency, added a new section on parallel structure. :)
The updated rules for numbers now allow me to toss the ancient GPO Style Manual kept handy for that (I work in science and technology), not to mention the new usage section covering most of the troublesome words means I'll be reaching for my American Heritage dictionary less frequently.
Well done Chicago! Thank you!The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition Overview

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