Copy/Proof Basics

Introduction

Thanks for signing up to help with copyediting and proofreading—it is essential work to ensure that our articles have the high quality that we and our readers expect.

Outline of copy/proof team process

• Sign up in current issue’s spreadsheet for a task

• Do the task (copyediting, proofreading)

  • If the article is a google doc, make your corrections as suggestions in the doc

  • If the article is a PDF, make your corrections as annotations using Adobe Acrobat or on google drive or adobe acrobat online (depending on whatever you receive!)

• Sign your initials to the spreadsheet in the appropriate box when finished and, if necessary, upload the PDF to google drive

• We use the [e-mail] google group to communicate, or the #copyproof channel on slack. Please feel free to ask questions in either place.

• The copy-proof lead for the issue is there to help you! Please feel free to reach out with any questions that you have.

The SftP publishing process

Each issue of Science for the People is edited by an editorial collective facilitated by the managing editor. During this process the article will be fact-checked and edited for content—that is, problems with the content, factual and otherwise, of the article will be addressed. After this process is done, the article will be ready for copyediting and proofreading: this is where the copy/proof team comes in. The overall process is tracked in a google spreadsheet which you should have access to. There will be one spreadsheet per issue of the magazine. (The spreadsheet should be linked above).

During the copyediting and proofreading stage of the article’s process (which is where we come in) the article will be (generally lightly) edited to correct errors and to ensure consistency, clarity, conformity with our style guidelines and.

Copyediting

This is the first stage of the process and the more errors we can correct at this stage the easier the process after this will be. You will read the article carefully to ensure that:

• Spelling is correct (this is easier with spell-checking, but an author may still use the wrong word, e.g. lath vs. lathe). The Merriam-Webster dictionary should be used.

• Grammar

• Style, e.g. whether to italicize or put in quotations a title. We use the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) 17th edition and our own style guide. The style guide should be followed if it contradicts CMOS, but CMOS is much more comprehensive. We have a login for CMOS: the username is ehetznerand the password is science4people. Our style guide is tailored to SftP content, so if you are looking for information on, e.g., whether or not to hyphenate anti-capitalism, look to the style guide.

• Punctuation! This is probably going to be a big part of it, sorry. We follow US standards of punctuation, which differs from British countries, so many of our submissions will need to be fixed. Pay attention to ensure

• Citations. We ask our authors to provide citations in Chicago note style, but they do not always get it right. Especially the capitalization is often incorrect.

• Numbers: Some numbers should be spelled out, and some should be numerals (99). Percentages should always use numerals and the word percent: 99 percent.

• Lack of clarity, general style changes. Be sparse with this. Do not make changes to poetry, more personal pieces, interviews, etc.

• Any and all other errors 😄 Lots to know here. If you really want to improve your skills, The Copyeditor's Workbook contains useful exercises and The Copyeditor's Handbook an exhaustive guide.

Interviews

If the text is an interview, avoid making changes except to spelling and punctuation to the interview. For example, if the interviewer said ISO, we should not change the text to International Socialist Organization or International Standards Organization. You can clarify the text with brackets, e.g. ISO [International Standards Organization]. If the interviewee said "20 percent" we should ensure that is correctly formatted (not "twenty percent" or "20%."

Poetry

Poetry is an even more special case and should generally not be changed at all. Spelling mistakes should be flagged to determine if they are intentional or not.

Technical details

You will be editing an online google document. For easier tracking of changes, please ensure that you are “suggesting” changes by selecting that editing mode in the upper-right hand corner of your screen.

When you are suggesting changes, you will simply make edits to the document as usual, but they will show up as “suggestions” in the right-hand margin, allowing them to be easily reviewed by the authors, editors, and other members of the copy/proof team.

Example

I hope there won’t be so many errors in our copy! Note, though, that copyediting should catch as many errors as possible, because the earlier they are caught, the easier our job is down the line. You will probably find that you are most attuned to finding errors the first few times you read a text; as your familiarity grows it becomes more difficult to spot errors.

Proofreading (google doc)

After the article has been copyedited, the google doc is proofread by a second person to find any errors missed in the first round. The process is more or less the same as copyediting, but you should be dealing with far fewer errors at this point. You will be making suggestions to a google doc and the work will be tracked in another column of the spreadsheet. When the article leaves this stage, it should have zero errors (ideally 😊) and be ready to be typeset.

Proofreading (pdf)

After the first round of proofreading, the articles will be sent to the designer for layout. These “proofs” (PDFs) will be sent to the author and editor for their correction first. The copy/proof team will then read through the articles once again to ensure there are no errors. At this point our focus should be on spotting errors introduced to the text during the design process. During this iterative process we may send articles back to the designer a number of times as we discover errors.

The proofreader will be sent a PDF document located on google drive. You can then flag errors in one of three ways:

1. Make an online comment on google drive.

2. Download the PDF and add comments to the PDF using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

3. Send the comments back the copy/proof lead as an email, specifying page, column and paragraph number (least preferred).