Comments on words / myth / ampers & virgule: Who is responsible for manuscript markup

For freelancers, I certainly think it's part of th...

2009-08-13T16:09:42.657-04:00

For freelancers, I certainly think it's part of the copyediting. Chicago is pretty clear on this in 2.76–2.80: It's the manuscript editor's responsibility. Section 2.51 specifically mentions markup as part of mechanical editing.

However... when I was an editorial assistant, my bosses edited the content and I did the formatting and layout (our publications weren't typeset; they were mostly desktop-published). Perhaps the attitude of "that's beneath me" is coming from people who had editorial assistants when the economy was better, but now have to do that work themselves. Personally, I've always enjoyed markup more than substantive editing, which is why I'd rather do web work or DTP than copyediting. :-)

(BTW, my editing lists have been set to NOMAIL for quite a while, so if someone else has already made those points on a list, I don't know about it.)

Thanks, Doug. Don't be a stranger.

2009-08-13T08:55:00.436-04:00

Thanks, Doug. Don't be a stranger.

Off topic: I have been reading your blog for years...

2009-08-13T08:38:37.185-04:00

Off topic: I have been reading your blog for years--nearly always via RSS--and appreciate your insights into gardening, Adobe customer service and editing. :) Though I rarely comment; I enjoy your blog tremendously.

-Doug

I place tags, so that the compositor has just to p...

2009-08-13T03:45:00.568-04:00

I place tags, so that the compositor has just to pull the appropriate style from his palette [template?]. The rare occasions that I don't do so is when someone asks me not to do that at all and when they are being stingy: in that case mere language editing suffices, though of course I don't see how a publisher could just leave a manuscript to be language-edited and then send it on to the compositor? Is compositor, as you rightly pointed out, supposed to read the whole article and then figure out what head level is that? Or how to set a given list?