Preparing Files for Copyediting
Receiving and sorting files
RC technical editors generally receive entire volumes of material at once; a Praxis volume, for instance, will usually contain 6–8 essays, including an introduction by the volume editor(s), and will come via Slack (or e-mail) as a zip file. A complete volume submission will also contain three more elements: (1) a document containing all contributor bios; (2) a document containing abstracts for all essays, including the introduction; and (3) an “About this Volume” file, containing a brief description of the volume as a whole.
Upon receipt of the volume submission, you should check that all files are present, can be opened, and are usable (i.e., not corrupted, etc.). You should also skim each essay’s abstract and scroll through the documents to ensure no undisclosed technical requests are present. If anything is missing or needs attention, or if you have any questions/concerns about technical matters before you begin, contact the volume editor(s) directly and request materials and/or information.
File prep
The following initial steps are intended to clean up the document to speed up and simplify the copyediting process, and they also have the added benefit of ensuring the conversion process from Word doc to XML is as artifact-free as possible. When you begin work on a volume, please perform the following steps, in order, for each essay.
In general, when there are minor formatting/layout issues that prevent a manuscript from conforming to the house style, you may “silently” correct those changes (i.e., without the “Track Changes” function on). Any changes beyond those in this document, however, need to be “tracked” for author review and approval. Pay close attention to what does and does not need to be tracked in the instructions that follow. Note that, at this stage, you’re not (yet) reading the manuscript. If you notice any major issues during this initial review, flag those in a comment for attention later, during copyediting. If you will not be the one copyediting the document, address your comments to the copyeditor, who will read the comments during their review of the manuscript.
- Inside the relevant production volume’s folder, create two new folders called “original essays” and “copyedits” (if they don’t already exist). Move all original essays into the appropriate folder. Then open and rename each manuscript file along the convention “CE_Author_volume,” resaving this version in the “copyedits” folder. You will work only on these “CE” files, leaving the originals untouched (you may need to reference these originals at some point, so save them).
- Ensure “Track Changes” is off: for now, you don’t want to record every tiny formatting change you make.
- Perform a “find and replace” for double spaces in the doc and replace with single spaces; it may be necessary to repeat this function several times until no double spaces remain.
- Remove excessive spacing between paragraphs, around subheads, etc.
- Ensure the document is double-spaced throughout with standard 1” margins. If block quotes and/or poetry excerpts are indented via tabs, restore left margin and then restore indents by changing the margin indent (using either the “increase indent” shortcut or the ruler).
- Convert all footnotes to endnotes (from the top menu, select Insert / Footnote… / Convert… / Convert all footnotes to endnotes).
- Examine the document to ensure there aren’t any strange formatting conventions: remove any instances of changing font sizes, types, or colors, highlights, stray marks, existing comments (if it seems appropriate to remove them), etc. Use your judgment; if in doubt about something, query the author.
- Turn on “show all characters” (the paragraph symbol in the Word toolbar), and remove as much extraneous formatting as possible from the file, including different fonts and font sizes, centering of heads and/or excerpts, colors, highlighting, any remaining Track Changes elements or comments, extraneous bolding, etc. In general, the simpler the formatting of the source essay, the easier its conversion to TEI will be.
- If there are any images in the document, save them to the “media” folder within the volume (create it if it doesn’t exist). Ensure all images appear in such a way that the text is readable (i.e., no strange wrapping or layout issues exist), and that each image is designated as a “figure” and has a caption. If not, leave a comment for the author to provide caption text. (For more on image/figure conventions, see TEI guidelines.)
- Perform a “find and replace” in Word to fix common dash errors, including double hyphen for em dash, en dash for em dash, hyphen for en dash, and extra spaces around dashes. (See CMOS for specifics on dash use. No dash should be surrounded by spaces; always remove space, except in direct quotes.)
- Now it’s time to turn “Track Changes” on. You’ll want to record everything you change from here on for the author’s review.
- Run Word’s spell check feature to identify and fix any obvious errors in spelling/construction. Be sure not to change anything contained in quotation marks; always query the author in these cases.
- Examine Works Cited section: ensure it bears the heading “Bibliography” (not “Works Cited,” “Works Consulted,” etc.), and that the entries appear to conform to CMOS citation style, per RC house style. If something seems wildly off here, contact an assistant or general editor.
- Clean up the Works Cited. To perform the first 3 items below, you should turn your Track Changes function back off, but make sure it’s on for the rest.
- Fix spacing in works cited: ensure that hanging indents aren’t “tabbed” or spaced, but accomplished using the indent markers on Word’s ruler. (To format the WC correctly, format all entries as left-aligned, then use MS Word’s Ruler [View / Ruler] to create the hanging indent. *N.B.: If you need to fix this, make sure “Track Changes” is off so it doesn’t make a mess!)
- Replace all duplicate names with three em dashes: “———.” (This also can be done without Track Changes on.)
- Ensure that all titles appear in headline-style capitalization (not sentence-style; see CMOS for conventions/rules). If any don’t, you can “silently” enforce this capitalization both in the WC and in the body of the essay, but make sure to be consistent (perform a search to ensure you find all instances to change).
- Check that all entries appear in alphabetical order. If they don’t, simply rearrange.
- Take a minute to read through all authors’ names, titles, and dates. If something seems off, you should perform a web search to confirm that details are correct. If they’re not, fix them (and, if appropriate, leave a comment asking author to double-check this info).
- All works listed in the WC must actually be cited in the essay. Perform a search of each author/work listed to ensure that each work in the WC is cited in the essay. If not, leave a comment alerting the copyeditor/asking the author to either cite the work or remove it.
- Be sure all links that appear in the WC are functioning. If not, leave a comment.
- If the text is an electronic source, then a hyperlink should be provided. If there is not one, request a link in a comment.
- Replace any “paywall” sites with a general access page (replace, for example, a “University Login” JSTOR page with a JSTOR stable page). You may link to an Internet Archive/Wayback Machine page, if necessary. If you edit the link—or can’t find a suitable replacement—leave a comment.
- Once you are sure you have everything you need, send the volume editor(s) an e-mail to confirm receipt of all materials and to provide an estimated delivery date for your copyedits of the volume’s essays, which the editor will distribute to their contributors. (Generally this will be 2–5 weeks, depending on the length of the volume.) Once you’ve finished these steps, the manuscript is ready for a full copyedit—with a head start.