The Copyeditor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications

Wish I'd thought to look at the copyright on this text

The Copyeditor's Handbook is a manual for learning copyediting skills. Copyeditors, a style manual and a dictionary are not enough. With this book, Amy Einsohn will teach you how to use these references. She starts with a perspective on the task of copyediting: How heavy a hand should you wield? How long should it take you? How should you structure and pace your work? Next she tackles the rules of English under the various headings of punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, etc. But she does more than just give you rules. She explains the rationale for the rules, gives you the range of opinions about those rules, and helps you choose which rules to keep and which to ignore. You can't just use a style manual and expect to be a good writer or copyeditor. My advice if you're a writer, a copyeditor, or a person who works with copyeditors: get this book, read it twice, and keep it handy on your shelf as a reference. The Copyeditor's Handbook is weighty reading because it provides serious learning.

Sure, The Copyeditor's Handbook is full of information and advice for copyeditors, but I read it as a writer trying to learn more about the process and procedures of editing my own work. And for that I am grateful to Ms. Einsohn. In the process of writing, revising, writing some more and revising again, the editing procedures and formalities I garnered has help me become a better writer. I review my drafts in a different light, understanding now the editor's decision to move a sentence or a paragraph to make my writing clearer.This book sits between my Chicago Manual of Style and Elements of Style, each complementing the other. The author's style is lively and won't bore you, while the excercises are great because the answers are in the book. Try it, you'll like it.

This book is a wealth of clearly presented information. People considering copyediting as a career should certainly invest in a copy. I heartily disagree with the reviewer who gave it one star; rather than being too liberal, Einsohn succinctly presents the reader with a broad spectrum of opinions on common disputes about grammar and punctuation, allowing readers to make their own decisions. The book contains an excellent explanation of what copyediting is, how to copyedit your first manuscript, how to typecode manuscripts, what to expect from authors, etc. I found Einsohn's exercises and detailed answer key extremely useful.

I have spent more than thirty years as an editor, and I teach in the Certificate Program in Editing at the University of Washington Extension. Amy Einsohn's book is required reading. It's an invaluable complement to the standard manuals (Chicago, Words into Type, etc.), and it's very readable--a lucid, generous, up-to-date work. It utterly transcends the squabbles about vocabulary that people often confuse with the work of editing manuscripts.

I'm an English teacher who does occasional freelance copyediting, and I found this book to be not simply a fine guide to copyediting but an excellent run-down of grammar and sentence structure, including the various 'debates' about split infinitives, email or e-mail, like or as, and so on. It is a clear and readable book (just as it ought to be!), useful and informative, but also enjoyable for its own sake.