The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (Or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)

I've read and taught from most of the editing advice books out there and met many of their authors. With due respect to all the heavyweights, if my office caught fire, once I'd pulled CMS and MW11 from the flames, this is the one I'd save. I'll be taking it out often for advice, entertainment, and consolation. If you're an experienced editor or a halfway smart inexperienced one, you'll already be following most of the suggestions here about organising and logging your work and correspondence, but it's nice to have those practices validated. More valuable to those of us who work in relative isolation are the suggestions on coping with impossible expectations, fixing your mistakes and living with your fallibility, and rubbing along with special-needs authors and colleagues. Many editors seem to think that only rigid formality and abject deference are appropriate for communicating with authors in queries and letters; Saller's friendly, informal, and straightforward tone in her examples is a pleasant corrective. And some of her stories had me laughing out loud. Like Dr. Spock and Miss Manners, Saller urges you to trust yourself and consider other people, advice that seems elementary but is often hard to heed. This is a great little book.

Carol's book is an essential read for anyone who, like me, has the daily task of massaging copy AND egos. With keen insights and sharp wit, The Subversive Copy Editor is a small but valuable addition to my editing library.

You can become a great copy editor by toiling away for years as a publishing underling, making some horrible errors along the way. Or you can just read this book and save yourself some embarrassment by learning from the author's and her colleagues' mistakes.

In teaching the professional editing sequence of courses at UC Berkeley extension, I often assigned for the basics "The Chicago Manual of Style" and for the advanced course Joseph Williams's "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace." Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition) As noted in my detailed review of the latter, almost all of my students found it 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. (To see the full list of "Editing: Top Ten Books," click on Listmania in the Profile section, located at the top left corner of this review.) 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

I'm a manuscript editor at a university press and I can't say enough good things about this book. I've long enjoyed Ms. Saller's clever answers in the Q & A section on the Chicago Manual of Style website, so I was predisposed to think well of her, but this book just cemented my respect and admiration. Her advice to editors (and to writers) ranges, for me, from the "I can't believe I never thought of that" variety to the "I have thought of that, but could never have said it so well" variety. This book should be required reading for anybody who is in the business of transforming unpolished words in a manuscript into type on a page.