This is the second part in a series about how my next book, Hunger and Thirst moves through the process of editing to arriving onto bookshop shelves. The first part covered structural and line edits with my UK and US editors at Fig Tree/ Penguin and Tin House / Zando. And in this part I’m going to be looking at copyedits which I’ve just finished checking for my US editor.

What are copyedits?

Copyedits are done on a novel to check for inconsistencies, missing words, repetition of words, that the publisher’s house style is being used, and many more things. Is a character’s eyes blue at the start of the book and brown at the end? Are capital letters and italics used in the right place? I’ve even had a copyeditor spot a plot hole in a previous book that no one else had. They are life savers.

I have a US copyeditor and a UK copyeditor, and sometimes the UK does their copyedits first, and sometimes US – it simply depends who reaches that point in the process first. In the case of Hunger and Thirst, it was my US copyeditor who was sent the manuscript first, and it was returned to me towards the end of June and I had three or four weeks to work through it.

The Numbers

In the document I was sent, the copyeditor had made 3,356 revisions and 114 comments. She’d changed my UK style single quote marks to double and changed my UK style em dash to a US style, so it’s likely that a great many of the revisions are accounted for by these changes. She also went ahead and changed things that I wouldn’t need to see or check – clear spelling mistakes, an extra space between words, but after all these, I was still left with probably 1,000 + marked up changes and suggestions, and those 114 comments.

The Process

I went through the manuscript and checked every single one of those 1,000 suggested revisions and either accepted or rejected them. In the vast majority of cases I accepted them – it’s nearly always the right suggestion. I started with the easy things, leaving those that might require some thought on my part until last. For example, I have a house called the Underwood in Hunger and Thirst. In some cases I’d called it The Underwood and in others I’d used the Underwood. The copyeditor pointed this out and let me choose (lowercase t, if you’re interested). I set up a macro on my keyboard so that I only had to highlight the change and press one button to accept, otherwise it was three or four steps with the mouse and when I’m doing a thousand that gets tiring.

Once I’d accepted or rejected the revisions I moved onto the comments. Maybe 25% of these are instructions to the typesetter further down the line to set acronyms and initialisms in smaller capital letters. But the rest are for me: I mention a minor character called Mel; did I mean Michelle? (I did – I’d changed her name at some point and missed this one). Sometimes I use peephole for a hole in a door, other times I use spyhole. Which would I prefer? The second time I mention Raymond I say he’s Sue’s older brother, but it seems that four chapters back I’ve already told the reader that. Remove? the copyeditor asks. Yes. I make the change(s) and delete the comment.

US v. British English

Hunger and Thirst is set in a town in England in 1987 and the characters are English, but it’s still part of my American copyeditor’s job to point out any Britishisms that she thinks might make American readers stumble. And it’s my job to have the UK and US versions as similar as possible.

Bin liner – trash bag
Standard lamp – ?
Hessian – burlap
Biro – pen
Lining paper – ?
Pebble glasses – ?
Spanners – wrenches
Egg bread – French toast

And, the squits – ??

And more. But I’m never asked to change colour to color or pavement to sidewalk. In each case I need to think what alternative I can change the word to that still works in 1987 England but won’t trip up US readers. Some are easy: it’s no problem to change Biro to pen, but changing bin liner to trash bag isn’t going to work. My characters would never think or say trash bag. Some of these I changed and the rest I left. Then I removed all the comments and send this version to my UK editor to send to her UK copyeditor (yes, another round coming for me), and booked in a call with my US editor to go through these remaining words on a Zoom call. There are maybe 6 or 10, not very many, and I love this bit – comparing our languages which are so similar in many ways and yet with these weird small differences. And as I write our call is happening this afternoon, where we’ll be discussing all of the above, including what the American equivalent is for ‘the squits’ and whether we should change it. I’ll let you know how it goes.*

What would you change bin liner to? Or do you think it’s unnecessary if it’s a book set in England. Would you get tripped up by any of these if you’re a US reader? I know some UK-based readers are irritated that the same considerations don’t always work the other way. I’ll love to hear the opinion of both US and UK readers of this post. Let me know in the comments.

And, any questions? Or anything I’ve missed out? Let me know either in a comment on this post, or send me a message here, and I’ll try and cover them next time.

*An update
We had our call. Bin liner, lining paper, pebble glasses, spanners, and egg bread all stayed as they were.
Biro I had already changed to pen.
Hessian was changed to cloth
Standard lamp was changed to floor lamp

And I’m pleased to say that ‘the squits’ also got to stay.

If you liked this post, you might like this one too: Ten Years of a Photo a Day. And if you liked it lots, please consider sharing it.

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