By Stanton R. Mehr, President,
Revisions Communications & Editorial Services
I’ll be
showing my age here, but does anyone remember the old days of lead type and the
California Job Case? Well, I do, and I’ve worked through the many evolutions (and
revolutions) that have eliminated “repro” copy, press type, and typesetting companies
with old Linotype machines. Those were the days—the days when you could take
the time to mull over the correct word, afford several layers of copyediting,
and properly address the organization of a manuscript, promotional piece, or paper.
We
gained a tremendous amount of production efficiency, slashing the time it takes
to go from manuscript to press. I recall working five months in advance to
ensure that I had adequate time for the entire process: 2 weeks to edit a new
paper, 3 weeks to get queries answered by the author and obtain their final
approval, and 1 to 2 weeks for the typesetters to send back galleys (through
regular mail or UPS, of course!). Once we had a suitable back and forth with
the typesetters to ensure that proofreaders found nothing further to correct,
the graphic artist used a drafting table to spray the back of the galley and
position it exactly, ensuring base alignment and cross alignment, and placed in
the artwork. This could take anywhere from 2 days to 5, depending on how many
articles were appearing in that month’s issue and what other work the graphic
artists were handling. Editors would then review the page proofs, ensure the
folios were in the right position, nothing was crooked, and no tape was
obscuring type, before approval was given and it was sent to the printer in
huge, well-packed, delivery boxes. We received bluelines about 2 weeks later,
which the editors hovered over for the entire day.
Today,
an article is often edited in 1 to 2 days, sent to the author with a 3–5-day
turnaround for approval, laid out on a page-layout program like InDesign or
Quark in 1 hour, and proofread the next day. If a PDF is to be posted on a
website, the whole process may take less than 2 weeks, and this may include
writing the piece!
We’ve
lost some important things along the way, from both a communications and
technical standpoint. Ability to publish in hours not days or weeks has created
a careless imperative to do so. The better writers and communicators step back
from their work, if only for a few hours or overnight, reread their copy, and
then decide on next steps (which should still be to have someone else to review
the content).
Today’s
common communication and publishing technologies have revealed a difficulty for
most experienced editors—it is not as easy to edit a document in PDF form as it
is on paper. In using typical PDF commenting tools, I estimate that it takes me
twice as long to ensure that the graphic artist responsible for making
typographical corrections can understand what I’m trying to correct. And who
hasn’t been confused when viewing a Word document through “Track Changes” that
has multiple revisions?
Few
people recognize the standard proofing and editing marks we editors used to
make routinely in the margins of galleys and in the printed manuscript. That’s
progress in publishing, I guess.
Stanton Mehr is President of Revisions Communications & Editorial Services, an organization that is
focused on providing top-notch writing, editing, and communication services for
your business.
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