Customer Reviews

Copyediting: A Practical Guide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great nuts and bolts volume for the beginning copyeditor. Judd covers nearly everything you need to learn. She follows Chicago Manual of Style fairly closely and when she doesn't, she tells you. This book also includes exercises to allow you to polish your skills. One of the most useful I have read on this topic.

Karen Judd's "Copyediting: A Practical Guide" is one of the few books on this topic. Any help in this area is appreciated, and Judd's guide is extremely handy.

Pros:

1. Her examples are excellent, unlike some other grammar and punctuation guides. Got a strange sentence construction? Her examples will cover it. Not sure if that appositive needs commas or not? Judd gives the correct answer.

2. Methodical. The book delineates the technical aspects of copyediting well.

3. Covers proofreading techniques and notations not found in style and grammar manuals.

4. The trade paper size of the book makes it far less cumbersome than others that include workbook training. Judd's workbook questions are just as easily managed in the smaller format.

5. The price is right.


Cons:

1. This is an enormous con: There are enough errors in the book to confuse readers. Judd sometimes lays out a rule, but then the example is wrong. (A few other reviewers noted this, too.) In a book on copyediting, you'd expect perfect copy! Needs a revision badly.

2. While the copyediting and proofreading marks are extensive, there are not enough variants listed. Some publishing houses require marks that aren't here. I'm no expert like Judd is, but I've seen far more mark variants in my copyediting experience than she covers.

3. This book is "plain brown wrapper" and could use a layout freshening. Almost too dull to look at.

4. Some of the proofing marks are not crisply printed. As a suggestion, this book would benefit greatly from a two-color printing process that makes the marks stand out from the text more effectively.

5. The paper used in the book's construction is cheap, possibly leading to durability issues over the long run. For a true reference work, this is a shame.


Could have been the best value out there in a copyediting reference, but there are enough cons to relegate it to being merely good. A new edition would be excellent, but one doesn't appear to be on the horizon any time soon. Too bad for us.

This is, indeed, a practical, information-packed guide, with lots of exercises, answer keys, and checklists. It doesn't go over every point of grammar--you can get that from your other reference books--but it does tell you most of what there is to know about pen-and-paper copyediting.

The book shows its age whenever computers are mentioned; Judd's comments on these magical machines are amusing and entertaining, but not very useful. I found it worthwhile, but if you edit online or on disk, this may not be the best book for you.

I'm just beginning to consider a career in copyediting; this book is one of several that I ordered so that I might gain an understanding of the discipline. Perhaps it's just the edition I have (after all, no one else has mentioned this), but there are several errors (copyediting errors or compositing errors) throughout the book. I'm not talking about stylistic errors--the writing is just fine. For example, in a few of the exercises, the text in the answers differs from the text in the exercise (the text should be identical in both, since the exercise only involves using copyediting symbols, etc.) I can imagine that it would be difficult keeping straight the 'example' edits and the actual edits, but I just found it a little ironic. Most of the errors were small (e.g., the first word of a title is missing an underline), but they stood out more than they would in a novel, due to the nature of the text.

This is a comprehensive book; the author covers everything you need to know to copyedit, and more. She discusses the uses of the copyediting and proofreading symbols, and when they should be used as well as spelling, grammar, style; numbers and abbreviations; footnotes and bibliographies, typemarking, and handling artwork.

She also explains how (and when!) to write queries, and the differences between copyediting textbooks, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, medical, and science (etc.) texts.

She discusses what publishers are looking for in a copyeditor--what to emphasize in your resume, and what to leave out. The author is an experienced copyeditor, so the book tells you how things really work, not just how they are supposed to work.

The book is well written. It is not hard to understand or tedious to read; and it is very well organized.

What makes copyediting so complex is that the English language is a knotty monster. And for the most part, the reference books that try to tackle and untangle said language are fairly thick and complex tomes.

Let's say you are preparing to interview for an editing job. Chance is good that, if you aren't constantly editing or constantly reviewing, you're going to be a bit rusty in the editorial joints. And chance is very good that, for most editing positions, a copyediting test will be required.

So, with only a few days until your interview and test, do you really want to brush up with a book the size of the New York Yellow Pages? I thought not.

While the bigger bookshelf hogs (like The Copyeditor's Handbook by Amy Einsohn and Chicago) go into greater depth in both explanations and exceptions, Karen Judd's book is perfectly organized for the purpose of reacquainting yourself quickly and efficiently with the essential rules of copyediting. And unlike those other books (I'm looking at you, Chicago!), Judd's work deals thoroughly with the difference between copyediting and proofreading.

It's a good book for your first book, and you might be surprised to find yourself returning to it again and again when you feel your skills could use some refreshing or refining.

I liked the way it was laid out, the many references to other similar texts, and the general overview of the entire editing philosophy.

I'm sure when this book came out it was a great source for editing and proofreading but with the current market certain aspects just don't ring true. Computers have changed the face of editing that this book just doesn't address. Granted it does have some good suggestions but I really found nothing here that I didn't already know. If you have any idea about editing I would suggest skipping the book. If you want to just learn the basics I would still suggest finding something a little newer. On the whole, it just isn't worth the money.

Certainly worth the 4 dollars, INCLUDING shipping, that I paid for it. Excellent book but old, and thus out of date in places. Good cheap buy for someone who has never copy-edited before and is interested in what it is and how it works.

Like other reviewers, I found the errors which fill this book made many of her examples confusing. The errors also make me question the credibility of this text. This is the third edition; there should not be as many as four errors on a single page.
Also, her tone is condescending at best. I'd rather not be spoken down to by someone who has produced such a poorly copyedited text...about copyediting.
This book is a required text for a graduate class (in an English and Publishing program) and we all spent a fair bit of time complaining about it.
In spite of this, it is reasonably helpful. I would, however, recommend purchasing stylebooks instead or at least in addition to this text.