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University of California Press

About the Book

This set includes two essential resources for writers and editors: The Copyeditors Handbook, now in its fourth edition, and The Copyeditor’s Workbook, the new companion to the bestselling Handbook.
 

Unstuffy, hip, and often funny, The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications has become an indispensable resource both for new editors and for experienced hands who want to refresh their skills and broaden their understanding of the craft of copyediting. This fourth edition incorporates the latest advice from language authorities, usage guides, and new editions of major style manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style. It registers the tectonic shifts in twenty-first-century copyediting: preparing text for digital formats, using new technologies, addressing global audiences, complying with plain language mandates, ensuring accessibility, and serving self-publishing authors and authors writing in English as a second language. The new edition also adds an extensive annotated list of editorial tools and references and includes a bit of light entertainment for language lovers, such as a brief history of punctuation marks that didn’t make the grade, the strange case of razbliuto, and a few Easter eggs awaiting discovery by keen-eyed readers.

The Copyeditor’s Workbook: Exercises and Tips for Honing Your Editorial Judgment—a new companion to the Handbook—offers comprehensive and practical training in the art of copyediting for both aspiring and experienced editors. More than forty exercises of increasing difficulty and length, covering a range of subject matter, enable you to advance in skill and confidence. Detailed answer keys and explanations offer a grounding in editorial basics, appropriate usage choices for different contexts and audiences, and advice on communicating effectively and professionally with authors and clients. Whether the exercises are undertaken alone or alongside the new edition of The Copyeditor’s Handbook, they provide a thorough workout in the essential knowledge and skills required of contemporary editors.

About the Author

Amy Einsohn was a professional editor who worked in scholarly, trade nonfiction, and corporate publishing. She taught dozens of copyediting courses and also conducted on-site corporate training workshops.

After earning a PhD in English in 1976, Marilyn Schwartz joined the staff of the University of California Press and served as Managing Editor for twenty-eight years. From 1979 through 2004 she also taught editorial workshops for UC Berkeley Extension. She is the principal author of Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing.

Erika Buky is a freelance editor currently based in New Zealand. She joined the University of California Press in 1991 and served as Assistant Managing Editor from 2000 to 2004. She has worked as a freelance copyeditor and developmental editor for scholarly and commercial publishers, research foundations, advocacy groups, museums, and private clients. She has also taught English composition and grammar, rhetoric, and scholarly editing.

Reviews

Praise for The Copyeditor's Handbook

"Absolutely required for students in publishing programs, the volume will also be valuable for those working with copyeditors and those interested in becoming freelance editors.... Essential."—CHOICE

"[A]n indispensable classic."—Technical Communications

“Marilyn Schwartz has incisively and thoroughly updated and expanded The Copyeditor’s Handbook, adding best-practice advice on editorial ethics, accessibility, digital sources, plain language, ESL, and more. Amy Einsohn would be so pleased! Pair this rigorous yet amiable handbook with The Copyeditor’s Workbook for a complete course in manuscript editing.”—Carol Saller, author of The Subversive Copy Editor

“Marilyn Schwartz has crafted a worthy revision of this revered classic. Much here is new, taking us fully into the twenty-first century. Further thoughts and explication from both Amy Einsohn’s posthumous notes and Schwartz’s own experience are so skillfully woven in that Einsohn’s voice continues to sing through.”—Pm Weizenbaum, 2018 president of the Northwest Editors Guild
 
The Copyeditor’s Handbook remains the best guide for copyeditors. Marilyn Schwartz has done a thorough job of addressing the ‘tectonic shifts’ in editing, using Amy Einsohn’s copious notes and her own deep experience. It’s as though she read the minds of editing instructors everywhere when we’ve said, ‘I wish Einsohn covered . . .’”—Erin Brenner, owner of Right Touch Editing and former owner of Copyediting.com

“The fourth edition does the well-loved Amy Einsohn proud, especially with the new material covering digital editing, helpful software, and indie authors. Editors everywhere will greatly appreciate the editing code of ethics added at the end of chapter 1. Reading this book is the next best thing to having a good mentor.”—Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, ELS, owner of KOK Edit

Praise for The Copyeditor's Workbook

“Editors, you’re not done when you’ve read the fourth edition of The Copyeditor’s Handbook. Do every single exercise in the comprehensive Workbook. You have to love a workbook that has an exercise with an editor’s version of the classic lightbulb joke.”—Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, ELS, owner of KOK Edit

The Copyeditor’s Workbook is a dream come true for teachers and students, a major expansion on (but including) Amy Einsohn’s original exercises. Thorough and (yes) often entertaining, the Workbook offers more than forty strategic drills—most of them new—in print and digital form. Perfect for training meticulous yet insightful copyeditors.”—Carol Saller, author of The Subversive Copy Editor

“The Workbook triples the number of exercises from the origin Handbook and offers far more scope for classroom settings, solo learning, and informal study groups.”—Pm Weizenbaum, 2018 president of the Northwest Editors Guild
 
“I’m really excited about The Copyeditor’s Workbook. It fills a gap in editor education and will help students develop that most elusive of skills—editorial judgment. With reminders that often there is no one right answer and exposure to different editing techniques and editor resources, the Workbook is an excellent addition to any copyediting course using The Copyeditor’s Handbook.”—Erin Brenner, owner of Right Touch Editing and former owner of Copyediting.com