I might not have been blogging last year but boy, have I been editing—content, line, copy, you name it. Fiction and nonfiction, too, which is what we’ll discuss here.* I love it all, and I’ve been very busy.

But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend: I’ve received several assignments from publishers to copyedit manuscripts that were clearly unedited. That is, they had not been through a content/developmental edit before they came to me for copyediting. I can only imagine these were cost-cutting measures, but there is just no substitute for a well-edited book, and the budget makers would do well to remember that too many costs cut might result in an unhappy denouement. (Just my two cents’ worth.)

Publishers: you need to edit these manuscripts before you give them to a copyeditor. If you continue to insist they have been edited, well, then, we’ve got a problem, because what I’ve seen is shocking. And shoddy. That’s what it is: shoddy. You’re expecting me to do both jobs, it seems, but only paying me for the one. Tsk, tsk. Your copyeditor can’t be expected to rethink and -write, look for redundancies, organization, logic, completeness, clarity in the writing, structure, and so on. That’s content editing. When I’m functioning as a copyeditor, I’m supposed to be checking syntax, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and all those things the Chicago Manual of Style dictates.

What makes me think a manuscript hasn’t been edited? Here’s a list of things I consider red flags:

• I find margin notes left by the author stating he’s going to add stuff or rewrite stuff “in the next pass.” All that sort of thing should be done before we ever begin the copy- or line edit.
• There is so much repetition and things that aren’t clear, that don’t follow, things that don’t support the thesis, things that—if I’d been the developmental editor—I would have looked after before it got to copyedit.
• The author is proving to be an “unreliable narrator”—I question his data, his numbers, and the way he analyzes or presents them. When the author says “the shooter killed scores of innocent people” and when I look into it I learn that five were killed and six injured, I begin to mistrust the author’s conclusions. When the author uses “millions” a lot, I think perhaps he has a tendency to hyperbole. Yes, the copyeditor should expect to do some simple fact-checking, but a good content editor should get out in front of it by looking for these false notes.
• I read statements in the manuscript that make me nervous. If I find myself sending e-mails to the in-house house editor that read, “Has legal seen this? Has legal approved this?” then I am pretty sure I’m the first person reading this content. You’d be surprised how often this has happened to me.
• There are some really long paragraphs.
• The footnotes—which are the author’s responsibility to supply—are an incomplete mess; the author should have been informed of this on the first pass of the developmental edit and asked to supply the information. The copyeditor cannot clean up what isn’t there. URLs for online sources should have been checked (they may have existed two years ago when the author began writing but are now broken links); all publishing information should be completed; and if the author is quoting something that came out of a video or radio program, we need to also note who transcribed the text.
• Similarly, scripture quoting that does not identify the translation or version used is a red flag, something the developmental editor definitely should have asked for on the very first pass.
• The introduction is really long and has a lot of repetition. It looks like it was a last, OMG-I-forgot thought. As a content editor I have tightened up many introductions; it is simply not the copyeditor’s job.
• Lots of jargon and terms aren’t explained. Readers need to know this stuff!
• Dots need to be connected. There are sentences and ideas that don’t make sense to a reader with no knowledge of this topic—and isn’t that why the reader picked up the book? The developmental editor should be reading for these problems and they should have been clarified and rewritten in the content edit.
• Mention of people and theories that are not explained within the manuscript; acronyms that are used but not clarified. I have to ask for clarification a lot.
• There are a lot of “talking heads”—people whose names are mentioned (“Joe Schmo says …”) but who aren’t familiar to the reader. Who is this person? Why should the reader trust this speaker? That this person has written a book isn’t enough for me. It doesn’t take much, just identify a speaker as a sociologist or an expert in early childhood education, or whatever. But a miscellaneous name floating around in a paragraph is meaningless and maddening for a reader.
• The use of quotes, in general, is random. Quoting from a book or article on the topic under discussion is great. But just pulling a quote out of thin air (or Brainyquote) because it’s on topic (or on keyword) is less effective.
• Lots of scare quotes.
• I find myself questioning the author’s conclusions, sources, lots of things that should have been queried before we got to the copyedit.
• Word use is odd or otherwise feels off; author clearly doesn’t know the meaning.
• The presence/use of profanity in nonfiction makes me think twice. Generally it can be lived without.

When I do a developmental edit in nonfiction, I’m looking at organization, logic, completeness, clarity—and all the things we’ve discussed above. I check the facts, mark the awkward sentences, ask the author to explain what he meant, and show him why a thing is unclear. I point out the endless redundancy and the crappy sentences. I suggest ways to rewrite it. I ask the author to provide all the information for the footnotes; I ask for the specific scripture translations used so the copyeditor can check them. I sincerely try to make the copyeditor’s job easier.

By the time we get to the copyedit phase, the content should be fact-checked, approved and signed off on by the author, the acquisitions editor, and the legal team (if necessary). Ideally, a copyedit should be a straightforward process. But when the content edit is skipped, it opens the door for all sorts of problems that could leave author and publisher—and reader!—unhappy.

* It happens in fiction, too, of course; but in this post, I’m talking about non.

Tweet: Publishers: you need to edit these manuscripts before you give them to a copyeditor.
Tweet: What makes me think a manuscript hasn’t been edited? Here’s a list of things I consider red flags.