Available From UC Press

The new, updated edition of the handbook that should be on every copyeditor’s desk.

Unstuffy, hip, and often funny, The Copyeditor’s Handbook 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 fourth edition features updates on

• the transformation of editorial roles in today’s publishing environment
• new applications, processes, and protocols for on-screen editing
• major changes in editorial resources, such as online dictionaries and language corpora, new grammar and usage authorities, online editorial communities, and web-based research tools

When you’re ready to test your mettle, pick up The Copyeditor’s Workbook: Exercises and Tips for Honing Your Editorial Judgment, the essential new companion to the handbook.

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.

“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