Mary Norris is a “page OK-er” or query proofreader for The New Yorker magazine. In an interview with literary agent Andy Ross, she describes the process of checking an article before publication:
“…the job of the copy editor is to do the first pass on a piece, when the manuscript is ‘set up,’ that is, set in type for general distribution… The copy editor does not make any interpretive changes… [Next] One of the query proofreaders, on a day when she is not OK-ing a piece, reads the galleys of a piece that is scheduled for a future issue, fixing spelling and punctuation, of course, but also making more subtle suggestions… When a piece is scheduled to run in the magazine, we read it again, twice… The OK-er then has the duty of reading the piece yet again…”
That’s a total of five copy-editing passes for each article. “This takes as long as it takes,” says Norris, “and we don’t rush out at 6.00pm” when the working day is officially over.
Lori Franklin suggests the ideal copy editor is someone who worries about details and is comfortable with absurd conversations.
“The job has its perks—an accumulation of random knowledge, for instance—but it also has its side effects… Once you train yourself to spot errors, you can’t not spot them. You can’t simply shut off the careful reading when you leave the office. You notice typos in novels, missing words in other magazines, incorrect punctuation on billboards. You have nightmares that your oversight turned Mayor Bloomberg into a ‘pubic’ figure.”
Though she has moved on to another type of editing job, Lori Franklin confesses there’s still a strong copy-editing streak within:
“I can’t help it if I think unnecessary quotes are funny, as if signs are trying to be ironic. Or if I’m turned off by guys who spell it ‘definately.’”
Danielle Corsetto illustrated this personality type perfectly in her online comic, Girls With Slingshots — click image to see the full-size original:
Web comic, above: Girls With Slingshots, by Danielle Corsetto - episode 849
