Presentation for IBPA Publishing University 2013, "Beyond Spellcheck: Editing for Success", Session 804

1. Session 804
Beyond Spellcheck: Editing for Success
“Check but Verify”
Saturday, April 27, 2013, 1:45 - 3:00 P.M.
Peter Goodman, Stone Bridge Press

2. 5 (at least) Key Mechanical Features
• serial commas before “and,” curly/straight quotes, en/em dashes, old-
style/lining numbers, double spaces and periods (Revision Tracking
clean up)
• A heads and B heads, maybe C
heads, but, really, D heads?
• chapter titles and running heads
• consistency consistency consistency:
italics, caps, numerals, hyphenation,
list styles
• common errors your spellchecker won’t catch: its/it’s, their/they’re

3. Old School Concerns
• rivers
• hyphenation
• widows/orphans
• placement of illustrations
MR. GRUNDY SEZ:
• that/which
• appositives: “My uncle Jack” vs “My uncle, Jack”
• parallelism: both/and, not only/but also, either/or
• get yourself a style guide, chase commas

4. Getting It Right at Start and Finish
• always use paragraph and character styles in Word and InDesign
(identify slight variants by color)
• design with picas and points and use #s to ensure alignment and
consistency
• proofing: check all elements separately, one after the other (may
need to go through the text a dozen times or more); use a “proof tag”
for hard copy to be double sure

5. top trim edge
baseline of running head
“Proof Tag” for baseline of 1st line of text
checking hard copy,
especially galleys
Proof Tag for checking galleys, 6 x 9 standard page, “Book Title”
baseline of chapter #
Check each item baseline of chapter title
separately, even if
baseline of 1st line of chapter
you need to go opener
through the book 12
times or more
space for A head
(baseline to baseline)
baseline of any A head
baseline of caption (above photo)
top/bottom edge of photo
baseline of caption (below photo)
last line of text
baseline of folio
bottom trim edge

6. Word Style Examples

7. The Chicago Manual of Style
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

8. Usage Guides

9. Thank you for your . . .
careful attention!
Peter Goodman
sbpedit@stonebridge.com