In this post I said that copyeditors and proofreaders should always ask, ask, ask if they find their editorial project manager client’s instructions unclear or aren’t sure what’s required of them. In this post I’d like to expand on those themes a little.
When editorial project managers write briefs, they try to make them brilliant. They really do. They endeavour to make them complete, unambiguous and as concise as possible.
But the reality is that nobody is infallible. Even editorial project managers will make mistakes. Especially with more complex, bespoke projects.
Why you should query your editorial project manager
Many years ago, I wrote a detailed 21-page brief for the copyeditors of an encyclopedia. I started the brief almost from scratch as I was in the middle of a major overhaul of my paperwork. Inevitably, the brief contained some inconsistencies, typos and ambiguities. It would be crazy if it hadn’t. After all, the very premise we editors and proofreaders build our livelihoods on is that no human being – whether publisher, author or indeed professional copyeditor or proofreader – is capable of editing their own work with a clear eye.
We cannot see our own errors because we see what we think we typed, not what we actually typed.
My two excellent copyeditors carefully worked their way through the brief before they got stuck into the manuscript. They internalized the 99% that made sense and sent me queries on the 1% where I'd come unstuck.
Result: all-round clarity. The text was consistently edited, necessitating fewer corrections at proof stage than there might have been if the ambiguities had remained unaddressed. Plus, as a result of the queries, I was able to improve my new briefing template so the same errors wouldn't appear in the future.
The dangers of not querying your editorial project manager
Now let's consider another scenario (from near the start of my career) that didn't turn out so well.
This was a much shorter book, and my brief to the copyeditor contained a single ambiguity. The copyeditor unfortunately did not query this ambiguity. As a result, an unwanted stylistic choice was included throughout the manuscript.
It was my fault that the brief wasn't as clear as it should have been – I took full responsibility for that. But it was unfortunate that the copyeditor didn't query the issue with me.
The result was that difficult choices had to be made in an already tight schedule. A five-minute email exchange could have saved hours of reworking.
This was a long time ago and I can't remember what my relationship with this particular copyeditor was like. But nowadays I always aim to foster a feeling of psychological safety among everyone I work with, to help them feel comfortable raising queries (I've written about psychological safety here).
Knock your editorial project manager off their perch
If editorial project managers – or copyeditors or proofreaders – aspire to any kind of infallibility, it should be an infallible ability to admit when they might be wrong, might have made a mistake or might not know the whole answer to a problem.
So, if your editorial project manager seems to have made a mistake or hasn't expressed something as clearly as they might have, knock them off their perch (politely!). This is quite easy to do: because you know you are not infallible, you will be aware that you might be mistaken in your perception of the error. So the conversation will naturally be about shared problem-solving rather than unsavoury finger-pointing.
Traditional thinking might make you pause: perhaps the project manager will be unhappy to have their mistake pointed out and won't hire you again. But really, does anyone think like that nowadays (and do you want to work with them if they do)? Be more charitable: faced with a genuine ambiguity in the instructions they’ve written, most editorial project managers will be glad to have the opportunity to learn and improve.
Finally, even if your client does have trouble accepting their own fallibility, you owe it to the author (if they are not the client) and the project's intended audience to do the best job you can with the manuscript. Among other things, this means raising queries rather than making assumptions (which I've written about here).
In my copyediting and proofreading work, I can’t recall ever asking a valid question of an editorial project manager and receiving a frosty response, so let’s squash this myth of unapproachable infallibility and allow editorial project managers to be human.
What are your experiences with querying project managers? Do you think editorial project managers benefit from or lose out from the myth of their infallibility? Do you even agree that such a myth exists?
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