As connoisseurs of context, judgement and nuance, copyeditors and proofreaders constantly draw on their tacit knowledge. Discover my three tips for embracing your inner tacit knowledge superstar.
Copyeditors and proofreaders, you know that gut feeling you get that something in a manuscript isn’t right? Or how you often have a strong sense of a topic without being able to explain it in detail?
There’s a name for that: it’s tacit knowledge.
And you probably have a ridiculous amount of it.
Fuzzy maps
There’s a sensation I sometimes get in conversations that drives me crazy. It’s the feeling of understanding the topic without being able to say anything concrete about it whatsoever.
It’s like my brain has a map of the topic but the map is just a vague sketch. A little navigator in my head is hopping up and down, excited and enthusiastic about contributing to the conversation. But all she can do is point in the direction of a vague, fuzzy area. ‘Yes, yes! I know the answer… kind of… Look, it’s over there! And it’s… this big blob of instincts and feelings that I can’t put into words but that I promise I do understand!’
It may also manifest in a complete blank, as experienced by the editor in Iva Cheung’s marvellous cartoon ‘Retention’.
This is incredibly frustrating to me – and I’m sure to the people who witness these blustering outpourings of excited impotence or deer-in-headlights mental vacancy.
Three types of knowledge
Before we dig into why copyeditors and proofreaders are tacit knowledge superstars, we need to understand just what tacit knowledge is. And, before we do that, we need to understand two other types: explicit and implicit.
Explicit knowledge
Explicit knowledge is codified and written down.
Let’s continue the map metaphor and imagine that we’re trying to understand how a city functions. Explicit knowledge gives us a meticulous plan and a census of the occupants – their ages, occupations and residences.
For copyeditors and proofreaders, style manuals such as The Chicago Manual of Style are where explicit knowledge lives.
Is any knowledge explicit in the editorial world?
In editorial work, the waters of knowledge are muddied by the fact that even explicit knowledge is open to interpretation and opinion. Individual style manuals are full of alternative ways of doing things and caveats for different fields and types of publication. And many of them will give a preferred approach (say, omitting the comma after ‘e.g.’) but allow editors to diverge if the author has been consistent.
Nevertheless, if we’re not all going to lose our wits, we need some sort of touchpoint that effectively says ‘if in doubt, do this’. And that’s what style manuals provide.
Implicit knowledge
Implicit knowledge is shared more informally. In our city map metaphor, implicit knowledge comes from the residents. You can talk to them to find out the quickest way to get from A to B at a certain time of day, or which neighbourhoods to avoid after dark, or what time a bakery will start to discount its goods to get them off the shelves before it closes.
Here’s an example from copyediting: some of my clients like me to return both tracked and clean versions of their updated style guide, some just want tracked, and some just want clean. I don’t believe any of them have ever told me their preference formally. Instead, I’ve acquired this knowledge from communicating with them over the years. The only place it’s recorded is in a few scratty notes in my checklists that might only make sense to me.
Tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge is more nebulous still. It is knowledge that is hard to explain, and it is sometimes referred to as ‘conceptual knowledge’.
In our city-mapping scenario, tacit knowledge is knowledge that you can only gain yourself, from living in and experiencing the city. It’s made up of scents, sounds and other impressions, and it exists in your head as a huge set of associations. It’s unique to you, but that doesn’t make it any less useful to somebody who appreciates the city like you do and wants to understand it with the benefit of your perspective.
In copyediting, it might be a feeling that a chapter has too many subheadings. Or the view that footnotes rather than endnotes would be a better choice. Or the instinct that an author’s lesser familiarity with the language has led them to inadvertently skew the arguments they’re citing. Or the sense that ‘ineffable’ rather than ‘unknowable’ is more suitable for a client’s tone of voice.
Tacit knowledge is subjective and always open to negotiation – but it is not just opinion. It is a carefully curated set of shared truths that a team (that’s you and your client) or community inhabits, mediates and evolves over time.
How copyeditors and proofreaders can embrace their tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge is inherently creative and instinctive. It may not be logical. And, because it is unique to each of us or our team or community, it is hard to copy. But this also means that it is difficult to demonstrate or define.
I suspect that, for this reason, many copyeditors and proofreaders undervalue their tacit knowledge – especially those of us prone to the subtle whispers of impostor syndrome (brilliantly reframed as care for clients by editorial training provider Sophie Playle).
So, let’s have a think about some ways that copyeditors and proofreaders can demonstrate and use their tacit knowledge superstardom.
1. Well-honed instincts
It may feel like all you can remember is that a previous project used the serial comma and American spelling (do check out Iva Cheung’s cartoon if you haven’t already). You might even have forgotten certain projects entirely.
But, I promise, the information you read in those projects is there in your head in some shape or form. And it will surface when you need it.
I can’t count the number of times over my editing career that I’ve found myself feeling that something about a sentence isn’t right. And when I’ve looked into it or queried the author, I’ve realized why and that my doubt was based on a past or related project.
For example, one of my main editing specialisms is business, leadership and finance, and another is policy and research. Very often, these two worlds collide – for example, when a business book contains a chapter or two about the environment. My experience editing texts relating to climate change policy means I have strong spidey senses around how climate change bodies and instruments are described. This helps me to support my business clients in presenting that world accurately.
2. Adaptability and ability to quickly get up to speed
I believe editing brains often function like enormous indexes.
When we edit a manuscript, we live and breathe it for the duration of the project. We mull it over on dog walks or while we’re doing the washing up. We wake up thinking about it. The client’s world becomes our own and we inhabit it fully.
And then, when it’s done, we close the door behind us and enter a whole new world.
We can’t remember every detail of all these worlds. But we do remember bits about them, and those bits act like an index.
What this means is that when we’re asked to step into a world that’s similar to one we’ve inhabited before, we can get up to speed very quickly. Because our mental index is exceptionally well constructed, we are versatile assets to clients who need us to swiftly grasp their project, its priorities and editorial issues that it is likely to encounter.
(Speaking of stepping into the client’s world: copyeditor and proofreader Lisa de Caux is currently doing research on editors’ emotional investment in editing, and you can already check out her findings on emotional investment from the author’s point of view.)
3. Fierce defence against arbitrary personal opinion
I observed above that tacit knowledge isn’t just opinion, and this point is crucial in the editing world.
Generally speaking, there is no room for personal opinion in copyediting or proofreading. As I explored in my article Editorial midwifery: why a love of language is not enough, the ‘baby’ is always somebody else’s.
An editor’s job is to make recommendations, and we may draw on our tacit knowledge (as well as our explicit and implicit knowledge) to do so. Sometimes those recommendations will be extensive and involve huge changes to the text.
But, unless the client asks us to do so, no change a professional editor makes should cross over the line that divides tacit knowledge from opinion.
Tacit knowledge is copyeditors’ and proofreaders’ superpower
Tacit knowledge is why I still believe copyeditors are not going to be replaced by AI. Tacit knowledge is where our experience, instincts and judgement lie, and no AI can truly mimic it.
Very often in editorial work, there is no ‘right answer’. There are viewpoints and perspectives, which can be backed up by experience (taken from implicit knowledge) and best practice (taken from explicit knowledge).
But it is tacit knowledge where editing superpowers truly lie.
Hazel, you nailed it! That ‘fuzzy map’ feeling of knowing that you know, but can’t retrieve enough to be a convincing prosecutor of that knowledge.
Thanks also for validating my experience of editing a fascinating piece of writing only to have its content fade away over a couple of weeks. (Then only remember the serial comma)
Love your work.
Thanks, Beverley! At least it alleviates the frustration a bit to acknowledge that we do remember on some level and are using what we picked up in some shape or form!
I haven’t thought of or said the words tacit knowledge for what seems like a decade!
But it bubbled to the surface of my mind just by reading your title, and with further reading came the deep re-realization of how much I rely on it in my editing work!
Great piece, Hazel. Thanks so much for it!
Thanks, Deborah! I was reminded of it by a client saying on a call, essentially, ‘Wow, you must have loads of tacit knowledge.’ It can be so empowering to recognize how much we use it!