I loved this book. Saller, senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press and editor of The Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A, has assembled a wealth of useful information and observation based on her experiences. Each chapter starts with a Q and ends with the corresponding A. The main body of the chapter is made up of musings, advice, rules and anecdotes relevant to the theme. And it’s peppered with recommendations of other texts, websites and tools that the author has found useful. It’s beautifully written, and a good humoured, gentle, easy read.
Recommendations range from detailed and technical (how to change the case/capitalisation of selected text using Shift+F3 in Word), through to soft skills (sample wording for delivering a polite-but-firm, non-negotiable “no”; pointers on how to triage an over-full to-do list), and best practices borne of bitter experience (how to make a considered call on whether it’s worth bending/breaking the rules for a particular text; a strong recommendation to check whether there’s a specific reason your author uses two different spellings of a certain name throughout a text before editing all occurrences to the same spelling without track changes turned on!).
I’ve seen some reviews on Goodreads criticise the text as not teaching the reader anything new, and that could well be the case for an experienced writer/editor, but it does reinforce and remind of best practices, and sometimes a well phrased reminder of what you (think you) know already is just the kick required to inspire greatness and enthusiasm. Also, anecdotes, like pictures, paint a thousand words, and even if you know you should be doing a thing one way, perhaps you don’t fully understand why until you hear the trouble brought about by doing it another way.
Highly recommended!
