Editor’s Note: The most popular post of all time on Corrigo is Indian Copyeditors Forum: Connecting Editors, Creating Opportunities. Editing in India is a growing field, and the ICF was founded in 2015 by Vivek Kumar to create awareness about editing in India and bring Indian editorial freelancers together. You can see their first newsletter, iEdit, here.
Yateendra Joshi, the author of this article, is a member of the ICF.
It is my hope that publishing articles written by our colleagues in other countries will expand our own awareness of the global reach of our profession.
As professional technical editors, we are sometimes asked to comment on the quality of a hard-copy document. “Take a quick look and tell me what you think” is a typical request.
In this article, I’m going to suggest a plan for performing this type of quality check in an hour. This plan uses the following definitions when determining quality:
- Freedom from defects
- Conformance to standards
- Suitability for intended use.
There are four passes in this quick quality check: first impressions, skimming, scrutiny, and overall assessment.
Pass 1: First Impressions (5 minutes)
In the first pass, scan the document for its overall look and feel to get a sense of the document’s purpose and intended audience. The overall look and feel of it, or its ‘build’ should match its purpose. For example, a paperback book’s small size makes it portable, a coffee table book’s large size allows it to be shared at a communal table, a document’s stapled pages indicate that its content is flexible, and a cookbook’s spiral binding allows it to lie flat so that its readers can free their hands to do other tasks while reading.
A document’s cover page and front matter should answer some basic questions. For example:
- What is the document about?
- Who is it for?
- What is its tone?
- Who authored it?
- Who published it?
- How current is it?
- What does it promise to deliver? (An easy-to-scan, one-page table of contents accomplishes this last item.)
The front matter should clearly provide this information, and if it does not, this detracts from the quality of the document being reviewed.
The overall look of the document’s pages—the page ‘gestalt’—also matters. Do the pages look inviting? Are the typeface and size appropriate? Do the line length, line spacing, and margins make the document easy to read? Is the page color uniform and neither too dark nor too gray? For documents printed on both sides, do lines of text back up perfectly? (Hold a page against the light to check the text.) Are navigation tools such as page numbers, page headers, and footers correct and formatted well?
Last but not least, be sure to correct any typos on the cover page and in the section titles.
Pass 2: Skimming (15 minutes)
During the second pass, read a few parts to get an idea of the writing quality. Note any glaring errors related to spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Read larger chunks of the front matter (for example, the foreword, preface, and introduction). Also, do a random check to see if the table of contents entries are listed on the correct pages. Verify the page numbering is correct. If the document has an index, do these same checks for a few index entries.
If applicable, take a closer look at the tables, figures, and references. Select a table at random and see if you can get a sense of what the table is about from its title. Do the same with a figure and see if its caption is appropriate for its content. Lastly, pick a couple of citations or footnotes, and verify that they have matching entries in the reference or works cited section at the end of the document. Make sure a consistent style is applied to all tables and figures with respect to:
- Punctuation
- Capitalization (title case or sentence case)
- Typography (bold, italics, or normal)
- Table design (grid lines, borders, shading, and so on)
- Positioning and alignment
Pass 3: Scrutiny (30 minutes)
In this pass, read the document as if you were copy editing it. Confine your scrutiny to three pages and, if applicable, to three tables, three figures, and five references selected at random. This small sample will help you quickly judge the overall quality of the document.
Evaluate the document’s suitability for its intended use in terms of language. Consider whether the vocabulary is appropriate (jargon is fine if the document is meant for specialists), whether the writing is clear and concise, whether transitions are used appropriately, whether the usage is uniform (not a mix between US and UK English, for instance), whether the paragraphs flow smoothly, whether the text is coherent, and so on.
Pass 4: Overall Assessment (10 minutes)
During this final pass, look at the document’s physical attributes (for example, printing, paper, and binding). If the document is a priced publication, try to judge whether readers will find it valuable for the money being charged. If it’s a free publication, make sure the document indicates how readers can obtain copies of it.
At the end of this review, diplomatically present a summary of your findings to the document’s author so that he/she can improve the document, if needed.
Yateendra Joshi has been copyediting technical and scientific documents for more than 30 years; for more than 15 years, he has also been teaching academics and researchers how to write, publish, and present.
Communicating in Style by Yateendra Joshi and published by TERI will always be a major reference guide. Thanks a ton.