The Bookworm: 'The Subversive Copy Editor'

The Subversive Copyeditor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself), by Carol Fisher Saller. 186 pages. The University of Chicago Press. 2009.

Knowing how to tinker with a broken piece of prose until it hums is a source of contentment know by all who have mastered a worthy craft. The midwife works with a laboring woman to produce a healthy child. A seamstress or tailor finishes the couturier’s garment until it’s a perfect, flattering fit. Carpenters and masons execute an architect’s vision and take pride in a safe and well-functioning building. What we all have in common is our wish to cooperate—not compete—with the originators of our material, and we share a satisfaction and sense of accomplishment when everything is going well. (p. xix)

I read another book! Actually, I finished The Subversive Copyeditor, which I had been picking at here and there since around May 2020. It’s a book I picked up from the sale table at Prairie Lights and felt serious buyer’s remorse about buying—until I started reading it.

What I expected of Subversive (and the reason I had buyer’s remorse) was a stiff, dry read of stuffy and pretentious advice from the style lords at Chicago. Thankfully, it is the opposite: well written, personable, relatable, humorous, understanding, empathetic, and down to earth—the perfect book to help aspiring and seasoned copy editors. When Saller explains that she uses Merriam-Webster’s spelling of copy editor (two words) and copyedit (one word), I was hooked and knew I could trust her, knew she was someone I liked.

According to Saller, copy editors should learn, love, and live these three words: carefulness, transparency, and flexibility. They should first and foremost “do no harm.” It is great advice, which I wish I would have received long ago. (I’ve slowly learned the hard way.) They are principles that make life a lot easier for not only copy editors but also writers. “No,” Saller writes on page 85, “the author is not the enemy.”

Saller’s advice is akin to copyediting meditation. Relax, take deep breaths, and don’t give into the “misguided drive to perfect what does not need perfecting” (p. 90). Don’t, Saller says, lay down your life for the serial comma—though I may always have a hard time doing that. She provides numerous resources for education and simplifying tasks, some of which I plan to use, especially visiting The Editorium and using macros in Word (which could potentially save me a lot of time).

I could empathize with a lot of what Saller writes about, the examples she gives, hypothetical situations she uses, and horror stories she shares. She has more experience and, probably, worse nightmares, but I can relate, which is one thing that made Subversive so good and interesting for me.

The book has 14 chapters separated into two parts. Each chapter begins with a question posed to the Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q and A and ends with the answer. It’s a feature I really liked, though it is easy to forget the question when you reach the end of the chapter.

Subversive is a book I will and should revisit again and again. (Honestly, though, it has been so long since I read the first half or so of the book that I should read it again.) It is a valuable guide I will keep handy, especially since it has an index so I can easily access the things I easily forget.