Editing While the author is finishing the final revisions on the manuscript, the press uses the author's sample disk to verify that the disks will be usable by the typesetter and to determine how much work will be involved in any conversion or clean-up. In addition, the compositor or editor will clean up any problems the author may have introduced in his or her work on the files, deleting unnecessary boldface commands, lowercasing chapter titles that are typed in all capital letters, deleting any soft hyphens, making sure the author has not used the letter l when he or she was supposed to use the number 1, and so forth. How long this work takes depends entirely on how carefully the author prepared his or her disks and manuscript. The manuscript is then edited. Others find editing the hard copy most useful, letting the compositor or an editor make final editing changes on the disks.
Presses also differ in the style of printout they send to the author for review of the copyediting.
The press may send the actual copyedited manuscript. When the manuscript is edited on- screen, the editor will prepare a printout that shows all the deletions, insertions, and changes in a format similar to that of a conventionally edited manuscript. This printout is then sent to the author for his review. If the changes are extensive, many presses will send a clean printout of the edited manuscript as well. After the author has reviewed the editing and indicated on the hard copy any final changes he or she would like to make in the manuscript, the copyeditor or compositor will enter those changes on the disks and make a final mechanical check of the manuscript before giving it to the production department for typesetting.