A Guide to Our Copyediting Process: Common Errors, Grammar Pet Peeves, and Advice for Writers
By: Brittany Jezouit
Tags: Editing, Ｍedium, Marketing, Writing, Grammar

Ask the Copy Editors: Q&A with Deirdre, Lelo, Brittany, Ayanna, and Vinh

Note: These answers apply to all publications within the “Better Publishing” network — Better Humans, Better Marketing, and Better Programming.

What are some common errors that you see in articles?

A very common one is unnecessary capitalization, especially for job titles. (Lelo)

Basic grammatical mistakes (“it’s” vs. “its,” “there” vs. “their” vs. “they’re,” etc.) and unnecessary capitalization are the most common issues I encounter. (Vinh)

Run-on sentences. Keep your readers in mind, and let them take a breath! :) (Lelo)

Using Medium’s quotation styling for passages that aren’t quotations. (Deirdre)

Sometimes writers don’t know when to close compounds. For example, “my work out.” In this case, it should be “workout” because it is being used as a noun. (Lelo)

Often authors use capitals in places where capitals don’t belong. Those places include the phrases that an acronym stands for, job titles, the names of corporate departments, and general concepts, principles, and disciplines. Some examples of incorrect capitalization: “IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment.” “To apply for a job as a Senior Developer, contact the Human Resources Department.” “There are Bootcamps for everything from Data Science to Machine Learning to Object-Oriented Programming.” (The correct forms would be: “IDE stands for integrated development environment.” “To apply for a job as a senior developer, contact the human resources department.” “There are bootcamps for everything from data science to machine learning to object-oriented programming.”) (Deirdre)

Using “he/she” (or more usually “he”) instead of “they”. “They” is now standard in many style guides, including ours— and using it makes life so much easier! (Deirdre)

What kind of style and structure changes do you make to an article?

The main publication I edit for at the moment (Better Programming) doesn’t require much structural editing. I do, however, try to keep the flow in mind in order to provide a good reading experience. As such, I will tweak run-on or messy sentences to that end. Style-wise, I follow our in-house guide, which covers everything from formatting to site-specific spelling preferences and diversity/inclusion guidelines. (Vinh)

I try to fix unclear sentences by using punctuation first. If that doesn’t work, I reorganize, break up, or combine sentences, and I reorder or replace words. As a last resort, I rewrite, but minimally. I repair awkward constructions and smooth out bumpy transitions. I add, remove, or replace conjunctions to avoid confusion (e.g., the conversational “because,” the one that’s just a filler). At the word level, I add missing words and remove those that are redundant, and I fix eggcorns (e.g., “for all intensive purposes”), mangled metaphors, and words that are simply wrong. I correct misused prepositions and verb forms (more on that in the attached list.) I always try to make list constructions parallel because they have so much more punch that way. (Deirdre)

When I’m editing authors who aren’t fluent in English, I often have to make a fair number of changes, some of which occasionally require mindreading. It must seem pretty invasive to the writers sometimes. If the writing is already strong but there’s a missed opportunity for it to really shine, I try to raise the whole piece to a consistently high level, e.g., by varying repetitive words and phrases or pruning writing tics heavily. I admit I have a soft spot for authors who have a strong voice but aren’t quite there stylistically. (Deirdre)

I hate side-aligned images and will almost always center-align all images in an article. I think the side-align usually make articles a little hard to read and breaks up the flow. (Brittany)

I often have to change titles to title case and subtitles to sentence case. It would help me a lot if writers did this on their own. And a lot of writers do not insert page breaks between sections, so I find myself having to do this a lot as well. (Ayanna)

Do you have any copyediting pet peeves?

Overuse of filler words, like “that.” Only use “that” where it’s necessary. Read the sentence out loud to see if it makes sense without the filler word. If it works without it, leave it out. (Lelo)

Dealing with plagiarism has to be the single most irritating part of the job. It isn’t always intentional (some writers don’t know any better), but it’s a real pain nonetheless. Also, just on principle, people should always get credit for their work. So give it to them. (Vinh)

This is a Medium-specific pet peeve, but when you submit an article to a publication, the publication editors can see all the comments on the article. That means every comment: the line-edit suggestions from your writer’s group, your “thanks but no thanks” note from other publication editors, etc. I don’t mind seeing peer-edit comments as much, but rejection notes from other publications are a great way to let us know that you didn’t write this specifically for us and you’re just shopping your article around to different publications — which may make us feel less inclined to publish it. (Brittany)

A surprising number of Better Programming authors are sloppy about the names of the programs, libraries, and frameworks that are the bread and butter of their work. It’s not unusual to see “javascript,” “Javascript,” “JavaScript,” “JS,” and “js” in the same article. Authors are unwittingly undermining their credibility. Every time I have to make this kind of fix, I think, “I really hope you aren’t this careless when you’re writing code.” Since Medium has no global find-and-replace, making program names consistent is a pain. (Deirdre)

Crazy amounts of bold formatting for every other word. So many authors do this and it makes your writing hard to read! If there’s too much extraneous formatting, I will just highlight the entire article and strip all of the bold away. (Brittany)

What are things that make you happy to see in articles?

Consistency makes me happy. If you’re writing in British English, stick to it throughout. The same applies if you’re writing in American English. (Lelo)

Proper attribution is wonderful to see. I also enjoy an article that manages to be informative and easy to read. Striking that balance is trickier than you might think. (Vinh)

Properly formatted headings, properly credited and linked images. Gists. Credit given to the people whose work the author has quoted from or paraphrased. Good alt texts! OK, let’s face it: any alt text at all. A distinctive voice that’s neither pompous nor frenetic. If all those things are in place, I can focus on making the article super professional. (Deirdre)

A few suggested alternate titles. Your first article title idea is rarely the best one. Leaving a private margin note at the top of an article with a comment like “hey, here are some other title ideas I had” is helpful, and we appreciate the extra effort. (Brittany)

What would you love to see a little less of in articles?

Any type of content that doesn’t offer enough input/insight from the author (aggregate content, lists, etc.). Bring something to the table. (Vinh)

Walls of text, especially those created by never-ending sentences. Keep all your sentences short and sweet if you can. (Lelo)

Images that are uncredited. Please make sure you credit your images correctly. It’s important! (Lelo)

I would like for writers to refrain from using Wikipedia as a source. It makes the writer lose credibility since Wikipedia is not reliable. (Ayanna)

It makes me sad on their behalf to see authors trying too hard to generate excitement or bolster their credibility. These are the people who pepper their articles with emojis and GIFs, bolding and italics, exclamation marks, and phrases like “we’re gonna make something awesome!!!” This comes across as anxiety that their idea, app, or analysis can’t stand on its own — when it probably can. (Deirdre)

Some authors repeatedly start sentences with “so” when the causal connection to the previous statement is perfectly clear. When “so” is used in excess, it makes authors look like they doubt that their argument is clear, when it almost always is. This is different from starting every second sentence with “so” just to be conversational and informal, which also happens a lot and is a distraction in its own right. (Deirdre)

We see the same feature photos over and over again. I’d love to see more unique photos, photos that reflect more diversity, and other image types (like illustrations, cartoons, DIY graphics). If you’re using Unsplash, scroll down a little — don’t pick the first image that comes up in your search. Also, photos that are overly literal but don’t have much to do with the content otherwise: for example, an article about a product launch and a rocket launch photo, sigh. In my opinion, an image that’s less related to the article but is interesting is better than a boring-but-related header image. (Brittany)