{"id":759,"date":"2018-02-10T05:21:03","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T09:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/?p=759"},"modified":"2021-04-02T12:40:11","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T16:40:11","slug":"im-using-copyedit-case-closed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/10\/im-using-copyedit-case-closed\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m using “copyedit[\u202f\u2026 ]”: case closed."},"content":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I posted<\/a> about the different spellings used for the set of “copyedit”-based words\u2014and how some dictionaries were inconsistent. For example, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary<\/em> (11th ed.) defines the word copy editor<\/em> (open compound) yet also defines the word copyedit<\/em> (closed compound). While this may be technically accurate in terms of common usage for each word, I think many editors would say that consistency should trump specificity. (If the primary spelling of four out of five words in a document end in “yze,” then the fifth word should not end in “yse”\u2014even if that’s how that single word is more commonly spelled.)<\/p>\n

Since that post, I made the discovery that although The Chicago Manual of Style (<\/em>the default style guide that I use) doesn’t have an explicit rule on this, it does, itself, use the closed form of all variations of the word. Therefore, I have happily accepted this as an implicit rule\u2014and will adopt it in all of my uses of the word unless overridden in a particular case.<\/p>\n

I must confess to a certain degree of relief. It’s nice to have such a widely acclaimed standards guide support my personal inclination.<\/p>\n

I have updated this website to change the spelling. I hesitated briefly because, in doing this, I was worried I was breaking parallelism by, for example, using ‘copyeditor’ alongside ‘stylistic editor’. But I decided that if I was going to be wrong in some way no matter what I did, this particular decision made the most sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I posted about the different spellings used for the set of “copyedit”-based words\u2014and how some dictionaries were inconsistent. For example, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","archive-loop-container"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledandcomposed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}