Editing Lingo

Some of the most common words and phrases you may come across as you work with your book editor:

Stet: a Latin word for “let it stand”; an editor may say that they chose to “stet” something, which means they left as-is

Query: a comment in the manuscript (using the comments feature); may include a question for the author or a note of a revision by the editor

Clean document: This can mean two things: 1) a document with all changes accepted or rejected (“a clean, final document”), or 2) a document only needing a light edit. I use the first definition most often but both are common!

CMOS: Chicago Manual of Style

M-W: Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary

Roman type: Normal typeface (as opposed to italics).

Au Pref: author preference (sometimes you’ll see this on a style sheet)

Silent global change: A change made throughout the document that would have been unnecessary to track every time (like changing all straight quotation marks to curly, for example).

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