Minding our language: How editors can frame questions without judgement

Words are the professional editor’s business, yet the ones we use in the course of discussing how we apply our craft are all too often prescriptive.
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This post looks at problematic language, the messages it might unintentionally convey, and how we can talk about the editorial conundrums we come across without judgement.

​Embedding the language of preference in editorial discussion

Most editors, however experienced, encounter conundrums in their work that lead to their seeking advice from colleagues. Too often, the language of prescription is used to frame questions:

• ‘What’s the correct way to punctuate this sentence?’
• ‘Is the grammar in this sentence right?’
• ‘What’s APA’s rule for hyphenating [...]?’

The problem with notions such as ‘right’, ‘correct’ and ‘rule’ is that they’re loaded. The implication is that there’s one way – a best way – to write and to edit.

In reality, there are multiple ways to punctuate a sentence, each of which could alter its flow and rhythm in nuanced ways.
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There are multiple Englishes, too, each with grammatical and syntactical structures that vary from region to region within nations as well as from country to country.

And there are multiple style guides that express particular preferences.

All of which means there is no ‘correct’ way to punctuate a sentence, no ‘right’ grammar, and no ‘rule’ on hyphenation. What there are instead are conventions and choices that that can be implemented or ignored.

Instead, we could ask:
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• ‘How can I punctuate this sentence to convey urgency? The author’s used commas but I’m wondering if spaced en dashes would be effective.’
• ‘Is the grammar in this sentence distracting or is the sense clear? The narrator is from [...] but I’m not.’
• ‘What’s APA’s preference for hyphenating [...]?’

The artistry of editing lies in helping the client craft prose in which the meaning is clear and interpreted as intended by readers. Embedding that principle – rather than the language of rights and rules – ​in the way we talk about our work means we’re more likely to think descriptively rather than prescriptively.

Whose standards and conventions are in play?

There are myriad standards and conventions in language, ones that determine the following for example:

• How words are spelled in various Englishes 
• How dialogue is punctuated 
• Whether a term is hyphenated
• How apostrophes convey possession or omission 
• Whether to place full points after contracted forms 
• Whether the first paragraph in a section is indented or not
• The grammatical structure of a sentence
• How verbs are conjugated

When we come across writing that doesn’t conform to these standards and conventions, some of us choose to refer instead to ‘non-standard’ language and ‘breaking from convention’ so as to avoid the judgement embodied in terms such as ‘right’, ‘best’, ‘correct’ and ‘rule’. 

It’s been my preference because I felt it was more neutral and framed the issue around reader expectation rather than my own lived experience of language. 

And that’s something I’ve been thinking about.

Why? Because these terms, too, need to be used with caution. We need to be aware that while standards and conventions help readers make sense of the written and spoken word, they are created and enforced by those with advantage, those who have the power to deem them as standard and conventional in the first place, and to assert their primacy. 

That doesn’t make those standards and conventions better; it just means those who define them are in a position to do so. It also means that prose can be just as rich when those standards and conventions are ignored or flexed.

What about style guides?

Individuals and organizations have preferences. For example, the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), the University of Chicago Press and the American Psychological Association each have style guides that record their preferences for myriad stylistic decisions.
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Mindful editing means remembering that these preferences aren’t ‘right’ or ‘better’. They’re certainly not rules. Even Oxford’s New Hart’s Rules isn’t a rulebook! Rather, these are useful guides that help editors and authors bring clarity and consistency to writing.

However, editors – particularly those working on creative texts – need to be ready to bend when character and narrative voice would be damaged by prescriptive application of a style guide.

As for those of us working on texts that deal with identity and representation, we need to be ready to question the advice in a published style guide; it might be behind the curve.

​Transferring judgement to the client

If we use the language of ‘right/’wrong’, ‘correct’/’incorrect’ and even ‘standard’/’non-standard’ when we talk to other editors about our work, there’s a risk that this will leak into the way we convey solutions to our clients, even into the way we edit their work.

An author might not write in sentences that follow grammar, spelling and punctuation conventions, but that in no way means they’re a poor crafter of prose. Perhaps the way they lay down words is because they haven’t learned our conventions. Or perhaps they’ve actively chosen to ignore those conventions because that style of language doesn’t suit their character and narrative voices.
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The mindful editor needs to recognize and respect both scenarios. Understanding which one is in play is critical because it will determine whether and which amendments are suggested, and why.

‘Wrong’, ‘non-standard’ or authentic voice?

Here’s an example that demonstrates how an author has chosen to craft a narrative that favours voice over ‘standard’ English now and then in order to reduce the distance between the narrator-protagonist and the reader.
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These excerpts are from the opening chapter of Imran Mahmood’s You Don’t Know Me (pp 4–5; Penguin, 2017).

I don’t mean it as joke ting, but like as a thing to shake you up. You never knew that I could speak like a professor is it? But I just wanted you to know that there’s more than just that one side to me that you lot saw when I was giving evidence.

[…]

Like I’ll give you an example. You remember when I gave my evidence a couple of days back? Well that was one of them things we had opinions about. He wanted me to tell you what he called ‘plausible story’. ‘Give them what they need to hear,’ he goes to me. So I go to him, ‘Nah bruv, I want to give them what they don’ want to hear from me, the truth.’

[…]
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He don’t know what I know. The problem for me was that although I know what I know, I don’t know what he knows. Do I let him speak to you in your language but telling only half the story, or do I do it myself and tell the full story with the risk that you won’t understand none of it? 

Are the words I placed in bold ‘incorrect’ or ‘wrong’? That’s a judgemental approach that implies there’s a single perfect, right way to write and speak English. There isn’t.

Are the terms ‘non-standard’? To my ear, yes, some of them are, but that’s because I’m a 54-year-old middle-class white woman raised in Buckinghamshire, England, who was taught how to write and speak according to a standard dreamt up by … actually, I’m not sure who dreamt up the standard but it was probably someone who looked, spoke and was educated quite a lot like me and had the advantages I have.

Rather than thinking about these excerpts in terms of whether some of the words are non-standard or standard, instead we can evaluate them in terms of voice. Rich, evocative voice.

Our first-person narrator has been accused of murder and has elected to defend himself. As the blurb on the back cover says: ‘He now stands in the dock and wants to tell you the truth. He needs you to believe him. Will you?’

Actually, it’s his authentic voice that draws me – a 54-year-old middle-class white woman raised in Buckinghamshire, England – deep into his psyche so that I can see and hear him as if we are one. And that means I can root for him, invest in him, care about him, believe him.

Thinking about that narrative in terms of whether it’s ‘correct’ or ‘right’ would be butchery. To apply a digital red pen to it would be a crime.

And even those of us who might apply the term ‘non-standard’ to the emboldened words must acknowledge that such prescription is based purely on our own lived experience of English – how we write, how we speak, and what we were taught. That doesn’t make our way of speaking and writing better or worthier.

When story and characters drive language, readers will come along for the ride, regardless of their lived experience. When prescriptivism is behind the wheel, readers will disengage and find a different journey to take.

​Framing errors in terms of author intention and reader expectation

An error is a mistake. We all make them when we’re writing – because we don’t know what the conventions are, because we’re focusing on meaning rather than mechanics, or because our fingers are typing so fast.

Regardless, the focus here is on intention, and for that reason there are times when it’s appropriate for the editor to use the term ‘error’.

When editors are tasked with finding errors, they’re looking for what wasn’t intended in that particular project. Take a look at these four examples:

• “Are the autopsy results in yet?’ Milburn asked.
• Xe put xyr pen on the table and frowned. No way was he letting that one pass.
• She hears him clearly – banging on again about how their from out of town and don’t know their way around.
• ‘I wanted to call the police but Johnny ‘One Sock’ Swainston wasn’t having any of it.’

We can say without judgement that there are four ‘errors’ in the above examples because in each case the author likely made a mistake – they meant to use a consistent style of speech marks in the first example, meant the pronouns to be consistent in the second, meant to use ‘they’re' in the third, and meant to use an alternative style for the nested quotation marks in the fourth.

When we’re querying potential errors, however, we can still use the language of intention and reader expectation in our comments, thereby avoiding a more critical tone:
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• Did you mean to write […] here or is this a typo?
• How about [...] instead? This would be less likely to distract the reader, who might be more used to seeing [...] and therefore misinterpret what you've written.
• The grammar in this section doesn’t align with your usual narrative voice, and reads more like something Character Y would say. Is this intentional? If not, how about trying [...]?

Summing up

As professional editors, we need to think about the language we use about language!
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• Saying something’s ‘right’ might imply that all alternatives are wrong when they aren’t.
• Defining something as a ‘rule’ might imply that breaking it is non-conformist, eccentric, non-compliant, even disobedient.
• Referring to something as ‘standard’ normalizes the preferences of those who have the power to make that decision in the first place.​

Instead, we can frame our discussions and queries around meaning, author intention and reader experience. That way, we’re putting the prose where it belongs – front and centre.

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

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