Recently, I was reviewing a copyedit with a client, and she stopped at one set of changes I’d made to align with the Chicago Manual of Style. “Would it be awful if we did this a different way?” she asked.
So many rules to follow…and break.
Absolutely not!
I think one pitfall editors can fall into — and I was certainly guilty of this early in my career — is insisting that every spelling, every sentence structure, and every period and comma and semicolon and em dash is in perfect adherence to the style book’s rules.
And while, most of the time, the right way to do it is, well, the right way to do it, here’s what I’ve learned: When being “correct” jeopardizes clarity or the authorial voice, then being “correct” often needs to take a back seat.
Now, that’s not to say the rules don’t matter. The Chicago Manual (or whichever style guide you’re using) is a strong foundation that, most of the time, will get authors and their editors to the levels of clarity and professionalism they need. But the beautiful thing about knowing the rules backward and forward (and, often more importantly, knowing how to look them up) is that, once we do, we can make educated and strategic decisions about where to break them for the sake of preserving — and really showcasing — the author’s voice.
What might that look like?
Maintaining not-quite-right word choices that highlight a narrator’s eccentricity — except in scenarios when the eccentricity obscures comprehension, in which case I might suggest alternative “incorrect” words or simply recommend using the right word this time.
Keeping non-English words in roman instead of italicizing them, as Chicago suggests, because codeswitching is central to the characters’ way of communicating with one another and the author doesn’t want to make the non-English language feel like it’s “less than” or “exotic” or otherwise external to the characters’ core identities.
Letting a sentence fragment slide here and there when it really emphasizes a point or a mood — but flagging them when they become so frequent that they lose their power.
I have worked with agencies that require their editors to follow the rules at all costs, and while I dearly love a good list of rules (just ask any of my family or friends — they’ll gladly mock me for it), it just never felt right to make a paragraph “technically correct” at the expense of the unique voice or purposeful style the author had worked so hard to develop. When I was in grad school at Emerson, my book editing professor handed us a document called something like, “The Editor’s Hippocratic Oath.” Just like in the medical version, the primary rule was “First, do no harm.” And sometimes, making the text technically perfect felt like doing harm. So these days, I no longer subscribe to the “exact or bust” mindset. Instead, I talk to my clients about what inconsistencies they know they’re using and what to preserve. And when I see something that’s not technically correct, but I feel that “fixing” it would be inauthentic, I don’t. Instead, I’ll add a comment that says something like this:
“Technically, this sentence should read as X because of Y rules. However, I think the way it’s currently written feels more appropriate to the style of this novel/voice of the character, so I’m not making the change. I did want to flag it for you, though, in case you decide you like Chicago’s way better.”
The goal of a good editor isn’t to make everything “correct.” It’s to make the author’s voice shine. Now, 95 percent of that is making sure the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed, but if you’re doing it right, following the rules is a means, not an end.