An editor, more than anybody on earth, must have a perfect resumé. Anything less than perfect indicates that she isn’t up to snuff. And so, since editing one’s own work is a surefire way to miss mistakes, I brought my newly revamped resumé to my writing group not long ago. I wanted to have fresh eyes scour the document for outright errors, and I knew my fellow group members wouldn’t hesitate to suggest ways I could improve it.
“Isn’t copyeditor supposed to be two words?” Erin queried.
“Um . . . ,” I spluttered. (I usually do spell it as two words.) “I’m sure it’s spelled both ways. I’m sure I remember some discussion about that among editors.”
Betty, our mentor, looked doubtful. We noted that substantive editor and acquisitions editor and production editor and all those other editors are written as two words, and the consensus of our little group was that copy editor should be as well. I dutifully made this change and didn’t give it any more thought.
Until, that is, a few weeks later when I wanted to review some editing matters and pulled out a couple of top-notch books about editing—The Copyeditor’s Handbook by Amy Einsohn and The Copyeditor’s Guide to Substance and Style from the editors of EEI Press. It must be okay to spell the job I do as one word, after all.
Curious, I turned to my trusty Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Two words. The CanOx doesn’t even offer the single-word version as an option. I poked around in a few dictionaries I could easily find: The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, The Oxford English Dictionary, and The World English Dictionary all list it as two words; The American Heritage Dictionary and The Random House Dictionary list it as one.
My professional association, the Editors’ Association of Canada, uses the two-word version on the definitions of skills page of our website.
Ah, but what about the book by Carol Saller, the witty and erudite editor of the Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A? It’s called The Subversive Copy Editor. She, too, uses the two-word version. But—are you ready for this?—in her blog Saller writes copyeditor as one word. I queried her about this discrepancy and was quite amused by her angst-filled response.
I think it’s funny that we copy editors, who so value consistency, can’t agree on how to spell the job we do. As for me, despite what I had initially put on that resumé, I do prefer the two-word version. It does seem more consistent with the other editing titles, and I also like that it avoids sounding and looking so much like copywriter, thus helping avoid confusion.
What do you think?