Is it one word or two? Is it copyeditor, copy-editor or copy editor? And does their job involve copyediting, copy-editing or copy editing? Let’s dive in!
Judging by the email enquiries I get from prospective clients, this is an open question. I quickly scanned the subject lines in my inbox right now, and here’s what people have recently requested:
- copy editing
- copy-editing
- copyediting
- copy-editing
- copy editing
- copy-editing
All of these are correct!
Well, they can be. It all comes down to which style guide you follow.
I personally prefer to style ‘copyediting‘ as one word, because that way it matches ‘proofreading’, which is always one word. I find that simple and consistent. The Chicago Manual of Style is with me on this, as is Australia’s own Macquarie Dictionary and the Australian Government Style Manual.
Some people prefer a hyphen in ‘copy-editing’. In a grand display of Oxbridge solidarity, New Hart’s Rules – the Oxford University Press style guide – and Butcher’s Copy-editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers agree on the hyphen.
Meanwhile, others reason that two words is more logical, because after all, ‘copy editing’ is a type of editing, like ‘sound editing’ or ‘video editing’. They’re backed up by the APA Style Blog, which uses ‘copy editing’.
The Oxford English Dictionary likes ‘copy-edit’ and ‘copy-editing’, but says the person who does that is a ‘copy editor’. The Guardian agrees, but can’t help pointing out that ‘copy editors’ who ‘copy-edit’ are “what subeditors are known as in the United States and Canada”.
But which option is most popular?
If you’re still not sure which style you prefer, let’s take a look at what people are using.
Google Ngram Viewer is a handy tool that helps compare how frequently particular words appear in books digitised by Google. Its “English” language corpus was last updated in 2019.
Here we can see that the noun ‘a copyedit’ has skyrocketed in usage over the past 40-odd years, and the verb ‘to copyedit’ is also the most popular in recent years. The verbs ‘to copy-edit’ and ‘to copy edit’ are least popular.
I’d avoid ‘to copy edit’, as the meaning comes ambiguously adrift without a hyphen to show that ‘copy’ and ‘edit’ belong together. It looks even more wrong in the past tense, like, “Mel copy edited my thesis.”
Now let’s run another comparison.
I’ve teased out the verbs and nouns again here. This time I wanted to distinguish between the present participle verb – ‘Mel is copyediting’ – which shows an action in progress, and the gerund – ‘Mel loves copyediting’ – which is the noun we use to describe the whole practice of doing that action.
Google didn’t find any instances of “Mel is copy-editing”, but “copy-editing” as a noun has steadily risen in usage over the 20th century.
But what I find most interesting about this comparison is that “Mel loves copy editing” was the most popular choice for most of the 20th century and peaked in 1984. But in 2000, “Mel loves copyediting” overtook it. To me, this suggests that the one-word option is much more digital-native.
This graph surprised me! I wasn’t expecting ‘copy editor’ to be the winner here. But the same trend seems to apply; since 2000, ‘copy editor’ has declined in usage, while over the same period ‘copyeditor’ has grown.
The answer: be consistent
Oh boy – I feel like I’ve written ‘copy’ and ‘edit’ about a bazillion times by now. So, is it copyedit, copy-edit or copy edit?
Ultimately, whether you like your copy editing open, you prefer to run a closed copyediting shop, or you want to hedge your copy-editing bets, you should choose one option, and stick to it.
When I edit your project, I always create a Style Notes document that keeps track of all these kinds of decisions. If your chosen citation style doesn’t specify one way over another, you can tell me your preferences upfront, or answer my fun Editing Quiz.
Or I’ll simply read your document closely enough to pick up on your natural writing choices, and I’ll make those into your style.
After all, my copyediting approach is always about making you read like your best self.
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