The Subversive Copy Editor, Second Edition
Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Introduction
Part One
Working with the Writer, for the Reader
1 The Subversive Copy Editor
2 The Good Launch
3 Working for the Reader, through the Writer: Carefulness, Transparency, Flexibility
4 When Things Get Tough: The Difficult Author
5 The Misguided Martyr; or, Laying Down Your Life for the Serial Comma
6 Dear Writers: A Chapter of Your Own
Part Two
Working with Your Colleagues and with Yourself
7 When Things Get Tough (the Sequel): The Dangerous Manuscript
8 Know Thy Word Processor
9 The Living Deadline
10 That Damned Village: Managing Work Relationships
11 The Freelancer’s Quandaries
12 Things We Haven’t Learned Yet: Keeping Up Professionally
13 The Zen of Copyediting
14 You Still Want to Be a Copy Editor? Breaking In
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
“If you admired—even loved—the first Subversive Copy Editor, you will perforce admire and love the second edition.”
“With the book, (Saller) hopes to give copy editors ‘self-assurance and a measure of grace’ in negotiating words with the writers we are ‘charged with saving from themselves.’ It’s an invaluable work for aspiring copy editors, and a useful one for those more established. Writers—who all edit their own work, to a degree—will also find it illuminating. The Subversive Copy Editor is a wise, witty, and thoroughly helpful companion to the work of editing.”
Library Science and Publishing: Publishing
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