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  • The editorial process once again:Behind the scenes in the Language office

Taking a behind-the-scenes look at certain operations is admittedly a risky proposition; an oft-quoted saying warns against looking too closely into how sausages, or laws, are made, since the process can be ugly.1 I trust that the same is not true, however, for the process of putting together an issue of Language, and especially the final stages. Having now been in on the assembly of numerous issues over four-plus years, I feel it is time to lay bare some of what we do and to discuss some aspects of the editorial side of the last parts of the production process.

Previously in this space I have touched on matters that pertain to editing and production and in particular how, in the course of the editorial process, Language’s copyeditors and I often change an author’s words and style in the direction of the journal’s historically avowed goals of economy and succinctness of expression, as well as other desiderata such as consistency.2 My comments then focused largely on the philosophy of editing, so to speak, with just a few concrete examples concerning Language’s style and our editorial practices. There is thus more to be said.

Striving to achieve these stylistic goals drives much of what we do as the articles in an issue move into production and the issue itself takes shape. A good part of this reworking is done in the copyediting stage, with a further step—that of proofreading—ensuring, among other things, that the copyedits are incorporated properly into the text.

In the copyediting phase, a ‘raw’ paper is turned into a Language article by careful attention to readability and consistency, balanced against parsimony. We of course aim for accuracy in all respects and preserving the author’s intent, but we focus as well on the needs of our readers (on which, see below). Then, after the copyediting, the resulting article is handed over to compositors, who turn it into the familiar-looking Language pages. These pages are checked over by authors in the proofreading stage, but also by members of the Language ‘team’: an independent proofreader and my two editorial assistants.

During copyediting we make sure that examples, tables, and figures are properly introduced so readers know what they are looking at. We pay attention to very small details that in the grand scheme of things may not matter a lot but nonetheless are serious business for us: the use of symbols, for instance, should be accurate throughout; when necessary, we work with the compositors to get phonetic (and logical, etc.) symbols right, even if that means having them create a symbol that is not in their repertoire. Accuracy in the presentation of data is clearly crucial, in that claims based on faulty data can hardly stand, but usage must also be consistent throughout the article. If there is an inconsistency in the marking of a sound, for instance, a reader may legitimately wonder if some difference is intended from one occurrence to the next.3 Such is the [End Page 482] case too with terminology: does an author mean something different by, say, grammaticalization in one part of an article and grammaticization in another? Some authors do, but some don’t, so we level out the differences where appropriate (checking with authors as needed) to remove any doubts. And consistency also comes into play with the implementation of points of style, where other potentially conflicting considerations can matter.

For instance, the Language style sheet, like many style manuals, calls for a comma after the next-to-last element in a multiple coordination, thus Attic-Ionic, Doric, and Aeolic were three Ancient Greek dialects, not Attic-Ionic, Doric and Aeolic.4 It is a small point admittedly, but on occasion that comma can add to clarity, even though oftentimes it makes no difference (as in this example). When that comma does not matter, it is, in a small way, extraneous so that its appearance violates the goals of parsimony and economy; nonetheless we include it in all cases, since consistency is the higher-ranking constraint, so...

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