It’s all a matter of style

Editors know a thing or two about style.

I’m not talking about the chunky cardigans, furry slippers and fingerless gloves that some of us put on when the weather turns cool.

This is about an editor’s work. Here, style is about making sure the text is appropriate for its intended audience, consistently applying a client’s style preferences, and – where possible – preserving an author’s voice.

This year’s Mediterranean Editors and Translators online conference was entitled ‘The Style Issue’, and there was plenty to interest me in the programme. In this blog post, I’ve summarised three of the sessions that I found particularly useful:

• Editors’ Café
• An overview of institutional styles
• Research writing in English

​In this session, two editors – Alan Lounds and Theresa Truax-Gischler – had a friendly discussion on how they would each tackle the same piece of text. The idea was to get ‘under the hood’ of the editing process from two different perspectives.

The text was the abstract and introduction of an article written by an author whose first language isn’t English. The paper was to be submitted to an international interdisciplinary journal on Romani studies. Alan and Theresa also had access to the full article to assist them in their editing task. Both are experienced editors who are accustomed to working with academic authors, although the article was outside their respective subject specialisms.

Points to note:

• The article was written by a student, as part of a PhD by publication. Neither Alan nor Theresa usually works with students.
• Alan and Theresa had seen the article and prepared their comments in advance – they weren’t being put on the spot!
• Their focus was purely on the language. In the real world, editors would also take into account the client’s budget, timescale and expectations, and any ethical issues or rules relating to editing students’ work.

​I found this discussion fascinating, as I often edit academic papers in English for multi-language authors. Here are the main points that Alan and Theresa covered.

First impressions – Both editors agreed that the  paper was nowhere near ready for submission, in terms of either content or style.

Context – The author mentioned ‘securitisation’ in the abstract but didn’t define this concept or explain its relevance. This lack of context was a serious issue.

Background information – Much of the data given in the introduction was from general sources such as newspapers and non-academic websites, and lacked academic focus.

Parallelism

1. The study involved two countries; the author had been inconsistent in the order in which they mentioned them. Alan felt that the order – whether alphabetical or based on the country’s respective importance in the study – should be the same throughout.
2. Theresa highlighted a lack of parallelism in the study design, particularly in terms of differences in the datasets for the two countries.

First or third person – Alan preferred first-person writing (‘I studied…’), while Theresa retained the third-person perspective. The two editors discussed the trend towards publishers accepting first-person writing, including the fact that this often depends on the academic subject. As an aside, they noted that Spanish authors (for example) sometimes resist writing in the first person in English because this doesn’t come naturally in their first language.

Following a thorough discussion of the two editors’ approaches to the text, several questions from the audience were addressed.

Q: Should the abstract be edited first or last?
A: Probably last. However, when writing an article, Theresa felt it was useful to start with the abstract because it helps the author to formulate the structure of the paper.

Q: What is the role of a developmental editor?
A: Their role is to look at ‘big picture’ issues, including the structure and argument of the text. Ideally, copyeditors and language editors should have some basic training in developmental editing so that they can see whether a text is ready to be edited.
​
It was so interesting to see how Alan and Theresa tackled the same piece of text. While there were similarities in their approaches, there were also differences in emphasis. It was proof, if proof were needed, that there’s often no single ‘right’ way to edit a piece of writing.

​Timothy Barton’s presentation was a treat for anyone who – like me – often has to switch between different organisational style guides. Timothy took us on a whistle-stop tour of various guides, including those of the United Nations, the European Commission and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

​The list of topics covered will be familiar to most editors:

• British or US spelling and punctuation (and if British, -ize or -ise)
• Data (plural or singular)
• Use of the Oxford/serial comma
• Year ranges (en dash or hyphen; both years spelled out or second one shortened)
• Numbers as words or figures (words up to nine, up to ten, up to twelve, up to ninety-nine…)
• Currency formats (ISO code or symbol; use of non-breaking space)
• Country names (short form or long form)
• Place names (political considerations: some can’t be referred to as ‘countries’ (e.g. Reunion), some have different names depending on the style guide (e.g. Taiwan))
• Acronyms and initialisms (some acronyms have more than one definition; they can be defined on first use in the whole document or on first use in each chapter; the United Nations has an official list of acronyms and only those can be used)

Timothy then mentioned a few style points that seemed open to debate:

• Should ‘Brexit’ and ‘COVID-19’ be defined on first mention?
• Some style guides don’t allow the possessive to be used for countries and organisations (e.g. you can’t say ‘France’s economy’). Is there a good reason for this rule?
• Some style guides call for the country name to be given after the city name, except in the case of the country’s capital city. So we would have ‘Lagos, Nigeria’, but ‘Abuja’ (Nigeria’s capital city, but perhaps not as well known) without the country name. Is this a sensible rule?

Some other great tips emerged:

• Be cautious when using phrases such as ‘Triple R’ if the document is going to be translated. The constituent words might not all begin with ‘R’ in other languages.
• Avoid using seasons to specify times of the year. Seasons aren’t the same in all countries.
• Customised PerfectIt style sheets can help you to check many of the finer style points, although they do take time to set up.

​I found this a fascinating presentation that highlighted the sometimes surprising differences between well-established style guides. 

​In this presentation, John Bates considered advice on academic writing, drawing out similarities and potential discrepancies between the different sources.

John looked at the definitions of research writing and came up with three key characteristics. The text should be:

• Clear
• Concise
• Precise

But what does that mean in practice?

John considered various aspects of research writing that could in many cases be improved, in line with these three principles.

Use words with care

1. Authors often use words and phrases that they think sound ‘more academic’ but for which there is a clearer alternative. John gave some examples: undertake metric analysis = measure; utilise = use; constitutes = is. These shorter alternatives might not be suitable in all cases, but should at least be considered.
2. Should academic writing be complex? Complexity can refer to writing that is difficult to understand (which we’d want to avoid) or writing that is lexically or grammatically varied (which may be appropriate for the subject matter). Technical terms, although derided by some as ‘jargon’, can be clear, concise and – perhaps most importantly – precise in a particular context.

Nouns and noun phrases
Noun phrases can often be a source of confusion for readers. Take the example ‘infant observation’: does that mean ‘observation of infants’ or ‘observation by infants’? Longer noun strings can raise even more issues, especially if they’re used to mean different things in the same piece of writing.

Subjects and verbs
In most cases, these should be as close to the start of the sentence as possible. Long introductory phrases mean that readers have to keep a lot in their heads before they reach the subject.

Rounding off his presentation, John – referring to comments by Thomas Spratt in 1667 – pointed out that criticism of academic writing goes back a long way. From George Orwell and Michael Crichton to contemporary authors such as Michael Billig (Learn to Write Badly) and Helen Sword (Stylish Academic Writing), plenty of people have had plenty to say on how researchers should communicate their findings. Have things have improved over the years? John feels they haven’t!

An audience member asked about respecting the author’s voice when editing academic writing, especially when that voice is rather ‘flowery’. John acknowledged that this could be a problem. The editor often has more leeway if the text is written by an author whose first language isn’t English, because there’s an expectation that the editor will amend the language to make it clearer and more concise. And if the author’s first language tends towards more elaborate constructions, that could well be mirrored in the English version.

​There was so much more to METM21 than I’ve summarised here, and I’ve yet to catch up with the recordings of the sessions I wasn’t able to attend in real time. The hope is that next year’s conference will take place in person, in San Sebastián, Spain. And if that’s the case, I’m hoping I won’t need to pack my fingerless gloves.