Editing styles in the UK and US

Let’s get the old cliché out of the way first: Britain and the United States are ‘divided by a common language’. But what about how we edit? Well, that divides us as well …

​Rules versus ‘feel’

I first became aware of this particular transatlantic split in 2018, thanks to a lecture by linguist Lynne Murphy at the annual conference of the UK-based Society for Editors and Proofreaders (now the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading). That year, Murphy also discussed this subject at the ACES conference in the US, and for an ACES article written by Alexandra Martinez soon afterwards, ‘Lynne Murphy: How American editors are different from British editors’.

As well as acknowledging the ‘language cultures of the two countries, and how we treat English differently’, Murphy said that American editors focus heavily on rules and are ‘much, much more rigid than British ones’, whose work is based more on ‘the voice of the author’ – an approach learned by ‘osmosis’.

I’ve noticed this contrast when following discussions between UK and US editors on social media. American editors often cite ‘rules’, especially those set out in the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), while the British contributions are more to do with pragmatic judgements about what we think will be most helpful for the  author and reader in the context.

​Style manuals: rulebooks or just guides?

Many US editors seem to use CMOS as a matter of routine, whether or not their clients or managers have asked them to do so. Other established style guides, such as that of the American Psychological Association (APA), are also widely followed in the US.

In contrast, UK editors tend to use either their client’s or employer’s style guide, or none at all. We do sometimes refer to New Hart’s Rules (NHR, part of the overall Oxford University Press style manual). However, NHR is far less extensive than CMOS, with 464 pages compared with 1,146. It barely even touches on grammar, which features in a whopping 230 numbered paragraphs in CMOS.

​How I do it

My own approach to editing is typical of the general British way: it’s largely about ‘what feels right’ and ‘what works best’, rather than abiding by supposed cast-iron ‘rules’. I did focus on the idea of ‘rules’ in my early days, but then gradually started being guided by notions of conventions and what I consider good practice.

For me, the reader comes first – I try to judge what will work best for them, as that will help my client or their author to get their meaning across smoothly and clearly. If this goes against some arbitrary ‘rule’, set out by people who aren’t really in a position to set the ‘rules’, that won’t be a genuine problem.

I sometimes use NHR or Butcher’s Copy-editing for guidance, when looking for confirmation of a widely accepted way of doing something, but don’t follow them religiously unless asked to do so.

​What is copy-editing for?

An article by Helen Betya Rubinstein on the Literary Hub website, ‘Against copyediting: Is it time to abolish the other Department of Corrections?’, caused quite a stir in the editing world last year. Rubinstein was looking back, not fondly, on her five years as a copy-editor at an ‘esteemed book publisher’ in the US. She recalled being expected to focus on minor, trivial things; editors exercised a ‘stultifying, inexhaustible pettiness’ with ‘an air of gravitas, or piety, or prestige’. They were ‘the keepers of the status quo’.

She noted that books originally written in British or Australian English ‘tended to be less meticulously cleaned up’ than theirs, and so she came to ‘associate the American practice of copyediting with Protestant discipline and a kind of Puritan ethics, an especially American squeamishness about the corpus’.

Rubinstein had learned from linguistics classes that language isn’t set in stone, and was yearning for ‘another way to practice copyediting … a practice that, to distinguish itself from the quietly violent tradition from which it arises, might not be called “copyediting” at all; a practice that would not only “permit” but amplify the potential for linguistic invention and preservation in any written work’.

But, as Molly Rookwood countered in her article ‘No, copyediting is not “stuck in the past”’ for Editorial Arts Academy, that more flexible, empathic approach typifies how copy-editing actually is practised by many editors today. (Rookwood is based in Canada, which may explain the difference in approaches to some degree.) Rubinstein, she wrote, ‘made it sound like copyeditors crow over mistakes, vindictively searching for errors to strike out in red. This is wrong. Yes, I am looking for errors when I copyedit, but only because my job is to make the author’s writing as clear and consistent as possible.’

​Playing by the rules – a digression

All of this has reminded me of a book I read some time ago: Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism, by Andrei S. Markovits and Steven L. Hellerman (Princeton University Press, 2001). No, really – please bear with me …

Markovits and Hellerman theorise on how soccer (and yes, I will call it ‘soccer’ in this context) was crowded out by other team sports – American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey – in the US in the period between roughly 1870 and 1930, when, they argue, each industrial society’s ‘sport space’ became filled with mass-audience sports.

Part of their explanation of American football’s appeal in those formative years is its rigidly rules-based nature, and how this distinguished it from soccer and (especially) rugby, which evolved largely according to unwritten, even unspoken, agreements on ‘how the game should be played’. Instead, it ‘developed a mass of intricate rules that served as a lingua franca for the sport in a multiethnic and multicultural society dominated by bourgeois values of individualism, rather than the noblesse-oblige collectivism of the British aristocratized sports world’. They also see similarities between the game’s development and the highly systematic industrial production methods that Frederick Winslow Taylor devised in the same period.

There may well be flaws in Markovits and Hellerman’s theory – for one thing, soccer (but not so much rugby) has flourished in many societies that are hugely different from the UK. But I do think there are parallels between American football’s evolution and growth as a scientific, micro-regulated sport – at least in their analysis – and the prevailing rules-based US approach to editing the written word.

Other editing cultures

Of course, I am aware that the UK and US aren’t the only countries where editors operate. I’ve briefly mentioned Australia and Canada (though without offering any real insight), and there must be all kinds of interesting observations to be made about how it’s done in other English-speaking environments, and with other languages. Approaches also vary according to the type of material, its purpose and its target audience.

That, though, would need a great deal more research, and, to put it bluntly, I’ve only got so much time on my hands. Something to blog about in retirement, maybe.

​Which is the way to go?

As you may have gathered by now, I tend to prefer the UK approach, though I will do things differently if asked to. But I will at least try to assess the pros and cons of the two styles objectively.

The UK approach, I would argue, makes writing less homogenous and predictable. It retains more of the author’s ‘voice’ or the organisation’s style, as appropriate (this is important in novels and other literary works, but less so in things like business writing and public information). For what it’s worth, I also suggest that it’s less frustrating for the editor – it gives them more leeway to improve the text as they see fit (hopefully while striving to retain the appropriate ‘voice’ or style if needed), and they don’t need to spend so much time consulting style manuals and other reference sources.

Meanwhile, the US style helps to ensure a higher degree of consistency. As Lynne Murphy has suggested, it also reduces the risk of ambiguities and other problems remaining unresolved.

​What does this mean for editors and people who hire them?

If an editor offers their services to both UK and US clients, they need to be aware of these likely differences in what their clients will expect.

If you’re hiring a UK editor to work on US material or vice versa, remember that their usual approach may not be the one you’re familiar with.

In any case, it’s important that the two parties come to a clear understanding about how the work should be approached – it might make a big difference to the end result.