Most copy editors don’t plan to be copy editors. We plan to teach math, philosophy, art history, or maybe the third grade; report the daily news; or perhaps travel the world. When we do become part of the trade, many of us find that what we share, other than a slightly manic devotion to the fundamentals in The Chicago Manual of Style, is curiosity and a commitment to getting things right. Any room of good copy editors will be one that welcomes enthusiastic discussion of such questions as, How many editions did Mrs. Beeton’s household book go through, anyway, and what changes were made in the title’s wording? Which spelling is current and correct, antisemitism or anti-Semitism? Does the U.S. Navy prefer the word boat or ship? Should the poet’s name really be rendered as E. E. Cummings? Good copy editors also value—and require—parallel construction and tidy endnotes that conform to an accompanying bibliography, have an ear for the “sound” of good writing, and grow proficient at alphabetizing words in an index to at least the fourth letter. A sense of humor is also useful.

Yielding the product of extended effort and revision to the care of a stranger requires a leap of faith on the part of any author, but that stranger—with luck and cooperation—can free a manuscript from infelicities of construction, fact, or logic. The author’s name is on the book, but the copy editor can improve the book—often by asking the questions an informed reader would ask and prompting revisions or clarifications. The ideal is for both parties to work as a team, shaping a sometimes unwieldy manuscript into an accessible, well-organized volume.

Mary Giles has recently retired after editing books and journals at the University of Illinois Press for more than twenty years.