The Copyeditor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communication

Many manuscripts contain material other than sentences and paragraphs of running text. The most common of these elements are book, article, and chapter titles; heads and subheads; extracts; tables; and captions for illustrations.

Decisions about the physical appearance of these elements—e.g., typeface, type size, indention, vertical and horizontal location and spacing—are the province of the publication's designer. But it is often up to the copyeditor to identify for the designer which elements appear in the manuscript and the location of each element. The designer will then supply specifications (always called specs) that detail the desired treatment of those elements.

Copyeditors working on hard copy are usually asked to typecode the elements with a colored pencil. As shown in figure 14, the copyeditor also marks the beginning and end of any element whose boundaries are unclear in the manuscript. Typecodes are written in the left margin—or to the left of an indented item—and circled.

Every publisher has its own set of hard-copy typecodes, and a list of these codes will be given to you. In book publishing the following mnemonic codes are typical.

-309-