(Note: The first part of this article introduced helpful resources for various dictionaries and general copy-editing.)

A book can contain many elements besides solid blocks of type. … It is the editor’s job to make all these elements work together to present the content effectively to the intended reader.

Janet Mackenzie

Grammar and punctuation

Since grammar and punctuation are two of the areas most critically in need of ‘panel beating’ in the texts we are presented with for improvement, we certainly need to be in command of them – or at least know where to double-check our editorial interventions. There are a number of excellent classic works that can be invaluable vade mecums to us in our ‘hour of need’:

Grammar and usage guides

• Bryan A Garner Garner’s modern English usage (OUP, 2016)
• Eric Partridge Usage and abusage (Penguin, 1999)
• HW & FG Fowler The King’s English 2 ed (OUP, 2010)
• John Kahn (ed) The right word at the right time (Reader’s Digest, 1985)
• John Linnegar Engleish, our Engleish: Common errors in South African English and how to resolve them (Pharos, 2013)
• John Linnegar & Ken McGillivray grammar, punctuation and all that jazz (MLA Publishers, 2019)
• Myf Steynberg PEG guide to grammar and punctuation (PEG, 2018)
• HA Treble & GH Vallins An ABC of English usage (OUP, 1973)

Punctuation pointers

In addition to the list of guides above, which all deal with aspects of punctuation (usually problematic ones!) in one way or another, the following books focus specifically on punctuation:

• GV Carey Mind the stop (Penguin, 2021)
• Noah Lukeman The art of punctuation (OUP, 2007)
• Eric Partridge You have a point there (Routledge & Kagan Paul, 1978)
• Lynne Truss Eats, shoots and leaves: The zero tolerance approach to punctuation (Gotham Books, 2004)

Although the first three books in this list were originally published about 50+ years ago, their wisdom is timeless and therefore still enormously relevant to us as practitioners in the 21st century. Unfortunately, books printed that long ago, and not reprinted or available as ebooks, usually have to be purchased from secondhand bookshops or charity shops, or from online bookstores such as Abe Books or Amazon, but they are nevertheless worthwhile tracking down.

House style and plain English specialists

Nowadays, we editors often have to plough our way through endlessly long sentences, long rather than short words, and passive rather than active voice, not to forget those highly complex sentences whose meaning only the author will understand! If we put ourselves in the shoes of the target readers, we will be doing them an enormous service by making authors’ sentences and words a lot plainer. But to do so we need to apply the sound principles of Plain English or Plain Language that focus on rendering texts reader-centred. Our aim should be to render authors’ ideas and words accessible at first reading. These are some of the invaluable guides to applying Plain Language principles to texts.

• Martin Cutts Oxford guide to plain English (OUP, 2013)
• Sir Ernest Gowers The complete plain words (Penguin, 1987)
• John Linnegar & Ken McGillivray grammar, punctuation and all that jazz (MLA Publishers, 2019)
• Elizabeth Manning Murphy with Hilary Cadman Effective writing: Plain English at work 2 ed (Lacuna, 2014)
• EE Viljoen-Smook Plain language: A practical guide to easy-to-understand language (Pharos, 2020)

Consistency

One of the often-overlooked pillars of the editor’s craft is applying consistency across documents. Consistency, that is, in the treatment of numbers, dates, spelling, capitalisation, hyphenation, abbreviations and symbols, and much more besides. Whereas consistency is dealt with in the major works on editing and proofreading listed above, it is treated specifically in the following publications:

• Bryan A Garner Garner’s modern English Usage (OUP, 2016)
• John Linnegar with Paul Schamberger & Jill Bishop Consistency, consistency, consistency: The PEG guide to style guides (PEG, 2016)
• New Hart’s rules (OUP, 2014)
• New Oxford dictionary for writers and editors (OUP, 2014)
• New Oxford style manual (OUP, 2016) (which combines the New Hart’s rules and the New Oxford dictionary for writers and editors)
• William Strunk & EB White The elements of style (Penguin, 2000)

Online tools

Besides these printed resources, there are also a number of online tools, sites and resources to consider:

• Paul Beverley’s macros for Microsoft Word users (both PC and Mac)
• PerfectIt: software program
• Grammarly: software program
• The adventure of English: a 2003 BBC documentary consisting of 8 episodes available on YouTube
• Louise Harnby | Fiction editor & proofreader: site of a professional fiction editor
• Urban dictionary: an online dictionary of slang words and phrases (not an authoritative source!). This is a crowdsourced online dictionary for slang words and phrases.