Documentation

Copyedit QC

Check the following to confirm the quality of copyedited documents.

Note: Some checklist items are intentionally vague, to be used as catch-all checks, or may not be applicable to a particular project.

Consult the appropriate style guide (CMS, APA) as well as individual publisher guidelines and project specifications.

File Type and File Naming

Scribing

This includes proper style usage and presence of structure indicators as needed.

Compare

Special Characters and Digital Hub Conversion Alerts

Upload the .docx file to the Digital Hub to view a list of all special characters in the document.

Example: Processing to another file format may reveal mismatches in footnotes or endnotes.

If footnotes are used, the counts of fn, fnnum, and fnrefs should match.

If endnotes are used, the counts of en, ennum, and enrefs should match.

Style Sheet

Content Presence and Order

Examples: copyright, design credits, and index content often come later in the publishing process.

Note: The Mark for Editing tool is also used for other checklist items.

Design and Series Consistency

If a new design is being created, the copyediting choices should be coordinated with the design choices (and vice versa).

Examples: Confirm if chapter numbers should be numerals or spelled out; confirm that elements and phrasing are handled consistently across a series.

Front Matter

The TOC should include TK materials like the index.

TOC listings should match chapter titles and heads in the body for wording, italics or other character style variations, and capitalization.

Note: Publishing conventions can result in some valid mismatches, such as “List of Figures” in a TOC pairing with “Figures” as the chapter title in the book.

Edits

Are there more or fewer changes than anticipated based on the desired outcome?

If the file is proceeding to the author for review, lock the tracked changes.

If the file is proceeding to conversion to another format, all tracked changes should be accepted and Track Changes turned off.

Rendering (General)

Are there any colors present that are not part of the Scribe Word template?

Example: If poetry or written language content requires special alignment in a typeset or e-book, instructions should be noted and a reference file provided.

Quotations

Block Quotations and Run-in Quotations

Epigraphs

Comments

Are there query marks or comments that should not be present?

Spell Check

Punctuation

Check for unmatched paired punctuation.

Check for missing paragraph-ending punctuation.

Lists

Figures and Illustrations

Tables and Tabs

Multiple tabs should not be used to force alignment within Word.

Recurring Elements

Examples: sidebars, pull quotes, boxes

Bibliography/References, Notes, and Glossaries

URLs

Examples: em dashes, en dashes, or spaces.

Convert the file to .sam and run the following regular expression.

ISBNs, Phone Numbers, and Zip Codes

This search will find ISBNs that use hyphens and/or dashes in a .sam file:

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Capitalization

Cross-References

Examples: page, chapter, section, figure, table, part

Numbers and Dates

Indexes

See the Index QC Checklist.

Text Checks

Convert the .docx to .sam in the Digital Hub.