The 50-Year Evolution in Publishing Has Challenged Writers and Editors Alike

I’ll be showing my age here, but does anyone else remember the bygone days of lead type and the California Job Case? Well, I do, and I’ve worked through the many evolutions (and revolutions) that have eliminated “repro” copy, press type, and typesetting companies that used Linotype machines. Those were the days—the days when you could take the time to mull over the correct word, afford several layers of copyediting, and properly address the organization of a manuscript, promotional piece, or project paper.

Over the decades, we’ve gained tremendous production efficiency, slashing the time it takes to go from first draft to publication. I recall working five months in advance to ensure adequate time for the entire process:

• 2 weeks to edit a new manuscript
• 3 weeks to get queries answered by the author and obtain final author approval
• 1 to 2 weeks for the typesetters to send back galleys (through regular mail or UPS, of course!)
• 1 to 2 weeks to ensure that our proofreaders found nothing further to correct (few people would recognize the standard proofing and editing marks we editors used routinely in the margins of galleys and on the paper manuscript)
• 2 to 5 days for the graphic artist at a drafting table to spray the back of the galley and position it exactly, ensuring base alignment and cross alignment, and then insert any artwork or figures (this could take several more days, depending on what other work the graphic artists were handling)
• 1 day for the editors to review the page proofs, ensure the folios were in the right position, nothing was crooked, and no tape was obscuring type, before approval was given and it was sent to the printer in huge, well-packed, delivery boxes
• 2 weeks later, blueline proofs were delivered, and the editors hovered over these for hours

You get the picture. Today, an article is often edited in 1 to 2 days, sent to the author with a 3-day turnaround for approval, laid out on a page-layout program like InDesign in 2 hours, and proofread the next day (or even that night). If a PDF is to be posted on a website, the whole process may take less than 1 week, and this may include writing the piece! On the other hand, if we’re talking about a post like this one, it was all done in less than 1 day!

We’ve lost some important things along the way, from both a communications and technical standpoint. Ability to publish in hours not days or weeks has created an imperative to do so, regardless of the risks. The better writers and communicators step back from their work, if only for a few hours or overnight, reread their copy, and then decide on next steps (that first one should still be to have someone else  review the content for editing purposes).

Today’s common communication and publishing technologies have revealed a difficulty for most experienced editors—it is not as easy to edit a document in PDF form as it is on paper. In using typical PDF commenting tools, I estimate that it takes me twice as long to ensure that the graphic artist responsible for making typographical corrections can understand what I’m trying to correct. And who hasn’t been confused when viewing a Word document using “Track Changes” that has multiple sets of revisions?

That’s progress in publishing, I guess. However, the rush to publishing does show in the final product. Artificial intelligence tools like grammar and spelling checks do what they can to clean up the manuscript, but they have little ability to check for mistakes in meaning or even use of the most appropriate word or term. Of course, I’d have to mention the revolutionary use of AI to write the piece in its entirety, which so often results in bland, replicated copy, without a voice. It has structure, but no one would want to read more than a couple of paragraphs. 

It is a challenge nowadays to editors, proofreaders, marketers, and even writers, to allow the time it takes to properly complete a project involving written words. If you are just interested in producing excellent, well-written copy as you are in quick publication, click here.