The inability to separate copy editing from proofreading is one of the biggest problems we face where I work, I think. Proofreading here is basically just copy editing on a typeset page, which means that everyone feels free to make fairly substantial changes. It tends to draw out the typesetting process and introduce unnecessary errors fairly late in the process. So far my efforts to try to differentiate the two have been pretty fruitless.

Amen.

Thank you so much for this! I've looked for a macro that could convert plain text to linked notes, but I could never find one. I already have a script that can do the same thing for InDesign, but this could save us a lot of time. I'll have to talk my boss into buying some licenses for our office.

Great post, Carol. Notes and bibliographies are a frequent problem, because they're often quite messy when authors turn them in, and Chicago, as detailed as it is, simply can't cover everything. I try to remind my coworkers that the overriding concern is citing references adequately so that they're clearly attributed to their respective authors and so that readers can track them down if they're so inclined.

Carol, I believe Lea was trying to point out that you have an extra w in "snowcloning". And for what it's worth, CMOS recommends plenty of rules that you have to puzzle over or research every time.

Amen, LeaGalanter. A while back, one of my coworkers came across the phrase "raised the specter of a lawsuit" (or something close to it). Then she and another coworker started discussing what the phrase should be, and they settled on "raise the scepter" rather than "raise the specter." I was both surprised and annoyed that, first of all, they weren't familiar with the phrase and therefore assumed that it was wrong and second, that they didn't bother to look it up in a dictionary or corpus or Google search and concocted an ill-informed miscorrection instead. I think one of the most important skills a copy editor can have is to look up everything that they aren't sure of.