What is woke editing?
Some copy-editors are woke, some achieve wokeness, others are definitely anything but woke. What would woke editing actually look like?
It would be dangerous for anyone over 30* to express an opinion on what woke is, what is from time to time woke, and what may be woke today and cancelled tomorrow.
So I won’t try to define woke or express any view as to whether it is (if I knew what it was) a benefit or not to the common good. I am also unqualified to attempt a definition of what is common, what is good, or, indeed, what the two words together might mean.
Copy-editing golden rule
The point is this. When copy-editing a book, whether a spy novel, treatise on virology or celebrity memoir, the golden rule for any copy-editor or proofreader is humility (or at least the appearance of it).
I recommend erring on the side of the author and, unless you have a particular expertise, avoiding teaching your grandmother anything, however old or young she may be. Questions are fine, but opinions are dangerous. Editors edit. Authors write. This can be annoying, but it is more annoying to find that work is drying up! An interfering copy-editor or proofreader doesn’t get an invitation to the Christmas bash! (Remember them?)
Proofreaders’ enormity
Words come and go. Copy-editors and proofreaders soon learn this. Meanings change. In language all is flux. Don’t get mad. Simply accept that there never was a golden age for the English language. Every new generation thinks that any change is disastrous. Remember how different spelling, grammar and syntax was in the time of Shakespeare or Dickens. (Jane Austen spelled choose with a u.)
Enormity, which meant evil until about 1980, now means enormousness. Why? Because that’s how most people use it. How do we know? Because big publishers like OUP monitor language with computers that crawl everywhere. When it is clear to the big OUP computer that very few writers use enormity to mean evil the Oxford English Dictionary goes with the flow. The definition changes. The evil meaning is relegated to an archaism.
So I spent 20 years telling editorial course students that enormity meant evil and the next 20 telling them to chill (relax, don’t worry). “Don’t worry, it means bigness now. What do you mean, you always thought it did?” And is bigness really a word?
Cool changes
In my lifetime cool has changed from a word describing temperature to one denoting right-on with a hippie or faux-hippie vibe, then back to temperature, and now to verbal punctuation meaning OK, a form of apparent approbation. Though I have noticed some passive-aggressive usage which is fascinating. In this sense cool means: “OK, if you say so.” It may still mean approval; it depends on context and tone.
Again there are age dangers. To use cool above a certain age is social death. And that age creeps down. And our own age creeps up. So it may be safer to assume you are too old. If in doubt wear the slippers and cardigan with pride. (This may, in fact, be cool.) My mother used cool self-consciously when I was a teenager. My father didn’t. Far too cool.
So the message for those learning to proofread and edit is clear. Your job is vital. But the author and publisher own the book. Please don’t interfere and keep up-to-date with language. Woke editors should steer clear of woke editing.
*Nick, who edited this post, is 31.