You Are Allowed to Ask the Copyeditor a Question Back
When the copyeditor at Routledge sent the manuscript of Synchronicity in Grief back to me, one of the queries asked me to confirm the hierarchy of a section heading. It looked correct to me. The easy thing — the thing most authors do — would have been to type “yes, correct” and move on.
I did not just say yes. I asked why. If they took the trouble to flag it, yet it looked correct to me, was I missing something?
Here is what I actually wrote back: “It looks correct to me, but I am wondering if you asked for a specific reason? I am so used to APA, and I’m not sure if there is an issue with the heading as formatted.”
That sentence is doing something specific. When a query arrives, the instinct runs one of two ways. Either you comply — you assume the editor knows best, you say yes, you hope you have not just agreed to something you do not understand. Or you defend — you feel checked, you explain why you did it that way, you dig in. Compliance or defensiveness. Yes or no.
There is a third stance, and it is the one I hold with my own clients: you can ask. I always encourage questions from my own copy editing clients and I make that clear in my author queries. A query is an opening for a conversation. Defensiveness or submissiveness can stop that conversation from occurring at all, and that leads to a breakdown in the editing process. “Why are you asking?” is a completely legitimate thing to say to the professional editing your book, article, or dissertation. This is how two people who both want the manuscript to be right actually get it right.
I did the same thing a few pages earlier, in the front matter. There was a question about whether the foreword author’s name should come before or after the reference list. I did not know the house rule — so rather than guess in either direction, I asked. Again: not a concession, not an argument. A working conversation between people who care about the same book.
I spend my working life on the other side of this exchange. I write these queries into other people’s dissertations and manuscripts every day, and I have learned that the fear of them is almost always worse than the queries themselves. The authors I most enjoy working with are not the ones who accept every change without a word — that is not always trust; often it is masked anxiety. I most appreciate clients who ask. “What made you flag this?” “Is this a rule, or a preference?” “Can you show me where that comes from?” Those questions make the edit better, and they make the author a stronger writer for the next chapter, article, or publication.
So if your manuscript is with a copyeditor right now and a query has made you nervous, here is your permission: you are allowed to ask a question back. You do not have to know the answer. You do not have to defend your choice or surrender it. You can be curious out loud.
Your name is on the cover. A question is not an argument.
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