copyediting

By Pamela Whitcomb

Most publishers have a house style—a set of rules and guidelines defining the publisher’s preferences for spelling, punctuation, numbers, dates, abbreviations, bibliographic citations, and so on. A house style usually starts with a commonly accepted, publicly available style guide and a dictionary. The publisher’s house style adds an additional layer of rules for situations in which more than one option is acceptable in the style guide or dictionary or when specialized contexts require more specific guidelines. For music publishers, the house style will also include a set of rules for notational elements. But why all the fuss about these niggling little rules? Why not just let the author’s choices stand?

By Alexander Dean

The cost of each A-R edition is figured very finely, even down to hours per page, at each stage of the editing and production process, and the editions are priced as low as possible while still allowing the company to stay in business.

Our editorial department comprises Ph.D. musicologists who deal with difficult but necessary copyediting tasks: shepherding the creation of something as complex as a historical edition of music requires full-time, trained employees. The work that comes our way is high quality, presented to us by leaders in the field, representing artistic and scholarly creations that could be of lasting benefit to society, and A-R’s editorial department ensures that the editions we produce will fulfill that promise.