Handling tables and figures during copyediting

Objectives of copyediting and typesetting

Once a manuscript enters production, the content is always looked at in terms of the practical realities of the production process. When considered objectively, both copyediting and typesetting are part of a single production process. When analyzed critically, the two are radically different activities, as each stage looks at the same content from completely different perspectives. Copyediting aims to understand and polish the content; typesetting aims to present the same content in an aesthetic manner. So, the practical realities of the production process are different for each stage. In this blog, we'll try to understand the process in terms of copyediting.

Manuscripts have text and supporting data

Most academic manuscripts have a main text and some end-of-document references. The two may be linked by in-text reference citations, which in turn can take many forms. No matter how the two are linked, the main text and the references are together considered the textual part of the paper.

There may also be supporting data in the form of tables and figures. Tables have captions and figures have legends; the caption is placed above the table, and the legend is typically placed below the figure. The copyeditor must always remember this—despite the rare journal wanting the legends to be placed above the figures and the entire production team referring to these constantly as “table and figure captions.”

Data obtained from various experiments may be presented in tabular format or as visually appealing figures and graphs. It is only after a crystallization of the experimental results and their implication that an investigator (the author) often starts writing a paper for publication. So, the text of a manuscript basically starts with a brief introduction to currently available knowledge in a field and the investigator’s attempt to fill a lacuna therein. The theoretical hypothesis, the experimental and statistical methods used to test it, the results obtained, and their possible inferences will all be described in the manuscript. So, for a common man (or young researcher), the tables and the figures will primarily serve as supporting data to be referred to while reading the text.

And that is exactly how a copyeditor is also expected to understand the tables and figures in the manuscript (i.e., read the text as any reader would, refer to the tables and figures wherever appropriate, and ensure that the text and the supporting material match each other).

Two ways of looking at a scientific paper

Before we move forward, I would like to highlight to you two contrasting ways of looking at a manuscript.

Authors (often researchers, investigators) are experts in their subject. They start writing their paper once the implications of their research results (the tables and figures) are clear to them. For authors, the tables and the figures are the essence, and the text is simply a way of introducing and explaining their work to the public (or target audience). That is why other researchers often skim through the abstract, tables, and figures of published papers to understand the essence of those papers.

Graduates or young researchers, on the other hand, will first read through the text to understand the area of study, the suppositions and hypotheses, the methodologies used in the study, the results obtained, and their implications for science. For this group, the text is the main thing, and the tables and figures are supporting data that strengthen the logic of the scientific presentation.

We thus have two groups of researchers looking at the same content with completely different perspectives. As mentioned earlier, copyeditors aim to understand the content and polish it. Therefore, they have to follow the approach of the second group: read the text first, and then connect the content with the tables and figures.

Handling tables and figures digitally

In a digital editorial workflow, the copyeditor may best achieve this—I’m talking about how the copyeditor should work—by reading the text and switching to a different file (using Alt + Tab, so to say) to examine the supporting table or figure (instead of scrolling up and down within a single file). What this means is that the copyeditor must have the text as a continuous flow, and not have any tables or figures in between, distracting the flow of thought. It is for this reason that tables (with their captions) and figures (and their legends) are best kept in separate files (or even moved to separate files during copyediting).

In more recent versions of Word, there is a provision to open the current document in a new (second) Window (View tab, Window, New Window). This can be used if the tables and figure legends are moved to the bottom of the file, and this part of the file can be viewed in a second Window (again using Alt + Tab), instead of scrolling up and down the original file. Keeping figures within the main file always increases the file size; it is for this reason that the figures are always best kept in a separate file.

It is immaterial how the tables and figures are originally presented in the manuscript. The captions/tables and figure legends must be moved (cut and pasted) to separate files (or to the bottom of the file) early in the copyediting process.

Editing tables and figures together

The essence of any table is its layout. Quite often, all the tables may have the same layout. Rarely, each table may have a different layout. In daily work, you may have anything in-between. But no matter what you have, you can never take table layout lightly. In fact, The Art of Copyediting course on tables and figures documents 175 things that can go wrong with tables! Despite all this, it is often easy to edit tables together, without having to refer to the text.

One can edit all the table captions together, the column heads together, the row heads together, the footnotes together, and the like. That way, it is easy to ensure consistency of presentation among the different tables in a manuscript.

Similarly, the figures can also be edited together. In journal work, there may not be much leeway for editing figures, but axis labels can often be set right consistently across figures. Figure legends also can be edited together for consistency.

Reading the text

The copyeditor must start reading the main text only after the tables and figures/legends have been edited. And while editing the text, you may see pointers (often in parentheses, with wording such as Table 1) to every table and figure in the text. While editing, you may refer to the appropriate table as many times as necessary (and make changes as necessary, either in the text or in the table).

There is one other thing that you will have to consider. In journal work, the tables may mostly be full of data (i.e., numbers). In book work, however, it is common to have tables with rows and columns of only text. In case you run any mass Find and Replace actions (to ensure a preferred spelling, for example), you may run these first, before moving the tables and captions (and figures/figure legends) to a separate file. If these are placed at the bottom of the file—convenient when all the tables in a manuscript are similar—you don’t have to worry about anything.

All these relate to the role of the copyeditor and the way the editor handles the tables and figures during the copyediting process.

At the beginning, I also mentioned something called the practical realities of the production process. This relates to the way the copyedited digital file must be presented to the typesetter. That is a separate concept altogether—quite different from the way a copyeditor works on a file—and I will discuss it separately in another blog.