Have you ever wondered what all those different kinds of editors do? Recently I picked up a book titled The Copy editor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications and learned that copy editors look after the four Cs. Being a red-blooded American girl, I immediately thought, "What do cut, color, clarity and carat have to do with editing?" I could make an argument for clarity, but not the rest, so I read further and learned the copy editor has a different for Cs: clarity (of course), coherency, consistency , and correctness. That's nice, but what does it mean? Does the copy editor care if you kill off Uncle Joe in chapter three and resurrect him in chapter twenty? Probably, but the copy editor's main goal is to guide the author to an error-free product with respect to editorial style and language. Editing for language primarily consists of ensuring proper grammar is employed throughout, but also includes other language concerns su...