Editing Terminology List

Front 1

agreement

Back 1

grammatically, having the same number, case, gender, or person (subjects and verbs agree in person and number; pronouns and their antecedents agree in number, person, and gender

Front 2

all caps

Back 2

printing in entirely capital letters

Front 3

ampersand

Back 3

& (used in the names of companies)

Front 4

angle brackets

Back 4

< > Some dictionaries use angle brackets to enclose short excerpts illustrating the usage of words

Front 5

antecedent

Back 5

word, phrase, or clause to which a pronoun or other substitute refers

Front 6

appositive

Back 6

second noun placed immediately following another noun to identify it more fully (George Washing, the first PRESIDENT, had wooden teeth)

Front 7

block quote

Back 7

quoted material set off typographically from the text

Front 8

brackets

Back 8

[ ] used to enclose material--usually added by someone other than the original writer-- that does not belong to the surrounding text. In quoted material, reprints, anthologies, and other non-original materials, square brackets enclose editorial interpolations, explanations, translations of foreign terms, or corrections.

Front 9

caps

Back 9

capitalization

Front 10

collective noun

Back 10

noun that is singular in form but can be plural in meaning (staff, variety, herd, majority)

Front 11

compound predicate

Back 11

one independent clause in which one subject governs two verbs

(the committee will meet tomorrow and will review the report)

Front 12

compound sentence

Back 12

contains two independent clauses

(the committee will meet tomorrow, and the report will be mailed on Tuesday)

Front 13

coordinate adjective

Back 13

adjectives that equally and independently modify a noun; coordinate status marked by presence of word "and" or a comma in between them

"a dull and error-filled book"
"a dull, error-filled book"

Front 14

countable noun

Back 14

noun that has singular and plural form

Front 15

cross-reference

Back 15

lead readers to look at (or recall) another part of the text

labeled appendixes, see pages, etc.

Front 16

ellipsis

Back 16

punctuation mark (three dots) that signals an omission from a direct quotation

Front 17

extract

Back 17

long quotation typeset in a block in which indention from the margins substitutes for quotation marks

Front 18

gerund

Back 18

verb form that ends in -ing and is used as a noun (driving is difficult)

Front 19

initial caps only

Back 19

only first initial of word is capitalized

Front 20

lower case

Back 20

lower case letter

Front 21

objective case

Back 21

Using the objective case indicates that the pronoun is acting as an object.

Front 22

parallelism

Back 22

idea that sentence elements in a series should have the same grammatical structure

he like to run, to swim, and to ski

Front 23

query

Back 23

question an editor asks an author

Front 24

relative clause

Back 24

clauses with "that" "who" "whose" "when" "where" or "which"

Dogs that have three legs need care.

Front 25

relative pronoun

Back 25

that, who, which

Front 26

restrictive relative clause

Back 26

Dogs that have three legs need special care

Front 27

nonrestrictive relative clause

Back 27

dogs, which are members of the canine family, are related to wolves and foxes.

Front 28

roman

Back 28

traditional type

Front 29

serial comma

Back 29

comma used after the next-to-last element in a series

Front 30

small caps

Back 30

regular sized first initial in caps, rest of word in smaller capitals

Front 31

solidus

Back 31

/ (slash)

Front 32

split infinitive

Back 32

allowing a word to come in between the "to" and the "verb"

Front 33

stet

Back 33

... let it stand

Front 34

style guide

Back 34

a preference for grammar and publishing

Front 35

style sheet

Back 35

alphabetical list of words or terms to be capitalized, italicized, hyphenated, spelled, or otherwise treated in any way unique to the manuscript

Front 36

subjunctive

Back 36

a verb mood used in dependent clauses to express wishes, demands, commands, emotion, possibility, judgment, necessity, or statements that are contrary to fact at present

Front 37

subordinate clause

Back 37

A subordinate clause is usually introduced by a subordinating element such as a subordinating conjunction or relative pronoun. It depends on the rest of the sentence for its meaning. It does not express a complete thought, so it does not stand alone. It must always be attached to a main clause that completes the meaning.

Front 38

suspended compound

Back 38

compound words followed by a space
"a two- or three-day delay"
"a two-, three-, or four-day delay"

Front 39

typo

Back 39

a mistake made during type-setting of printed material

Front 40

unnumbered list

Back 40

preferred to numbered lists

Front 41

upper case

Back 41

big letter

Front 42

braces

Back 42

{ } used in prose to indicate a series of equal choices

Front 43

bulleted lists

Back 43

series of items

Front 44

change bar

Back 44

a vertical line placed in the left or right margin used to indicate where changes have been made to the text.

Front 45

collecting noun phrase

Back 45

usually take a plural verb, though they may take a singular verb when the collecting noun imposes itself as the main idea (a bunch of, a fraction of)

Front 46

em

Back 46

a unit of measurement in the field of typography, equal to the point size of the current font. This unit is not defined in terms of any specific typeface, and thus is the same for all fonts at a given point size

Front 47

em dash

Back 47

indicates parenthetical thought, or unfinished thought, shows change in thought

Front 48

en

Back 48

half the width of an em space

Front 49

en dash

Back 49

used to indicate a range of just about anything with numbers, including dates, numbers, game scores, and pages in any sort of document

also used instead of the word “to” or a hyphen to indicate a connection between things

Front 50

hard copy

Back 50

a permanent reproduction, physical copy of text

Front 51

historical present tense

Back 51

the use of the present tense in narrative to impart a sense of breathless immediacy and Conversational directness: I get to the office on Tuesday, and I find a note on my desk. So I reach for the phone and call Mary. Nobody answers

Front 52

independent clause

Back 52

A clause containing both subject and predicate

Front 53

linking verb

Back 53

Linking verbs do not express action. Instead, they connect the subject of the verb to additional information about the subject

Keila is a shopaholic (ising isn't something you can do)

The cats are content to nap (areing isn't something you can do)

Front 54

main clause

Back 54

A main clause—sometimes called an independent clause—must contain a subject and a verb as well as express a complete thought

Front 55

numbered lists

Back 55

a 1-2-3 way of organizing a document

Front 56

run-on sentence

Back 56

a sentence in which two or more independent clauses (that is, complete sentences) are joined with no punctuation or conjunction at all

Front 57

sentence fragment

Back 57

incomplete sentences