Editing Resources

This page contains a collection of miscellaneous edting resources for Associate Members and Editors to reference. Many of them have been copied over and slightly modified from our Associate Member handbooks, but we have taken advantage of the medium and added material as well where appropriate.

Databases to use for your source filing:

Use the FIU law library: Search online at http://library.fiu.edu/ (click on Library Catalog). Ask the law librarian if you need help locating law library sources.

Use the FIU Green Library general collection: Search the collection by using the online catalog at http://library.fiu.edu/ (click on Library Catalog). Visit the reference desk in the back area of the second floor of the Green Library, where the government materials and newspaper articles are located. Ask the librarian to show you how to look up and print newspaper articles and other documents from microfilm and microfiche.

For law review articles use HEIN Online: HEIN is an online database with scanned photocopies of printed law review articles and U.S. Reports cases. The HEIN database is subscription based, but you can access it for free when you use the internet through the FIU server at school or at home.

Here's how to log in to HEIN from school or from home:

- Point your browser to http://library.fiu.edu/
- Click on "Find Articles & Do Research."
- Click on "Connect from Home" in the upper left of the page.
- Type the number from the back of your Panther ID Card in the box provided.
- Click on "Find Articles & Do Research" again.
- Click on "College of Law Library" under the "Law" subheading.
- Click on "Subscription Databases."
- Click on "Click here to connect to HeinOnline." The HEIN page will open.
- Click on "Subscribers, Please Click Here to Enter."

Get Books from Other Libraries: To do this, use ILLIAD, an online service of the FIU library through which you can obtain from other libraries books that are not in the FIU library collection or law review or newspaper articles that you are unable to find elsewhere. Getting a source delivered through ILLIAD takes time, so it is extremely important that you submit your requests to ILLIAD as soon as possible. Search by going to http://library.fiu.edu/ (click on Interlibrary Loan) (then click on "Establish an ILLIAD account" if it is the first time you use this service).

Tips on Finding Sources:

- For international, legislative, or hard to find sources: ask the librarian, Jan Stone, for help. Do this early on in the process, because it may take some time to get these sources.

- For U.S. Reports cases: you can get a PDF photocopy of the case as printed in U.S. Reports from the HEIN online database. For recent cases not available on HEIN, you will have to pull the printed book and photocopy the case.

- For cases in other reporters: you will have to pull the printed book in the library and photocopy the case.

- For law review articles: you can get a PDF photocopy of the article as printed in the law review from the HEIN online database.

- For law review articles that you cannot find on HEIN: you will have to pull the printed law review from the library and photocopy it.

- If a law review article is not available on HEIN or in our library, you have to request it from ILLIAD. Do this early on because delivery takes time.

Editing Marks:

Many editors prefer to do initial edits of an article on paper. This is a good technique because you will often catch errors that you would not have caught if you had merely edited a document file of the same work. Editors have developed a standards set of marks to usewhen editing by hand. Consider adopting these marks as you do paper edits.

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Organizing your source file and preparing the editing memo:

Source filing is very important, but it can also be tedious and time-consuming, so prepare yourself and make sure you set aside enough time to do the job correctly. The basic rule of source filing is to build a source file that is easily understandable to anyone else who needs to look at it. Your Articles or Comment Editor will give you detailed instructions on how to source file according to their preferences, but here are the basics:

Cases: A source-filed case must be a PDF from HEIN Online or from the original reporter (except when you are Keyciting & Shepardizing). You need to copy:
1. The 1st Page of Case. On this page highlight the "Volume," "Page" and "Case Name."
2. 2 pages in Front of the cited page(s), the cited page(s), and 2 pages behind.
3. Afte that, Keycite or Shepardize the case and make a copy of that too.
If a citation begins with See Generally or similar nonspecific language, you must copy the Whole Case. After that, go through the case and highlight whatever information supports the citation.

Example: If a citation says 486 So. 2d 869, 881 (Fla. 1969), you would have to find volume 486 of the Southern Second, copy page 869, highlight it, then copy pages 879, 880, 881, 882 and 883.

Law Review Articles: Like the cases, these must be PDFs from HEIN Online or an Original Copy. for these articles, you need to copy:

1. The front cover of the review.
2. The page of the table of contents that contains the article.
3. The 1st Page of Article.
4. The entire sub-section of the article the excerpt is from, with a minimum of 2 pages in front and 2 pages behind the actual substance page.

Once again, if a citation begins with See Generally or similar nonspecific language, you must copy the Whole Article and highlight whatever substantive information supports the citation.

Books: If you can somehow find a PDF of a given book, go ahead and use it. 90% of the time a PDF will not be available, so you are going to need to find the book and make copies of it. Here's what you need:

1. Inside Title Page
2. 2 pages in Front of the cited page(s), the cited page(s), and 2 pages behind.

If the citation says See Generally or similar, find the chapter that supports the author's point, copy it, and highlight the relevant substantive information.

Statutes and Legislative Materials: For statutes you need to get an original copy from the relevant statute book. Get the statute and the comment, if there is one, and highlight the relevant text.

Example: A footnote cites Comment 3 of 28 USC § 1333. Get everything from the beginning of the statute through the beginning of the next statute. Then highlight the relevant text.

Other: This category includes magazine articles, websites, and anything else that doesn't fall into the category above. You can only use original copies here, but if the source is an online source, you can just print it from the web. There's a general theme here that should be familiar by now, but we've changed it up a little bit because many of these sources will be fairly short. The general rule is this:

1. If the source is less than 12 pages: Copy the whole source, highlight the information relevant to the citation (like the cited page number) and the relevant text.
2. If the source is more than 12 pages: Copy the front page of the source, 2 pages in front of the cited page(s), the cited page(s), and 2 pages behind. Highlight the relevant information.

Preparing Your Source File: Now that you've collected the sources you need, you have to collate those sources into a format that others can use to verify your work. Preparing a Source File is pretty easy, but be prepared to do some extra copying. The key is to organize the Source File by footnote.

Footnotes can be composed of one reference to a source or they can be composed of many. If there is more than one citation in a footnote, we refer to the citations by letter (e.g. FN 42a, 42b, etc.). When you organize the source file, you should staple the sources together and use a binder clip or a folder to hold all of the sources for each footnote. After that, put a post-it on the front of each source identifying its location in the source file.

Example: Let's say footnote 42 looks like this:

42 See, e.g., Michael J. Perry, Why Political Reliance on Religiously Grounded Morality Does Not Violate the Establishment Clause, 42 WM. & MARY L. REV. 663 (2001); Michael J. Perry, Why Political Reliance on Religiously Grounded Morality is Not Illegitimate in a Liberal Democracy, 36 WAKE FOREST L. REV. 217 (2001); MICHAEL J. PERRY, RELIGION IN POLITICS: CONSTITUTIONAL AND MORAL PERSPECTIVES (1997).

This footnote contains three different sources. Assume that you have found all three and are now putting together the source file. You should staple each of these sources together first. Then put a post-it that says "42a" on the front page of Why Political Reliance on Religiously Grounded Morality Does Not Violate the Establishment Clause; put a post-it that says "42b" on the front page of Why Political Reliance on Religiously Grounded Morality is Not Illegitimate in a Liberal Democracy; and put a post-it that says "42c" on the front page of RELIGION IN POLITICS: CONSTITUTIONAL AND MORAL PERSPECTIVES. After that, use a binder clip or folder to put all the sources for FN 42 together and [place it in order in a wallet or large binder.

There's one exception to the rule and example mentioned above. Occasionally an author will use the same citation through more than one footnote by using "Id." Lucky you. As long as the use is contiguous, you can use the same copy and affix multiple post-its representing the fact that it is cited in more than one footnote. BUT if the author's use of a source is not continguous, you need to make separate copies for each use for the footnotes you have been assigned.

Once you have completed your source file, your Comment or Articles Editor will collect it and put it together with all of the other source files in a large box, which we will keep in file in case there is ever any controversy as to an author's use of a given source.

Your Editing Memo: After you've finished your source file and done your editing, you will need to memorialize it in a memo, so your Articles of Comment Editor will know what edits you are recommending. The key to organizing an editing memo is to identify errors in both the footnotes and the text, and to do so in a way that someone else will be able to understand. Here is a model footnote entry for an editing memo. This is just an example; keep in mind that your particular Comments or Articles Editor may have different preferences for his or her editing memo.

FN### (list the number of the footnote here)

Text: Write the textual content here, from the end of the last footnote to the current footnote.

Errors:
Bluebook: List BB errors for text only!
Grammar: List grammar errors for text.
Substance: List substantive errors for text.

FN: The content of the footnote goes here.

Errors:
Bluebook: List BB errors for the footnote.
Grammar: List grammar errors for the footnote.
Substance: List substantive errors for the footnote.

Style Notes: Comment on style concerns, if there are any.

What Should I Fix?

There is a simple trick to deciding what to fix and what not to fix when an author is engaged in Review Editing: if there is an error, fix it. For everything else, there is a presumption of correctness. This is the only rule that is necessary, but it is important to understand the terminology in order to apply the rule correctly.

There are only three kinds of errors:

Substantive Errors: This is where an author says something that isn't true or inadequately supports a point (thus the author cannot prove it is true within the content of a paper). Editors generally do not know as much about a given subject as an author, so substantive errors should be addressed in the context of suggestions for changes, not changed outright. The author is best-qualified to make the necessary edits.

Grammatical Errors: These are classic Strunk & White grammatical errors, which include misspelled words, misplaced articles, ambiguous verb and gerund placement, etc… Editors have a free hand to correct these mistakes, but it is important for the editor to recognize the difference between a grammatical error and a stylistic preference. Editing grammar mistakes makes an author sound better, but maintains his or her voice. Editing for stylistic preference substitutes an editor's voice for an authors.

Bluebook Errors: This is where Law Review editors are the experts and the authors often know less. Often, authors are eager to have this kind of assistance in the editing process. Editors correcting Bluebook errors have a much freer hand in applying changes as they see them. There is a chance that Bluebook application could obscure an author's voice, but it is comparatively small.

All of these errors should be fixed by the editor. It is important to keep in mind the distinction between errors and style. If an editor feels that an author uses too many commas or writes sentences that are too long, the first thing that author should do is open a Strunk & White and find out if the author has made an error. If there is no error, than the author's words are presumptively correct. Consider the following category:

Stylistic Preferences: This is where something is not really wrong, but it could be better.

Example: Some authors (like this author), tend to write really long, byzantine sentences that use all kinds of strange connectors-like dashes, for instance-and quickly stretch out into the eternal depths of bloviatory excess (the author may even use things like parentheses to explain how "bloviatory" is-or definitely should be-a word); they even do other wacky things like: (1) connect complete sentences with semicolons and (2) make silly lists using guide numbers that really aren't necessary (or use contractions).

Nothing was wrong with the last sentence. It has no errors. But it is certainly no fun to read. Editors tend to get really steamed when authors do this kind of thing. They make a big effort to hack the sentence into its constituent parts. Authors, of course, hate it when editors change this kind of stuff, and good editors swallow their pride, understand their role, and leave it the way it is, or they desperately search through the Strunk & White for an excuse to change it.

It is important to remember that your role is not necessarily to make an article easy to read; instead it is to help the author accentuate his or her voice and make his or her points. This is the reason that stylistic elements of writing are presumed correct. As editors, if we do not see an error, we must assume that the author wrote a given passage how he or she wanted it written.

This is not to say that no corrections for clarity and conciseness should be made at all; it is just to say that these corrections should be made very sparingly-and if possible, in the context of suggestions, not outright changes. When these kinds of corrections are made, they should be as minimal as possible. Look for the perfect spot to insert a semicolon into a run-on sentence instead of rearranging the words into two sentences. Use dashes to break off orphaned clauses. As an editor, you will have your own chance-in your own work-to right the wrongs you could not touch as an editor.