RP&E Workflow

RP&E Workflow

Author receives an assigned word count in increments of 500 which are approx 1 page of printed text with and average of 1 small photograph or title & byline.  Additional photos are added to the excel spreadsheet page counter to allow rough prediction of page count for an article. The first page has a fair amount of white space equivalent to the placement of a photo.  The goal is to edit the stories in manucript form to fit the pages but variation between 1300-1700 words for a 3 page story are common.

Introducing revisions after a stage should be complete or going to the next step without completing the revisions leads to re-duplication of the work in the next stage.  Some staging decisions are purely logical, others are necessary due to software limitations or optimization. Word is best for writing, content editing, copyediting and first pass proofreading. Quark is best for copyfitting, layout photo-scaling. Photoshop is required for file compatibility, color adjustments, and resolution.  Photos for print need to be optimized for B&W printing, color pictures need to be optimized for the web. Tracking the captions, makers and related manuscripts of the photo files needs to be maintained throughout production.  Giving the manuscript file a meaningful name and number or slug expedites multiple processes. Naming conventions need to be consistent and followed at each stage.

Each manuscript should have the filename as the header (left) with page number on right. If photos should be named by story or topic content size and color.

Basic production stages are as follows.

Assignment

Submissions

First draft review

Author queries or

Author revisions

Content editing

RP&E rewriting

Copyediting

Copyfitting

Photo selection

Comp layout (solve paging issues)

Final text imports

Final photo import

Draft Layout

Layout review

First complete printout

First proofreading

Second complete printout

2nd proofreading (can take up to 3-4 actual prints of some pages & articles)

Web pdf printout (this is a problematic production step due to photo resolution and color & bw issues)

Final internal printout

Collect for output 

Final preflighting

Send to offset printer vendor

Vendor printout

Layout review, conversion issues, proofreading

Headlines, bylines, captions, TOC, & frontmatte two readers minimum

Color proofs & page proofs

Final proofreading

 

Definitions

Copy editing, or line editing as it is sometimes called in publishing circles, is the painstaking job of going through a manuscript line by line to correct the spelling, grammar and punctuation. 

Proof-reading is a separate activity from copy editing and should always be done afterwards as part of a final check that the text is in good order.