Paperless Mark-Up: Editing Educational Texts in a Digital Environment

An affordance “refers to the fact that the physical properties of an object make possible different functions for the person perceiving or using that object” (Sellen and Harper in The myth of the paperless office. The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002). Historically, authors, publishers and editors have preferred to check and mark up hard-copy page proofs because it has been easy and flexible to read, cross-reference and annotate. Ironically, changes to the physical properties of computer hardware, as well as improvements to software such as Adobe Acrobat, are eroding our nostalgic preference for paper mark-up and highlighting paper’s inherent limitations. This article compares the affordances of paper in regard to editorial mark-up with those of digital, and demonstrates how digital affordances have impacted positively on editors’ workflow within educational publishing’s highly pressured production process. Specifically, how authors are supplied with complete electronic copy from previous editions and how editors perform their paperless mark-up.