In copy editing, the syntactic choices made in the input text are renegotiated.
Syntactic editing rules are either applications, reversals, or
alternatives. If the original version chose not to apply any particular rule of
grammar, the editor may reverse this choice and apply the rule. All the
optional rules of a normal grammar are potential editing application rules.
Particularly common are auxiliary and negative contractions, there insertion,
passivization, agent deletion, and relative clause reduction. Such rules
belong in any grammar of English, and all the copy editor does is take
options which were not applied previously.
A second group of rules reverses choices which have already been made.
Complementizer that is reinserted; co-ordinate sentences are de-co-ordinated;
sentences are de-passivized and agents reinserted; clefting is reversed, and
there re-deleted; NPs are de-pronominalized. A wide range of optional rules
is subject to editing reversal.
So-called "optional rules" are not the only syntactic rules which offer
choice. Obligatory as well as optional rules may produce several alternative
outputs. In editing, the choice is open to select an output that was not chosen
in the original. Such rules are among the copy editor's most common tools.
Lexical substitutions are in fact a choice of alternatives, as is the substitution
of one tense or aspect by another, and the choice of an alternative article or
complementizer.
The nature and range of editing changes which I have described in this
section appear to be common to all kinds of editing practice. The study by
Davisson et al. ( 1980) compared four texts re-written for US school children
with the original. Their independent categorization of editing changes is
strikingly similar to mine, particularly in the rules needed to describe the
'"splitting" and "merging" of clauses.