The Issues in Philosophy Beat is running a three-part mini-series called “Copyediting and Philosophy,” which focuses on issues around copyediting relevant to the philosophy profession: what it is, how to navigate it as an author, and philosophical questions it raises. This post is the third and final installment. Copyeditors are enforcers of a particular kind, even if they are not the originators of the norms they’re enforcing. Still, we might worry that the practice of copyediting could enforce standard Englishes to the exclusion of other registers and dialects in a pernicious way. Jessica Flanigan, for instance, argues that linguistic pedantry and an overemphasis on conformity with spelling and grammar perpetuates social hierarchies. And a few years ago, an essay by a former copyeditor, Helen Betya Rubinstein, argued that copyediting is a white supremacist project.  I think it’s important to pay attention to prejudices that attach to different varieties of English, whether these be registers, dialects, or “world” or “global” Englishes. At the same time, I think copyediting can be a way to facilitate communication, especially …