Map and Atlas Publishers Editing and Proofreading Services

Cartographic publishing is the only part of publishing where a design decision can prompt a diplomatic protest. Where a line is drawn, which name appears first, whether a place is labelled at all — these are read as statements by governments, by diaspora communities and by the people who live there, and an atlas sold in forty markets cannot satisfy all of them simultaneously. The decisions have to be made deliberately, written down, and applied consistently, because the alternative is that they get made by whoever is finishing the map at the time.

We edit what map, atlas and geospatial publishers produce — gazetteer and place name policies, toponym and transliteration standards, boundary and disputed territory policies, map legends and keys, marginalia and explanatory notes, atlas front matter and editorial statements, index and gazetteer entries, thematic map captions and source notes, data attribution and licensing statements, guidance for cartographers and editors applying house policy, market and territory-specific edition notes, road atlas and travel mapping content, and educational atlas text and accompanying material. Our editors work to your existing policy and to the authorities you follow, and we do not import naming conventions from elsewhere.

The naming and boundary policy is the document that makes everything else defensible. Publishers usually have positions — following a named international authority, showing disputed boundaries in a distinct style, giving alternative names in parentheses — held partly in a style sheet and partly in the heads of two long-serving editors. We write these so the policy states which authority is followed for names and which for boundaries, and what happens where they conflict; so the treatment of a disputed boundary is specified as a drawing convention with the wording that accompanies it, rather than as an instinct; so the rule for alternative and historical names says which appears first, in what typographic treatment, and on what basis; and so the marginal note explaining the publisher's position is drafted once, properly, rather than improvised when someone complains. A policy written down is also what lets the publisher say the same thing in every market, which is the only tenable position when the editions are compared, as they now always are.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including unpublished editions, licensed data and correspondence about disputed representations. We are editors rather than cartographers, geographers or legal advisers, and we offer no view on any territorial question, boundary or naming dispute. What we can do is make the policy explicit, the wording consistent, and the explanatory notes clear.