Bookselling and publishing

The tenth entry is la redazione del testo, and the English word that comes out to meet it has travelled in the opposite direction. « Redaction » in present-day English means removal: a page released with the names blacked out has been redacted, and « unredacted » is the word a journalist wants. La redazione removes nothing of the kind. It is the working over of a text before it is printed — sentences tightened, repetitions taken out, dates and names checked — which is what English calls « copy-editing ». The verb behind it is redigere, to draw up: redigere un contratto, redigere un verbale. The same noun also names the room where that work is done and the people in it, so la redazione del giornale is the newsroom and il redattore is the editor who reads the manuscript through. English has kept the older sense in one corner only, among scholars who speak of the redaction of an ancient text, and that corner is the bridge: it means there what redazione means everywhere in Italian.