What Is Editing?
Editing, like many words, can take a lot of modifiers.
Shining the light on 2021
Amid the darkness of winter—not to mention year 2 of living through a pandemic—we WCEA partners choose to celebrate some highlights of 2021. We have drawn from our professional life, but each of these highlights has also brought great personal…
Perfecting PerfectIt
PerfectIt, a style and consistency checker for editors, recently announced an integration with the Chicago Manual of Style that brings Chicago Style lookups right into Microsoft Word. What is PerfectIt? PerfectIt is editing and proofreading software that runs as an…
Keeping pace with the practice of proofreading
Editors are used to adapting to the shifting landscape of technology to get the job done. Currently, proofreading is the most rapidly changing area of the work we do. We’re still expected to examine material after layout or in its…
On mountains, spreadsheets, and becoming an editor
In the proofreading classes I teach at Simon Fraser University, and in conversations I have with people new to the editing profession, I often hear questions like “How do you get started as an editor?” “How do you get clients?”…
’Tis the (editing conference) season
Last year, many editing conferences were cancelled due to COVID-19. Although we’ve come a long way in the last year, in-person gatherings are still uncertain. As a result, many editing associations and organizations have decided to hold their 2021 annual conferences virtually.
Making time for mental health
Over the past few months, I have had a great opportunity to work with a client to develop a mental health training program for post-secondary faculty, staff, and students in British Columbia. It has been exciting to be a part…
Watching our language
One of our neighbours has been downsizing recently, and discards from her bookshelves have shown up on the curb by her house. One volume I snapped up was Watch Your Language by Theodore M. Bernstein, described on the cover as…
What’s in a name?
In the midst of a global pandemic and social distancing, many editors may have missed a significant change in name and branding of a 32-year-old editing organization. On March 1, 2020, the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) became the…
Storytelling in non-fiction business writing
While doing substantive edits of several business books this year, I found myself repeating the same thing over and over again to authors: “This section could use more of a storytelling style.” These books were about different business subjects, but…