Editors Canada’s Professional Editorial Standards (PES) describe the responsibilities of an editor. The scope of PES is broad; this series explores how the standards apply to a variety of editing contexts. Ellen Lupu has been a technical editor for 12 years. Her current project involves writing and editing training material …
Being a freelancer is hard. When clients don’t have work for you, you cease to exist for them even though your livelihood depends on them or on people like them. You need to be a team player, but often you will be dropped from the team abruptly when a project …
Editors make decisions all the time as they edit, but the most important judgment call of all is how to work best with each individual author. No one-size-fits-all solution will do. Most commonly, editors make their corrections with track changes, write questions and comments for the author in the margins, …
I was shepherded to my first Editors BC meeting by the editing instructor from my publishing diploma, who suggested I join Editors Canada. Maybe “suggested” isn’t the right word — when she heard I hadn’t joined yet, she had the college pay my student affiliate fee, told me which meeting …
I was a late adopter of the singular “they,” once thinking its usage was down to laziness or ignorance. I’ve recently changed my tune. The singular “they” helps streamline sentences, is considerate of those who don’t identify with a gender, and can help avoid the gender-charged language that can be …
Editors Canada launched the John Eerkes-Medrano Mentorship Program in the spring of 2017. For information about how you can become a mentor or a mentee, click here. Let’s begin with three playful suppositions. First, the best kinds of editing involve learning. Second, the best editors have learned from mentors. Third, the …
The prevailing orthodoxy in online editors’ groups, I have noticed, is one of huge respect for, and empathy with, the author. The author is king/queen. We, as editors, primarily serve the author’s vision, the author’s voice. However, in my own work (both in-house and freelance, primarily as a copyeditor of …
I received the Claudette Upton Scholarship* in 2012 at a critical point in my career path: I was nearing the completion of my Master of Publishing coursework at Simon Fraser University and preparing to move from Vancouver to Toronto to take on a summer editorial internship at McClelland & Stewart. …
I had a lot of reasons not to attend the Editors Canada 2018 conference, held in Saskatoon on May 25-27. I was struggling with low energy and caregiving duties (spouse). Also, I have been retired — or at least semi-retired — for a decade. But since Saskatoon is so close …
As a Mac user, I’ve often read Twitter and Facebook feeds enviously where other editors enthused about Intelligent Editing’s proofreading software, PerfectIt. Adrienne Montgomerie’s review of PerfectIt 3 in 2015 particularly made me drool. Well, my drooling days are over! Intelligent Editing has just released PerfectIt Cloud, the first version …