“How can you edit that? You don’t know anything about being an electrician.” I often heard that question and variations of it — carpenter, instrument technician, welder — in my years editing technical instructional materials for apprenticeship trades in Alberta. This is how I answered the question. I am the …
Like editing, solving puzzles is often a solitary endeavour. But not always! On the second Tuesday of every month, people get together in pubs across North America, Europe and beyond to solve puzzles at an event called Puzzled Pint. When I started going a few years ago, I never guessed …
Over the years I’ve done a lot of freelance fiction editing, mostly developmental. I send off the manuscripts with a critical analysis, a lot of developmental markup and some copy editing. Some of the authors go on to be published; their autographed works are on my bookshelves. Of the ones …
A Quill and Quire article popped up in my Twitter feed in late June: “Humber becomes new home for Indigenous Editors Circle.” I was thrilled that the Circle had found a home at Humber College’s Lakeshore campus in Toronto’s west end. Even better: a workshop on editing Indigenous manuscripts was …
I’ve always loved trying to understand things — investigating ideas and concepts to make sense of them, seeking clearer ways to view them. I was delighted, therefore, when I discovered that there’s a kind of editing rooted in exactly that pursuit: developmental editing. The name describes it well: you’re helping …
I’m thinking more about empathy these days. So are other editors — witness last week’s post on the editor-author relationship. So are Canadians in general, judging by Google searches over the past decade. Source: Google Trends. Y-axis shows interest over …
We’ve all as editors had the odd grumble over something an author has written. Maybe a string of noun clusters has pushed us to the limit of our patience, or we’ve broken down over a text awash with comma splices. It’s easy to criticize when we’re on the sidelines, though. …
Canada is a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages from around the world. As the number of residents whose native language isn’t English increases, the need for editors who can edit their writing effectively and sensitively grows, too. Before my editing career began, I taught English as a second language for …
We’ve all had them – those manuscripts that arrive on our desks that should not be published. They have little merit in either content or expression, and our initial impulse is to return them immediately. How do we deal with them? If the project comes from a trade publisher, the contract …
You’re editing a biography of Lester Pearson, and you see a line that says, “It is a fitting coincidence that Pearson was born the same year another great Liberal leader, Wilfrid Laurier, took the Canadian helm.” You’re drawn to the interesting coincidence of dates and decide to look up the …