Tag: editing

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Alex Benarzi

The Power of Affective Communities in Editing

April 3, 2025 by Alex Benarzi | 2 Comments on The Power of Affective Communities in Editing

At conferences, I sometimes wander into sessions without knowing the speaker or topic. This was the case during the 2025 Calgary Teacher’s Convention. (I wasn’t crashing the convention: I’m an educator as well as an editor.) I eschewed the session on my schedule and, by chance, ended up at a talk by Dr. Samra Zafar. […]

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Laura Bontje

Discussion Scenario: Editing While Under the Weather

September 26, 2024 by Laura Bontje | 8 Comments on Discussion Scenario: Editing While Under the Weather

[Content note: This post contains non-graphic discussion of mild pneumonia.] By their very nature, dilemmas don’t offer a clear right answer. So this week, I’m turning the advice over to you. I’ll be honest: this has been a challenging September. I’m feeling much better now, but I spent the first part of the month exhausted […]

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Laura Bontje

The Pros and Cons of Sample Edits

December 1, 2022 by Laura Bontje | 6 Comments on The Pros and Cons of Sample Edits

If you asked 10 editors how they approach sample edits, you’d probably get 10 different answers. Some editors charge for sample edits, some offer samples for free and some don’t do sample edits at all. Some editors begin on page one, and others edit an excerpt from the middle. So if you’re a new freelancer, […]

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Laura Bontje

Editing Picture Books without the Pictures

September 6, 2022 by Laura Bontje | 2 Comments on Editing Picture Books without the Pictures

Picture books: the artwork is so integral that it’s part of the name. But unless you’re working with an author/illustrator, editing a picture book usually means analyzing a text-only manuscript. For contemporary picture books, the illustrations are more than adornments; they’re a critical part of the storytelling. At the manuscript stage, it’s a balancing act: […]

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Laura Bontje

On Editing an Editor: Margaret Kingsbury and Laura Bontje in Conversation

June 14, 2022 by Laura Bontje | 2 Comments on On Editing an Editor: Margaret Kingsbury and Laura Bontje in Conversation

Editing a first-time author calls for a blend of sharp-eyed clarity, cheerleading and hand-holding. What if the author is also an editor? As part of a series of blog posts featuring conversations between author-editors and their editors, The Editors’ Weekly asked two editors to reflect on their experience of working together as critique partners. Laura […]

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Frances Peck

On Editing an Editor: Leslie Vermeer and Frances Peck in Conversation

March 8, 2022 by Frances Peck | 6 Comments on On Editing an Editor: Leslie Vermeer and Frances Peck in Conversation

Editing a first-time novelist calls for a blend of sharp-eyed clarity, cheerleading and hand-holding. What if the novelist is also an editor? As part of a series of blog posts featuring conversations between author-editors and their editors, The Editors’ Weekly asked two editors to reflect on their experience of working together. Frances Peck is a […]

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Ilana Reimer

Editing Young Writers

September 15, 2020 by Ilana Reimer | 2 Comments on Editing Young Writers

Sometime before I turned 10, my parents “published” my first story at Staples. When I held this spiral-bound, laminated book with my own words and illustrations inside, I felt like an author. Looking back on my progress as a writer, I see my journey dotted with people who believed in me. They pushed me to […]

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Gael Spivak

Grammar Matters

August 25, 2020 by Gael Spivak | 8 Comments on Grammar Matters

Antecedents and gerunds. En dashes and ellipses. Gripping topics for editors, right? Well, it turns out they’re not gripping for all of us. As one of the admins for the Editors’ Association of Earth groups on Facebook, I read almost every post and comment (one group alone had 310 posts and 5,611 comments in a […]

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Vaani Sai Nagallapati

My Neuroscience Thesis Helped Me Find My Dream Career… in Editing

June 30, 2020 by Vaani Nagallapati | 3 Comments on My Neuroscience Thesis Helped Me Find My Dream Career… in Editing

I remember, at six years old, an aunty visited our house. In an attempt to make conversation with me, she turned mid-chai, and asked, “So, dear, do you know what you want to be when you grow up?” At my young age, there were no real consequences to this question. I could have told her […]

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James Harbeck

The Performance of a Text

June 23, 2020 by James Harbeck | 3 Comments on The Performance of a Text

If someone says, “How about some music,” and you say, “Sure — Beethoven’s Fifth?” do you think they’ll be happy if you just hand them a printed copy of the score? A musical score is intended to be performed, and you don’t have a performance without musicians, a conductor, and the stage and lighting crew. […]

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Gael Spivak

Gael Spivak: An Editor’s Top 3

May 5, 2020 by Gael Spivak | Leave a Comment

In this series, experienced editors reflect on their Top 3 tools, rules and suggestions for clients and colleagues. Gael Spivak works in communications for the Government of Canada, where she specializes in plain language writing and editing. An editor for 13 years, Gael has worked on topics that include food safety and food labelling, biotechnology, […]

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James Harbeck

But Is It Art?

February 11, 2020 by James Harbeck | 3 Comments on But Is It Art?

Is writing art? And if it is, what is editing? If we say writing is “artful,” or “artistic” or “an art,” we mean that we appreciate it aesthetically and admire it for the skill it evinces. But if we say not “writing is an art” but “writing is art” — or “this text is a […]

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Marianne Grier

Editing and the Art of Ikea Furniture Building

October 15, 2019 by Marianne Grier | 4 Comments on Editing and the Art of Ikea Furniture Building

A recent move left my husband and me needing new furniture. Armed with an Ikea gift card, we chose some pieces online. Six flat-packs of furniture arrived a few weeks later, and we got cracking on assembly. As we pieced the furniture together slat by slat, dowel by dowel, I simultaneously felt we were making […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Mentors

October 8, 2019 by Rosemary Shipton | 8 Comments on Mentors

Throughout my career, I’ve been influenced by many mentors. When I was first hired right out of graduate school, Meredith, the experienced editor I was replacing, spent six weeks working alongside me introducing me to the principles, techniques and subtleties of editing both a scholarly journal and my first book manuscript. As we reorganized the […]

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: Professionalism

August 27, 2019 by Wilf Popoff | 8 Comments on Wasted Words: Professionalism

My phone chimes. It’s one of President Donald Trump’s people. Desperate Donald has written a book he hopes will cinch his re-election next year. But it needs a good editing. Can I do this? Of course I can. The question is, will I? The Donald is not my favourite politician. Far from it. The very […]

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Jessica Coles

Alone at the Intersection of Editing and Engineering

August 11, 2019 by Jessica Coles | 6 Comments on Alone at the Intersection of Editing and Engineering

This post is part of a new series of case studies by and for in-house editors. The focus of this series is on the personal experiences and various roles of in-house editors. A post will appear on the Editors’ Weekly every other month. If you’re interested in writing a post for this series, please email the Member Services Committee.  […]

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Marianne Grier

Lessons from the Big Buddha

August 6, 2019 by Marianne Grier | 2 Comments on Lessons from the Big Buddha

A recent family adventure took me to Phuket’s Big Buddha. As the name suggests, this marvel is a giant Buddha stretching 45 metres into the sky, overlooking the Andaman Sea. One of the top tourist sites on the island, the Buddha sits peacefully on his mountaintop, his white Burmese jade marble body glinting in the sun. […]

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Virginia Durksen

Inner Editor: My Big Editing Adventure

July 30, 2019 by Virginia Durksen | 14 Comments on Inner Editor: My Big Editing Adventure

The big adventure isn’t always in the story. Sometimes it’s in the editing. A few years ago I spent the morning with two classes of junior high students to talk about how to give editing feedback to each other. They were writing adventure stories. Part of their assignment was to find a magazine photo on […]

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Aaron Dalton

Empirical Editors: Acronyms

July 16, 2019 by Aaron Dalton | 13 Comments on Empirical Editors: Acronyms

Background I’m an in-house editor for the Alberta Energy Regulator. Authors are required to work with our group as they move towards publishing their documents. It’s essential that we cultivate and nurture relationships of respect and trust. One element of that is always being able to rationalize and justify our recommendations. There’s no room for […]

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Frances Peck

Vocation, Avocation: Margery Fee and Canadian Usage

July 9, 2019 by Frances Peck | 6 Comments on Vocation, Avocation: Margery Fee and Canadian Usage

We editors have our own celebrities. At the March meeting of Editors BC, which featured Stefan Dollinger, editor-in-chief of the DCHP-2 (A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, second edition), a name on the guest list caught my eye. Could it be? Really? It was. In the audience was Margery Fee, associate editor of the […]

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Wendy Barron

PerfectIt 4: Faster and More Customizable Than Ever

July 2, 2019 by Wendy Barron | 3 Comments on PerfectIt 4: Faster and More Customizable Than Ever

When I joined the publishing department of Legal Aid BC last year, none of my colleagues had used PerfectIt. But I have used it for years; I was hooked the first time I ran it on a manuscript and saw how quickly and accurately it found the one U-less “neighbor” in a sea of “neighbours,” […]

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Letitia Henville

Introducing Editor and Poet Margo LaPierre

June 25, 2019 by Letitia Henville | 2 Comments on Introducing Editor and Poet Margo LaPierre

“Everything’s happening at once,” laughs Margo LaPierre, the winner of the 2018 Claudette Upton Scholarship. She’s chatting with me while her husband refuels their car, three-quarters of the way through their 15-hour drive back home to Ottawa after the 2019 Editors Canada Conference in Halifax. A week before finding out the results of the competition, Margo […]

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Marion Soubliere

Social Procurement to Woo Female-Led Firms, Among Others

May 28, 2019 by Marion Soublière | 2 Comments on Social Procurement to Woo Female-Led Firms, Among Others

There’s a short paragraph in Budget 2018 that didn’t garner much buzz last year. But it holds hope for women-owned companies that want a bigger piece of the roughly $20 billion annual federal market. As part of boosting the overall number of female-run firms in this country, the Government of Canada pledged to make sure […]

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: The Risks of Reading

May 21, 2019 by Wilf Popoff | 3 Comments on Wasted Words: The Risks of Reading

Because I was a confirmed reading addict when television appeared, it failed to dislodge my teenage obsession. Like Groucho Marx I found the idiot box “very educating”:­ “Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” It’s been a relentless dependency. I still find it difficult to […]

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