THE EDITORS' WEEKLY

Filed under:

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 […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

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,” […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

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 […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Christine Beevis Trickett

Even Nature Needs an Editor

June 18, 2019 by Christine Beevis Trickett | 2 Comments on Even Nature Needs an Editor

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 Sara Promislow.  I am a […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

John Cords

Writing Resumés and Cover Letters

June 11, 2019 by John Cords | Leave a Comment

I occasionally hire copy editors, and it’s fascinating to see how people handle the rather limited genres of the résumé and cover letter. Traditional wisdom says that applicants can be divided into roughly three categories: not at all qualified, kinda qualified and well qualified. My focus here is how to get from the second category […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

James Harbeck

Novel Medical Treatments

June 4, 2019 by James Harbeck | 4 Comments on Novel Medical Treatments

People with serious health problems are often subject to novel treatments. But that shouldn’t mean being treated like they’re in a novel. Health problems are human problems, and they can be important stories about real things affecting real people. But often, in telling them, we create another problem, because we make the story conform to […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

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 […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

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 […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Brendan O’Brien

Valparaiso

May 14, 2019 by Brendan O'Brien | 12 Comments on Valparaiso

When I was at school, I learned a poem in Irish called ‘Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso’ by Pádraig de Brún (it’s actually a translation of one called ‘The Ship’ by Oliver St John Gogarty, but I didn’t know that then). A ship from Valparaiso came And in the Bay her sails were furled; She brought […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Aaron Dalton

Language Resources for Non-Native English Speakers

May 7, 2019 by Aaron Dalton | 3 Comments on Language Resources for Non-Native English Speakers

I teach plain language workshops, and I was recently approached by a non-native English speaker. His language skills were excellent. He said he learned English mostly through standardized exams, and he felt there was a gap between the mode of English he was taught and the plain language approach I was preaching. His question was […]

Read more »

Tagged