THE EDITORS' WEEKLY

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: Recasting Punctuation

June 14, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 3 Comments on Wasted Words: Recasting Punctuation

I recall Victor Borge’s celebrated skit where he reads a story aloud while sputtering rude noises as punctuation. Borge reasoned that if such detail was vital for a reader’s grasp it was likewise for a listener’s. The Great Dane died before Cyberia’s scribbling and texting mania laid siege to orthodox punctuation, so today his skit would bewilder […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Mentoring

June 7, 2016 by Rosemary Shipton | 5 Comments on Mentoring

What’s the best way to pass skills, experience and business smarts from one person to another? Mentoring tops the list. We humans have always known the value of one-on-one instruction: parents teach their trade or profession to their children, apprentices work for years with their masters and young hires look for an old hand in […]

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Frances Peck

Perilous Punctuation: The Email Salutation

May 31, 2016 by Frances Peck | 22 Comments on Perilous Punctuation: The Email Salutation

An old friend from Ottawa recently visited me in Vancouver. We hadn’t seen each other in years. “One thing I’ll never forget about you,” said Ann (who is not an editor), “is that you taught me the right way to begin an email. Every time I write ‘Hi comma So-and-So period,’ I think of you.” […]

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Dwain Richardson

English Editing in Quebec: All About Style (Part Two)

May 24, 2016 by Dwain Richardson | 1 Comment on English Editing in Quebec: All About Style (Part Two)

Last November, I underlined major stylistic differences between English and French. Here are a few more. To combine or not to combine English articles with French ones? When incorporating French names in English copy, remember two rules: Do not lowercase French articles (e.g., La Presse, not la Presse). Do not combine French articles with English […]

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James Harbeck

A Whole Nother Thing

May 17, 2016 by James Harbeck | 1 Comment on A Whole Nother Thing

As editors, we pay attention to the written form of our language. Its relation to the spoken form is a whole other thing. The spelling is odd, we know. But even our hyphenation doesn’t really break according to pronunciation. Consider the word breaking. Where do you hyphenate it? Break-ing. But where does the syllable break […]

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Melva McLean

Film Adaptation Is Just Another Kind of Editing

May 10, 2016 by Melva McLean | 4 Comments on Film Adaptation Is Just Another Kind of Editing

Several years ago, I was a reader for a couple of book publishers, and I had the opportunity to read a collection of short stories by the late Emily Givner. Joan Givner, Emily’s mom and a writer of note on her own, wanted to publish Emily’s stories posthumously and shopped the collection around. I was […]

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Katharine O'Moore-Klopf

How to Become a Medical Editor

May 3, 2016 by Katharine O'Moore-Klopf | 17 Comments on How to Become a Medical Editor

As a medical editor, I think I have the best job in the world. While I’m getting paid to edit medical manuscripts, I get to keep up with the latest research findings and treatment practices. There is a lot of this kind of work if you know where to look. Although there is no single […]

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Dominique Fortier

Adresser

April 26, 2016 by Dominique Fortier | Leave a Comment

Le verbe adresser, en français, signifie « envoyer » (on adresse une lettre à quelqu’un) ou « émettre des paroles » (on adresse des critiques, des compliments, la parole à quelqu’un). Adresser signifie aussi « diriger quelqu’un vers la personne qui convient » (on adresse un malade à un spécialiste). L’expression pronominale s’adresser à quelqu’un signifie, pour sa part, « parler à […]

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Paul Cipywnyk

Basic Tools for Productive Editing

April 19, 2016 by Paul Cipywnyk | 1 Comment on Basic Tools for Productive Editing

Your computer set-up can determine whether you have a smooth editing experience or suffer headache after IT-related headache, so let’s look at some of the tools that help editors succeed. Hardware Buy a computer with lots of memory (RAM), a minimum of 8 GB and preferably 16 GB. Having lots of memory enables you to keep many […]

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: Quarrelling With Pronouns

April 12, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 8 Comments on Wasted Words: Quarrelling With Pronouns

Around the time the Great Flood started to recede I was taught to write, “Everyone must remove his shoes.” Funny how boys aren’t bothered by such preferential usage of male gender pronouns. Back then feminism was a feature of the French Revolution and the current usage of politically correct had yet to surface. Mostly the […]

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