THE EDITORS' WEEKLY

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Melva McLean

Movie Review: Genius

July 12, 2016 by Melva McLean | 4 Comments on Movie Review: Genius

Genius is a movie about the relationship between writer Thomas Wolfe and editor Maxwell Perkins and is based primarily on A. Scott Berg’s biography, “Max Perkins: Editor of Genius” (Riverhead Trade). Perkins worked for Charles Scribner’s Sons for over 30 years. Like Canada’s Ellen Seligman, Perkins was an exacting editor. Like Seligman, his meticulous attention […]

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James Harbeck

Omitting Periods? It’s About Genres.

July 5, 2016 by James Harbeck | 1 Comment on Omitting Periods? It’s About Genres.

“Period. Full Stop. Point. Whatever It’s Called, It’s Going Out of Style,” declared a New York Times headline. Noted linguist David Crystal had made some comments observing that the period is not requisite in text messages, and as such is used only “to show irony, syntactic snark, insincerity, even aggression,” as article author Dan Bilefsky […]

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Lori Burwash

Twitter for Wordies

June 28, 2016 by Lori Burwash | 3 Comments on Twitter for Wordies

Twitter is made for people like us: a forum where communication must be clear, engaging and concise? GAME ON. But — whether out of indifference, fear or social media fatigue — many have yet to experience the wonder. If you’re one of the uninitiated, give Twitter a go. The platform is rich with editors and […]

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Paul Cipywnyk

Zoom, Zoom: Rev Up Your Editing

June 21, 2016 by Paul Cipywnyk | 5 Comments on Zoom, Zoom: Rev Up Your Editing

How quickly can you edit and still do a good job? In another life I was an editor for a financial and business news service, and I was amazed at how quickly reporters and editors could churn out thousands of words, yet maintain high standards. I believe you can learn to write and edit rapidly; […]

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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 | 23 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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