THE EDITORS' WEEKLY

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Sue Archer

Review: The Editor’s Companion by Steve Dunham

March 3, 2015 by Sue Archer | 10 Comments on Review: The Editor’s Companion by Steve Dunham

When I first read the title of this book, I thought it would be a comprehensive “how to” guide for people learning how to edit, like The Copyeditor’s Handbook by Amy Einsohn. The focus of this book is somewhat different. The Editor’s Companion is aimed at professionals who already know something about communications, but are […]

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Anna Williams

Editor’s Note: Thank You for Your Patience

March 1, 2015 by Anna Williams | Leave a Comment

Dear Readers, Thank you for your patience these last several weeks while our blog went through some technical issues. We are aware that our subscribers weren’t receiving their usual notices when new content was published. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Things should be back to normal again, although we’re still ironing out […]

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: A Compulsion to Exaggerate

February 24, 2015 by Wilf Popoff | Leave a Comment

Frank McKenna, a San Diego photographer, complains that all photos displayed on the web are described as stunning. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “When did every picture become stunning?” McKenna sees this as word inflation. I agree to a point. Certainly it’s almost insulting nowadays to simply say something is delightful or charming; we […]

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Dwain Richardson

English Editing in Quebec: Local Realities — Quebec City and Area, and Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean

February 17, 2015 by Dwain Richardson | Leave a Comment

♪♫ À Québec au clair de lune. Comme il fait bon… ♪♫ On those first few words of Marius Delisle’s 1959 hit, I make my way to Quebec City and the surrounding area to find out how language professionals fare with English on a daily basis. Of the more than 700,000 inhabitants of the Quebec […]

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Paul Buckingham

A Formula for Mathematical Editing

February 10, 2015 by Paul Buckingham | Leave a Comment

Mathematicians need editors. But why should that be? Aren’t mathematical manuscripts rather short on words? And as for the symbols, don’t they look after themselves? In fact, mathematics has plenty of words, particularly at the research level, and the wordy passages are often where the exposition and explanation occur. A page in a typical mathematics […]

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Susan Glickman

Facts and Fiction: Artful Flight

February 3, 2015 by Susan Glickman | Leave a Comment

I’d like to recommend two of my favourite books for writers, one ostensibly fiction and the other, not. Except that both are so idiosyncratic, so luminously zany, so full of revelatory insights, humour and poignancy, that generic boundaries seem to melt and what you take away from each is reaffirmation of not only why you […]

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Dominique Fortier

Les liaisons dangereuses : « lalaïsation » et « çalatisme »

January 27, 2015 by Dominique Fortier | Leave a Comment

« ÇA L’A l’air fou, et ÇA L’EN dit long sur une personne. » « ÇA L’A l’air d’une faute, et ÇA L’EN est une. » Le ça a qui devient ça l’a prend l’allure d’un gros bouton sur la langue québécoise. Ça enlaidit l’élocution. Ça irrite. Ça écorche les oreilles à tout coup et ça donne […]

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James Harbeck

Whom Do You Believe? | Linguistics, Frankly

January 20, 2015 by James Harbeck | 2 Comments on Whom Do You Believe? | Linguistics, Frankly

First of all: If you can avoid using whom, you should. Any but the most formal texts are better off without it; it’s a foreign word for most users, as evidenced by the general inability of even many language professionals to use it quite correctly all the time. Sometimes, however, you have to use it. […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Editors and Their Clients

January 13, 2015 by Rosemary Shipton | 3 Comments on Editors and Their Clients

Editors are shaped by their clients. Sure, we all share common knowledge, skills and talents, but we’re influenced by what our employers want from us. Over a period of years, that accumulated experience makes us the editors we are today. In recent posts to this site, Lori Burwash has described the challenges of writing and […]

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Victoria Neufeldt

What’s an Editor to Do?

January 6, 2015 by Victoria Neufeldt | 2 Comments on What’s an Editor to Do?

The vagaries of language can cause even the most experienced editors headaches. Editors as a group are more attuned to the whims and ways of language than the average speaker, but many strange and challenging usages regularly fly under the radar and pass into public text, despite our best efforts. When should an editor accept […]

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