THE EDITORS' WEEKLY

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Dominique Fortier

Dans quelle région se trouve Lac-Mégantic? En Estrie ou dans les Cantons-de-l’Est?

August 22, 2013 by Dominique Fortier | 4 Comments on Dans quelle région se trouve Lac-Mégantic? En Estrie ou dans les Cantons-de-l’Est?

Il existe, depuis longtemps et encore aujourd’hui, une grande confusion quant à l’utilisation du mot Estrie et de l’expression Cantons-de-l’Est. Cette confusion vient du fait que les deux entités n’ont pas les mêmes fonctions ni les mêmes frontières géographiques.Au Québec, presque toutes les régions administratives et les régions touristiques coïncident avec le territoire qu’elles recoupent. […]

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Karen Virag

GETTABLE GRAMMAR: I come to praise typos, not to bury them

August 15, 2013 by Karen Virag | Leave a Comment

Summer is often called the silly season—it is, after all, generally a time of cheap escapist paperbacks and brainless blockbuster movies (Sharknado, anyone?). So, in honour of that most thought-free, indolence-inspiring and cogitation-challenged of seasons, for this posting I will neither opine nor berate; instead, I will celebrate the little language mistakes that make us […]

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Wilf Popoff

WASTED WORDS: Stalking Verbosity

July 30, 2013 by Wilf Popoff | 4 Comments on WASTED WORDS: Stalking Verbosity

Verbosity is the technical term for Wasted Words and it reflects the ongoing motif of this blog series. Verbosity noun the fact or quality of using more words than needed; wordiness. (Oxford Online Dictionary) Not much here to make a writer proud. I admit to being verbosity-obsessed: while writing I’m terrorized by the possibility I’ll […]

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Virginia Durksen

THE INNER EDITOR: The Useful Conversation

July 24, 2013 by Virginia Durksen | 2 Comments on THE INNER EDITOR: The Useful Conversation

The desciptive-prescriptive war is over. Long live the conversation. In the past month, my colleagues have been chatting about an article called Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism: War is Over (if you want it). Its heading perpetuates a flawed premise, but the author offers good evidence that prescriptive and descriptive can both be thoughtful approaches to the […]

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Kate Icely

DISPATCHES 5: How to Get a Job in Publishing

July 16, 2013 by Kate Icely | 4 Comments on DISPATCHES 5: How to Get a Job in Publishing

  Always, ALWAYS, be prepared to talk about what you’re reading. Despite the auspicious title of this article, I can’t actually tell you how to get a job in publishing. Fewer and fewer jobs are opening up in this industry every day, and young people are having to get pretty creative to snag the few […]

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Karen Virag

GETTABLE GRAMMAR: Taking issue with “issues”

July 11, 2013 by Karen Virag | 4 Comments on GETTABLE GRAMMAR: Taking issue with “issues”

I think I remember the first time I heard the word issues used as a synonym for problems. I was watching a long-forgotten television sitcom, and one character commented on another’s weird behaviour by saying, “She has issues.” She overenunciated the word issues and at the same time made little scratching gestures with her index […]

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Dominique Fortier

De la révision/correction de textes d’hier (papier) à aujourd’hui (numérique)

July 4, 2013 by Dominique Fortier | Leave a Comment

L’article What Do Editors Need To Know Now?, publié par Lana Okerlund dans L’Hebdomadaire des réviseurs, il y a quelques semaines, m’a beaucoup fait réfléchir. Elle mettait en mots ce que j’ai l’intuition qui se passe dans l’univers de la révision depuis quelque temps déjà. C’est-à-dire que la révolution technologique engendrée par l’accessibilité accrue au Web, […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Editors and Self-Publishing Authors

June 25, 2013 by Rosemary Shipton | 15 Comments on Editors and Self-Publishing Authors

As editors, we must break out of our anonymous shell and shout our virtues loudly and clearly for writers to hear. We’ve all heard the stories: a few authors who self-publish do extremely well, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, while the majority have little success, bringing in less than $500 all told. […]

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Iva Cheung

Going Out of Style

June 18, 2013 by Iva Cheung | 1 Comment on Going Out of Style

It’s house style. I don’t think I fully appreciated the power of that sentence until I could no longer use it. As editors we’re constantly striving to balance the needs of the publisher, author and reader, but with the growth of self- and custom publishing, the needs of the publisher are becoming irrelevant in more […]

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Wilf Popoff

WASTED WORDS: A World Without Problems

June 11, 2013 by Wilf Popoff | 1 Comment on WASTED WORDS: A World Without Problems

“Houston we have a challenge!” “This is Houston Apollo. What do you mean by challenge?” “A power drop in one of the two main electrical circuits.” “That’s a problem Apollo. Can’t copy challenge.” I’ve altered parts of this celebrated exchange from 43 years ago to support my case. At the time challenge was a word […]

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