Search

Enter your keywords

Search results

Filed under:

Rosemary Shipton

Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

Tuesday October 11, 2016

We’ve all had them – those manuscripts that arrive on our desks that should not be published. They have little merit in either content or expression, and our initial impulse is to return them immediately. How do we deal with them? If the project comes from a trade publisher, the contract with the author was probably […]

Tagged

Tagged

author-editor relationship editor's role editors at work publishing Rosemary Shipton self-publishing

Filed under:

Rosemary Shipton

Succeeding as a Freelancer

Tuesday March 14, 2017

The key to a successful freelance business is a steady supply of projects. First, decide how many hours a week you’d like to work — 20, 40 billable hours? — and then set out to achieve your goal. Your professional life and income will become almost predictable. Here are some suggestions. Develop a strong client […]

Tagged

Tagged

business of editing business practices editorial skills editorial training editorial workflow freelance editors freelancing marketing Rosemary Shipton self-employed editors

Filed under:

Lost and Found

Tuesday October 3, 2017

Over the years I’ve done a lot of freelance fiction editing, mostly developmental. I send off the manuscripts with a critical analysis, a lot of developmental markup and some copy editing. Some of the authors go on to be published; their autographed works are on my bookshelves. Of the ones not published, about half come […]

Tagged

Tagged

author-editor relationship clients developmental editing Melva McLean

Filed under:

Mentorship: Where the Learners Teach and the Teachers Learn

Tuesday October 24, 2017

Having a mentor is often invaluable for workers in their early to middle careers. Courses, study groups, guest speakers and conferences all help them learn their trade. But one-on-one interaction with a wise and supportive mentor is an incredibly important component of the learning curve. Let’s not forget, though, how much an experienced professional can […]

Tagged

Tagged

Anita Jenkins editorial skills mentee mentor mentoring mentorship training

Filed under:

Marion Soubliere

Perks of Being a Federal Supplier Aboard ProServices

Tuesday May 8, 2018

The Government of Canada is eager to buy from small businesses. My 2017 post Winning Contracts With the Government of Canada explained how to register as a supplier to this annual $15-billion to $20-billion market. How to Market Your Services to the Feds, meanwhile, suggested ways to continually keep your small firm top-of-mind with federal buyers. […]

Tagged

Tagged

business practices federal contracts freelance editors government editing Government of Canada Marion Soubliere marketing small businesses translators

Filed under:

Wasted Words: A Paean to Poetry

Tuesday August 14, 2018

Good poetry, I believe, projects the essence of culture. It conveys profound concepts and articulates observations while captivating the listener with its beauty and power. It does this with a matchless performance of words that blend language with wisdom. The listener is both enlightened and entertained. Bad poetry, on the other hand, has little effect […]

Tagged

Tagged

culture free verse music lyrics poetry prose Wasted Words Wilf Popoff

Filed under:

Language Resources for Non-Native English Speakers

Tuesday May 7, 2019

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 […]

Tagged

Tagged

Aaron Dalton language language learning learning non-native English speakers plain language

Filed under:

Marion Soubliere

Social Procurement to Woo Female-Led Firms, Among Others

Tuesday May 28, 2019

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 […]

Tagged

Tagged

business practices editing federal contracts freelancing government editing Government of Canada Marion Soubliere ProServices small businesses

Filed under:

Novel Medical Treatments

Tuesday June 4, 2019

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 […]

Tagged

Tagged

heroes James Harbeck linguistics Linguistics Frankly morality

Empirical Editors Bias

Filed under:

Empirical Editors: Curse of Knowledge

Tuesday March 17, 2020

This article is part of a series that draws lessons from some of the research collected in Aaron Dalton’s “Empirical Research for Editors” list. Do you have the curse of knowledge? The “curse of knowledge” is a type of cognitive bias where someone unknowingly assumes, while communicating, that their audience has the same background knowledge […]

Tagged

Tagged

Aaron Dalton cognitive bias empirical editor knowledge effect plain language user testing writing process