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A two-story house is burning, filled with flames that are coming out through the front porch, upstairs windows, and through the roof. Four firemen in gear, with their backs to us, are standing in the foreground, watching the fire.

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Wasted Words: My Hit List

Tuesday February 5, 2013

Wasted Words is a series of musings on language and usage by editor emeritus Wilf Popoff. I have a dream: English users create their equivalent to the Académie Française to mind the language. I’m at the first hearing of this august body presenting a list of words I want banned. The English Academy must acquiesce if […]

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editing redundancies usage

Getting an internship can lead to a job—but it might not be the job you were expecting.

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DISPATCHES 7: Finding Work in Unexpected Places

Wednesday October 2, 2013

Getting an internship can lead to a job—but it might not be the job you were expecting. When I first started taking courses at Ryerson University, I didn’t have a clue about the variety of jobs available to me. I knew I could be an editorial assistant at a publishing company, but there were so […]

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editing editing jobs editorial skills finding work freelancing in-house work mentorship publishing transferable skills

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Writing Wrongs in Fiction

Tuesday September 6, 2016

Last month, Paul Cipywnyk wrote here about plausibility and continuity in novels. But what about in screenwriting? Realistic, plausible details and continuity are equally — sometimes more — important on screen, but it can be challenging to ensure them. Now, it doesn’t matter what you’re writing about or in what time period — the research […]

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continuity editor's role film Melva McLean

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Editing at the Legislature: A Look Inside the Hansard Office

Tuesday October 25, 2016

Ever wondered what it’s like to work as an editor at Hansard? Well, given that there are 15 Hansards published across the country, it depends on who you ask. The staffing, production processes and timelines vary from one jurisdiction to another, but here’s a quick snapshot of what it’s like in Alberta. Our production team […]

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editorial workflow government editing Hansard Sharon Skage

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Brendan O’Brien

Is It All About the Author?

Tuesday August 21, 2018

The prevailing orthodoxy in online editors’ groups, I have noticed, is one of huge respect for, and empathy with, the author. The author is king/queen. We, as editors, primarily serve the author’s vision, the author’s voice. However, in my own work (both in-house and freelance, primarily as a copyeditor of non-fiction), the emphasis has generally […]

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authors Brendan O'Brien editing freelancing production processes publishing

Person with their back to us meeting with another person in an online video chat.

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Letitia Henville

When Two Neurodivergent Minds Meet (Part 2)

Thursday December 4, 2025

A Virtual Assistant and an Editor Share Their Process Last week, I described why I decided to hire a virtual assistant (VA) in June 2025, and shared Melanie’s responses to my questions. This week, Melanie interviews me. Melanie Lobo: Our first conversation was on Reddit — what made you reach out to me? Letitia Henville: […]

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freelance business Letitia Henville virtual assistant

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4541542 (scrutiny) 2

This image of an attractive woman looking through a magnifying glass with one eye is a metaphor for close scrutiny, a metaphor for this week’s post on The Editors’ Weekly, titled “What’s an editor to do?”, which looks at copyediting and questions how many or few changes an editor should suggest when copy editing a […]

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A business man sits at a desk, among other business men, talking into a mic with a sheet of paper in front of him.

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WASTED WORDS: Stalking Verbosity

Tuesday July 30, 2013

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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editing grammar redundancies redundancy usage verbosity

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Anna Williams Karen Virag

In Memoriam

Monday January 20, 2014

The Editors’ Weekly mourns the loss of a loved and valued contributor, Karen Virag, who passed away on Jan. 11 following a brief illness. From the EAC’s national office: A longtime member of EAC’s Prairie Provinces branch, Karen was the association’s director of publications. She co-chaired EAC’s successful 2008 national conference in Edmonton and the […]

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Gettable Grammar Grammar Gals Karen Virag

Quebec City

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Dwain Richardson

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

Tuesday February 17, 2015

♪♫ 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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bilingualism copy editing editing editorial work language proofreading révision translation