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A colourful mess of sticky notes, with squiggly arrows in all directions, on a bulletin board.

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Continuity in Film and Fiction

Tuesday June 4, 2013

Movies are usually shot in location order, not narrative order, which makes physical continuity important. Last week I was watching my favourite crime show, and the female lead wore a blue shirt in an interrogation scene. The camera caught the cop’s dialogue in close up, then cut to a close up of the bad guy, […]

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continuity fiction film film editing script editing

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Cold Call Case Files

Tuesday May 13, 2014

Cold calling. I’ve heard arguments against it — it doesn’t generate work, it’s better to network in person, only word-of-mouth referrals reliably lead to jobs. But I haven’t yet discovered a downside. I can pick and choose all the companies I’d like to work for and start calling them. A phone call only takes a […]

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cold calls editing freelancers freelancing getting work writing

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Dwain Richardson

English Editing in Quebec: All About Style

Tuesday November 17, 2015

Whenever you do a concordance reading or translation, you certainly notice that the two or more languages you are working with show many stylistic differences. English and French are no strangers to this phenomenon. For instance, have you observed that French texts and translations are often longer than texts written in or translated into English? […]

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Dwain Richardson English Editing in Quebec French to English hyphenation punctuation style

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Dwain Richardson

English Editing in Quebec: All About Style (Part Two)

Tuesday May 24, 2016

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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Dwain Richardson English Editing in Quebec French to English phrasal verbs style translation

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Time to Put the “Free” Back in “Freelance”

Tuesday July 26, 2016

I make my living as a freelancer, which means I work pretty much every single day, all year long. My only breaks are brief visits to out-of-town family. Real holidays are rare — perhaps once every five years. Sound familiar? I suspect many of you are like me. We never know when the next job […]

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editing editor editors at work freelancing sabbatical Susan Glickman

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What’s in a Name?

Tuesday October 18, 2016

Last month’s book club choice was from a bunch of bestseller and book club lists. It was one of those “family” stories with a sizeable cast of characters. You know the kind — three or four sisters with partners and/or lovers and children and a couple of pets. I was a hundred pages into the […]

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character names characters editor's role fiction Melva McLean novels

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Tracey Anderson

Editing Technical Instructional Material: Become the Student

Tuesday December 6, 2016

Creating effective instructional material for technical students can be tricky. Making it student friendly requires a balance between adequately covering the information, which is often highly technical, and presenting it in a way that a wide range of students can understand. These are some ways editors can help subject matter experts (SMEs) find this balance. Watch […]

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instructional design instructional material jargon subject matter experts technical editing technical students Tracey Anderson

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Basic Computer Terms for Writers and Editors

Tuesday March 21, 2017

Writers and editors ask lots of questions about computers and software but sometimes confuse basic terminology. If you have an issue with a computer or software, it helps if you can frame your questions accurately and provide enough information so that others can help. So let’s do a quick review of some basics. Hardware: All […]

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computer terminology computers hardware Paul Cipywnyk software

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Emerge From the Shadows via the Our Languages Blog

Tuesday September 26, 2017

“If only I could rewrite this text!” If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably had a similar reaction, especially if your clients are looking for a “soothing” edit. You know the kind I mean: one that doesn’t involve any changes beyond sprinkling a few commas here and there… I spent almost 10 years fixing language […]

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blog blogging Julie Morin The Language Portal of Canada The Our Languages blog

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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 […]

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author-editor relationship clients developmental editing Melva McLean