Tag: communication

Filed under:

Tanya Mykhaylychenko

How to Offer Your Authors Positive Feedback

October 5, 2021 by Tanya Mykhaylychenko | 1 Comment on How to Offer Your Authors Positive Feedback

Recognizing and affirming your clients’ strengths is one of the best ways to create a collaborative partnership, encourage their learning and boost their confidence. This comes in especially handy if you work with ESL authors, job seekers, new authors or anyone who is entering a new genre or role. Trusting their text or important document […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Barbara McClintock

Emergency Linguistics: The Translation of Public Health Information in Emergency Situations

August 4, 2020 by Barbara McClintock | 4 Comments on Emergency Linguistics: The Translation of Public Health Information in Emergency Situations

Every act of communication is an act of translation. Gregory Rabassa, translator of Spanish and Portuguese fiction The translation of public health information is critical in emergency situations, particularly in a country like Canada that welcomes thousands of immigrants every year whose mother tongue is not English or French. A new discipline has been proposed, […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Frances Peck

Zoom Time

July 21, 2020 by Frances Peck | 6 Comments on Zoom Time

Oh, for those pre-pandemic days when “zoom” was just another word. For me, it mostly conjured up the “zoom-zoom” of that catchy Mazda ad. Once in a while, it was a video platform I used for teaching webinars or meeting authors about book projects. Now it’s a fatigue. In the COVID-19 world, media outlets from […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Rosemary Shipton

The Editor’s Letter

July 14, 2020 by Rosemary Shipton | 5 Comments on The Editor’s Letter

The editor’s letter — the first substantive communication you have with a client — is the most important task in any editorial project. It provides the opportunity to give your assessment, raise questions and establish a relationship. If this exchange is successful, the myriad other tasks should follow seamlessly. In this scenario, you’ve been hired […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

James Harbeck

The Performance of a Text

June 23, 2020 by James Harbeck | 3 Comments on The Performance of a Text

If someone says, “How about some music,” and you say, “Sure — Beethoven’s Fifth?” do you think they’ll be happy if you just hand them a printed copy of the score? A musical score is intended to be performed, and you don’t have a performance without musicians, a conductor, and the stage and lighting crew. […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

James Harbeck

But Is It Art?

February 11, 2020 by James Harbeck | 3 Comments on But Is It Art?

Is writing art? And if it is, what is editing? If we say writing is “artful,” or “artistic” or “an art,” we mean that we appreciate it aesthetically and admire it for the skill it evinces. But if we say not “writing is an art” but “writing is art” — or “this text is a […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Jessica Coles

Alone at the Intersection of Editing and Engineering

August 11, 2019 by Jessica Coles | 6 Comments on Alone at the Intersection of Editing and Engineering

This post is part of a new series of case studies by and for in-house editors. The focus of this series is on the personal experiences and various roles of in-house editors. A post will appear on the Editors’ Weekly every other month. If you’re interested in writing a post for this series, please email the Member Services Committee.  […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

James Harbeck

Yeet Citationality: Yippie-ki-yay!

January 15, 2019 by James Harbeck | 3 Comments on Yeet Citationality: Yippie-ki-yay!

The voting is in, and the American Dialect Society’s Slang Word of the Year is… yeet. Yeet is not so well known to oldsters, but it is in vogue among the youth. Its popularity demonstrates a central fact of how vocabulary spreads. It also leads us to Bugs Bunny, Clark Gable and Judith Butler. People […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Brendan O’Brien

Winning in the Freelance Game

November 13, 2018 by Brendan O'Brien | 6 Comments on Winning in the Freelance Game

Being a freelancer is hard. When clients don’t have work for you, you cease to exist for them even though your livelihood depends on them or on people like them. You need to be a team player, but often you will be dropped from the team abruptly when a project ends. This demands resilience. Here […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Marianne Grier

Learning Baby Talk

March 6, 2018 by Marianne Grier | Leave a Comment

As editors, we rely more than most on our communication skills. Whether we’re conversing with clients, sharing knowledge within the editing community or sculpting a client’s words to help them shine their brightest, our communication skills impact the success of our work and relationships. Nearly all the time, we use these skills in tandem with […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Virginia Durksen

The Inner Editor: Please Allow Me To … Interrupt You

February 6, 2018 by Virginia Durksen | 12 Comments on The Inner Editor: Please Allow Me To … Interrupt You

On Facebook recently, a colleague reported being the victim of a phone hijacking. You might recognize the feeling. A potential client calls to ask about editing services and then spends the better part of an hour telling her story with barely a breath between sentences, leaving you with no room to speak. There it is. […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Brendan O’Brien

The Perils of Not Knowing

January 16, 2018 by Brendan O'Brien | 10 Comments on The Perils of Not Knowing

One of the downsides of freelance editing is that you’re not there (wherever “there” may be) to explain your thinking on occasions when it might be appropriate to do so. Furthermore, you’re probably unaware that such occasions have even arisen. When I had in-house jobs, I learned a lot from bosses and colleagues. In my […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Sue Archer

May I Help You?

November 3, 2015 by Sue Archer | 6 Comments on May I Help You?

“Hello, Ms. Client? I’m Sue Archer from Customer Relations, and I’m calling to follow up with you about your complaint.” I’ve performed a number of difficult jobs in my life, but by far the most challenging one was a call centre role where I dealt solely with complaints. Every day it was my job to […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Paul Cipywnyk

How Skype Helped Support a Family Editing Tradition

December 9, 2014 by Paul Cipywnyk | 3 Comments on How Skype Helped Support a Family Editing Tradition

Upon retirement from their teaching careers at the University of Saskatchewan, my late mother, Sonia Morris, and her sister, Roma Franko, embarked on a labour of love: translating Ukrainian literature into English. For many years they shared desk space in one another’s homes in Saskatoon. Roma focused on translating, and Sonia on editing. I provided […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Lana Okerlund

What Do Editors Need To Know Now?

May 7, 2013 by Lana Okerlund | 2 Comments on What Do Editors Need To Know Now?

The volatile state of the publishing industry today—and, by extension, the editing profession—can sometimes feel pretty daunting. Digital disruptions to the book, magazine, and newspaper segments of the industry in particular are like an ongoing series of earthquake tremors beneath what previously felt like steady ground. Technological innovations have brought new forms of reading and […]

Read more »

Tagged