editing Archives - Page 6 of 6 - The Editors' Weekly

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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 descriptive-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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descriptivism editing Inner Editor prescriptivism skilled editing

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Gettable Grammar: Taking Issue with “Issues”

July 11, 2013 by Karen Virag | 4 Comments on Gettable Grammar: Taking Issue with “Issues”

Gettable Grammar is a monthly series of conjectures, opinions and postulates by Karen Virag. 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 […]

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editing publishing style useage word choice

Cartoon: 2 women drink tea. One says “Your book was published! How exciting! Can I get a copy?” The other answers, “I only have one left. They are, of course selling briskly,” as she pulls out a copy of The Tearful Rose from behind a curtain where there are many other copies.

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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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Edit Yourself—and Get Published editing editors self-publish self-published authors self-publishing

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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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editing house style self-published authors self-publishing

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Wasted Words: A World Without Problems

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

Wasted Words is a series of musings on language and usage by editor emeritus Wilf Popoff. “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 […]

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copy editing editing problem useage word choice

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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 […]

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book industry communication digital digital publishing e-books editing publishing publishing formats workflow

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Dispatches 3: An Intern’s Survival Guide

May 1, 2013 by Kate Icely | 4 Comments on Dispatches 3: An Intern’s Survival Guide

Dispatches from an Editorial Intern is a series of posts from a neophyte editor in the publishing trenches. For all the good that comes out of an internship, sometimes being an intern can be tough. Interns are dropped into a completely new environment where everyone has more experience than they do. It’s important that they […]

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editing editor editorial intern editorial student intern internships publishing

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Gettable Grammar: Learning to Like “Like”

April 9, 2013 by Karen Virag | 2 Comments on Gettable Grammar: Learning to Like “Like”

Gettable Grammar is a monthly series of conjectures, opinions and postulates by Karen Virag. One often hears complaints about how some people litter their sentences with the word like — not as a noun, verb, preposition or conjunction, but as, like, an interjection. Like that. Now I know that Canadians like to blame Americans for […]

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editing editor Edwin Batistella Gettable Grammar grammar Grammar Gals R.W. Burchfield usage

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Dispatches 2: What’s in an Internship?

April 2, 2013 by Kate Icely | 5 Comments on Dispatches 2: What’s in an Internship?

Dispatches from an Editorial Intern is a series of posts from a neophyte editor in the publishing trenches. When I enrolled at Ryerson in the fall of 2011, I took as many editing courses as I could. Copy editing, proofreading, grammar, substantive editing…. The more courses I took, the more I loved working with words. […]

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editing editor editorial intern intern internship publishing Ryerson

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What Does Your Markup Say About You?

March 19, 2013 by Iva Cheung | 5 Comments on What Does Your Markup Say About You?

A friend of mine was venting to me about his old boss, who used to look over his reports. Whenever his boss found an error, he’d not only circle it but also emphasize his discovery with an exclamation point — a practice that drove my buddy nuts. Encoded within this tiny mark of punctuation was […]

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designer editing editor editor's role proofreader proofreading working relationship

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Gettable Grammar: Things That Dangle

March 12, 2013 by Karen Virag | 1 Comment on Gettable Grammar: Things That Dangle

Gettable Grammar is a monthly series of conjectures, opinions and postulates by Karen Virag. Things that dangle in the night. And in the day. Hours before giving birth, a woman’s boyfriend leaves her for her best friend and quits the talent agency they run together to start his own competing business. Now that is one […]

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dangling modifier editing Gettable Grammar grammar Grammar Gals misplaced modifier usage

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Dispatches from an Editorial Intern

March 5, 2013 by Kate Icely | 10 Comments on Dispatches from an Editorial Intern

Dispatches from an Editorial Intern is the first in a series of posts from a neophyte editor in the publishing trenches. Outside looking in I decided I wanted to go into publishing in early 2011. It was a good solution to my problems at the time. Problems like why I didn’t want to fill out […]

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editing editor editor's role editorial intern intern publishing

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What’s an Editor to Do?

February 19, 2013 by Anita Jenkins | 4 Comments on What’s an Editor to Do?

Virginia Durksen recently stated in her blog post The Inner Editor: Reflections on Editing as Mindful Practice that an editor must “respect the writer’s voice and suggest only those changes that serve the writer first, and then the writer’s reader.” Certainly I agree; it’s a big mistake to indiscriminately apply a standardized style so firmly […]

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copy editing copy editor editing editor editor's role editors editors at work

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Gettable Grammar: I Are Confused

February 12, 2013 by Karen Virag | 1 Comment on Gettable Grammar: I Are Confused

Gettable Grammar is a monthly series of conjectures, opinions and postulates by Karen Virag. I are confused, aren’t I? Have you ever wondered why we say, “He is, isn’t he?” and “She is, isn’t she?” but we don’t say “I am, amn’t I?” (though you might say this if you lived in certain parts of […]

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editing grammar humour usage

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

February 5, 2013 by Wilf Popoff | 2 Comments on Wasted Words: My Hit List

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

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Are Book Editors an Endangered Species?

January 29, 2013 by Nancy Flight | 4 Comments on Are Book Editors an Endangered Species?

In December 2012, the world was supposed to end, the U.S. was expected to fall off the so-called fiscal cliff, and some commentators had already pronounced Canadian publishing dead or nearly so. As we know, the world did not end, and the U.S. has avoided plunging over the fiscal cliff, at least for the time […]

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book editors editing editors publishing

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Kristina Lundberg

Rising Above the Plateau: Mid-Career PD for Editors

January 22, 2013 by Kristina Lundberg | 4 Comments on Rising Above the Plateau: Mid-Career PD for Editors

Every fall I struggle with the professional development plan I’m required to submit to my employer. My first decade in editing was brimming with formal and informal professional development, and my professional growth was steep. Fourteen years into my career, how can I rise above the PD plateau and continue to grow? Of course, in editing there’s […]

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career editing editor mentorship

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Gettable Grammar: Less is More

January 15, 2013 by Karen Virag | Leave a Comment

Gettable Grammar is a monthly series of conjectures, opinions and postulates by Karen Virag. Less is more, not fewer. Except sometimes. The question of when to use fewer and when to use less perplexes many people. Generally speaking, you should use fewer to refer to a smaller number and less to refer to a smaller […]

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editing grammar lexicography usage

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Virginia Durksen

The Inner Editor: Reflections on Editing as Mindful Practice

January 8, 2013 by Virginia Durksen | 1 Comment on The Inner Editor: Reflections on Editing as Mindful Practice

As a young reader, I liked writers who tactfully addressed the “gentle reader.” Perhaps I enjoyed the ironic wink suggesting that writer and reader are both in on creating the story. Indirectly or directly, good writers invite the reader to trust the unfolding tale, just as they find a way to signal their trust in […]

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editing gentle edit gentle editing gentle editor Inner Editor mindful editing

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Victoria Neufeldt

New Words

January 2, 2013 by Victoria Neufeldt | 2 Comments on New Words

“New Words, Old Words, Shy Words, Bold Words” is a four-part series about English words and their origins. The end of a year brings thoughts of old and new words — and not only to us word birds, who throughout the year are tuned into what’s coming in and what’s fading out. It’s generally easier […]

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American Dialect Society editing lexicography usage words

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Gettable Grammar: Grammar Class Wars

December 18, 2012 by Karen Virag | 2 Comments on Gettable Grammar: Grammar Class Wars

Gettable Grammar is a monthly series of conjectures, opinions and postulates by Karen Virag. Grammar class wars Grammar. If it’s not your gramper’s wife, what the heck is it? Well, grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions of a language; it involves morphology and syntax, phonetics, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. Still scratching […]

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CBC Radio descriptivism editing grammar Grammar Gals

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Rosemary Shipton

A Changing Role for Editors

December 12, 2012 by Rosemary Shipton | 3 Comments on A Changing Role for Editors

It’s not all that long ago that editors were invisible or, if their presence was recognized, dismissed as nitpickers or as dangerous meddlers in the creative writing process. “Let’s Kill All the Copyeditors,” ran one newspaper headline. Renowned professor Jacques Barzun railed against the errors that “tone deaf” editors introduced to his texts in his […]

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editing editor editor's role Editors Scholars and the Social Text

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Lights, Camera, Action: A Book Editor in the Land of Cinema

December 4, 2012 by Melva McLean | Leave a Comment

The first in a series on working as an editor in the film industry. In 1966, my older sister snuck me into the Windsor Theatre to see an R-rated movie, A Man and a Woman, starring Anouk Aimée as a script girl and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a car racer. After that, whenever someone asked me […]

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continuity editing editor editors at work film script supervisor types of editing

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Wasted Words: The Editor as Analyst

November 24, 2012 by Wilf Popoff | Leave a Comment

Wasted Words is a series of musings on language and usage by editor emeritus Wilf Popoff. I find it hard to edit without playing amateur psychologist. Why did the writer do this? Carelessness? Ignorance? Of course it can be either. Compared to editors writers are not as alert, which is why they need us. But […]

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editing tautology usage verbosity