Tag: editorial skills

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Libby Graham

Editing Essentials: My Experience

September 27, 2022 by Libby Graham | 4 Comments on Editing Essentials: My Experience

I’m a new editor, and over the course of the past year or so, I’ve been searching for any and every tool to help hone my skills and launch my career. One of those tools was the Editors Canada Editing Essentials qualification. I thought that speaking on my experience with the test could be beneficial […]

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Merel Elsinga

The Editing Essentials Test Tested: Unlock Your Editing Career

April 5, 2022 by Merel Elsinga | 8 Comments on The Editing Essentials Test Tested: Unlock Your Editing Career

You have just embraced editing as your new career. You have some editing experience, just not the five years recommended to sign up for an Editors Canada certification test. How can you convince prospective clients or a potential employer that you do have editing skills? The certification steering committee has come up with a new […]

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Susan Chambers

Seven Common Survey Design Errors and How to Avoid Them

March 29, 2022 by Susan Chambers | 4 Comments on Seven Common Survey Design Errors and How to Avoid Them

Not so many years ago, administering a survey to get feedback from stakeholders (e.g., clients, members) was a time-consuming and expensive venture. These days, conducting a survey study has become much simpler with the advent of web-based survey tools. But perhaps the process has become a bit too quick and easy. While it’s now easy […]

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Aaron Dalton

Editing Face to Face

February 23, 2021 by Aaron Dalton | 3 Comments on Editing Face to Face

Writing in a large organization is usually done “by committee.” That’s a challenging process at the best of times. After doing a first pass, which almost invariably contains more edits than the writers expected, I’m often asked to sit down (these days, virtually) and work though my comments with them. The first few times were […]

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Glenna Jenkins

How the Pandemic Allowed Me to Learn a New Skill

January 26, 2021 by Glenna Jenkins | Leave a Comment

Last year, when Peerwith management asked me whether I could revise a paper written in Overleaf — an online LaTeX editor for the production of technical and scientific documentation — I saw it as a learning opportunity. Working as an academic editor through Peerwith.com meant I dodged the many changes and challenges the majority of […]

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Anita Jenkins

Mentorship: Where the Learners Teach and the Teachers Learn

October 24, 2017 by Anita Jenkins | 3 Comments on Mentorship: Where the Learners Teach and the Teachers Learn

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 […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Succeeding as a Freelancer

March 14, 2017 by Rosemary Shipton | 7 Comments on Succeeding as a Freelancer

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 […]

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Frances Peck

Keeping Up With the (Editorial) Times

November 22, 2016 by Frances Peck | 8 Comments on Keeping Up With the (Editorial) Times

As editors, we can never stop learning. Whether it’s to resolve specific questions, maintain a credential or generally stay on top of our field, we have to keep up with a dizzying array of books, articles, blogs, newsletters, interviews, Twitter chats, Facebook posts, webinars — and the list goes on. Ignore that information and we […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Shorten It!

August 23, 2016 by Rosemary Shipton | 13 Comments on Shorten It!

“Every word is gold,” my author said, “but I suppose you’ll have to shorten it.” Indeed I will: this book manuscript totals 180,000 words, and the trade publisher wants a 40 percent cut. That will be tough. Editors often need to reduce text. Newspapers, magazines, brochures, textbooks and reference materials have strict word limits. It […]

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Paul Cipywnyk

Zoom, Zoom: Rev Up Your Editing

June 21, 2016 by Paul Cipywnyk | 5 Comments on Zoom, Zoom: Rev Up Your Editing

How quickly can you edit and still do a good job? In another life I was an editor for a financial and business news service, and I was amazed at how quickly reporters and editors could churn out thousands of words, yet maintain high standards. I believe you can learn to write and edit rapidly; […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Mentoring

June 7, 2016 by Rosemary Shipton | 5 Comments on Mentoring

What’s the best way to pass skills, experience and business smarts from one person to another? Mentoring tops the list. We humans have always known the value of one-on-one instruction: parents teach their trade or profession to their children, apprentices work for years with their masters and young hires look for an old hand in […]

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Sandra Gravel

Un programme d’agrément en français : utile? | Why Do We Need French Certification?

May 19, 2015 by Sandra Gravel | 1 Comment on Un programme d’agrément en français : utile? | Why Do We Need French Certification?

Dans quelques semaines, le Programme d’agrément en révision linguistique – Réviseurs Canada fera son entrée dans le domaine des services langagiers francophones.  Pour le réviseur d’expérience ou pour celui ayant récemment joint le métier de la révision, le sentiment de compétence n’est pas nécessairement chose acquise, et le doute, la plupart du temps, habite son […]

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Virginia Durksen

Myth: Editors Read With Their Eyes

April 7, 2015 by Virginia Durksen | 12 Comments on Myth: Editors Read With Their Eyes

If there’s a cliché image for our profession, it’s eyeglasses. Editors and librarians, it seems, should always have a pair handy, preferably hanging from a chain around the neck. We earn this image, as we earn our reputation, when we limit editing to what the eye sees. Editing is not just an eye thing. It’s […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Editors and Their Clients

January 13, 2015 by Rosemary Shipton | 3 Comments on Editors and Their Clients

Editors are shaped by their clients. Sure, we all share common knowledge, skills and talents, but we’re influenced by what our employers want from us. Over a period of years, that accumulated experience makes us the editors we are today. In recent posts to this site, Lori Burwash has described the challenges of writing and […]

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Sue Archer

Four Guidelines for Editing Your Way Through the Corporate Jungle

November 25, 2014 by Sue Archer | 10 Comments on Four Guidelines for Editing Your Way Through the Corporate Jungle

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be an editor. Unlike many of my editing colleagues who work in publishing, I ply my trade within a corporation. Although my official title is not “editor,” editing is a large part of what I do. I’ve worked for years in information technology, where […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Twelve-Step Editing

November 4, 2014 by Rosemary Shipton | 23 Comments on Twelve-Step Editing

One project, one editor — that’s the norm in Canada today. Only a few large trade publishers and a small number of government departments still divide editing between structural/stylistic editors and copy editors, while the rapidly dwindling group of educational publishers distinguish between developmental editing and copy editing. Almost all the other publishers, institutions and […]

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Peter Midgley

The Lucky Ones

August 26, 2014 by Peter Midgley | 3 Comments on The Lucky Ones

How often have I heard the comment that editors are failed writers — or, in the scholarly environment in which I work, failed academics. Even when said in jest, the underlying suggestion is that one way of interacting with words and ideas — the editor’s — is somehow inferior. Such statements also hint at a […]

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Kate Icely

DISPATCHES 7: Finding Work in Unexpected Places

October 2, 2013 by Kate Icely | Leave a Comment

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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