Tag: editor’s role

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Fazeela Jiwa

The Radical Role of Developmental Editing

July 27, 2023 by Fazeela Jiwa | 2 Comments on The Radical Role of Developmental Editing

This post was adapted from a talk Fazeela Jiwa gave on acquisitions and developmental editing at The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) this year. Writers bring the complex and embodied facets of their lives to their practice, and I approach my work as a developmental editor with this in mind. I understand editing as a […]

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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.  […]

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Tracey Anderson

Editing Technical Instructional Material: Do You Need to Be an Expert?

January 23, 2018 by Tracey Anderson | 21 Comments on Editing Technical Instructional Material: Do You Need to Be an Expert?

“How can you edit that? You don’t know anything about being an electrician.” I often heard that question and variations of it — carpenter, instrument technician, welder — in my years editing technical instructional materials for apprenticeship trades in Alberta. This is how I answered the question. I am the target audience The goal of […]

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Rosemary Shipton

There’s No Clarity With Editors or Authors

September 5, 2017 by Rosemary Shipton | 6 Comments on There’s No Clarity With Editors or Authors

Editors say they love words, with finding just the right phrase for the context, but, ironically, they can only fail with two terms critical to the world of publishing: “editor” and “author.” When someone says she’s an editor, you have no idea what she does. Is she the editor of a newspaper or a magazine, […]

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Frances Peck

Editing and Empathy

June 6, 2017 by Frances Peck | 7 Comments on Editing and Empathy

I’m thinking more about empathy these days. So are other editors — witness last week’s post on the editor-author relationship. So are Canadians in general, judging by Google searches over the past decade.                     Source: Google Trends. Y-axis shows interest over time, defined as follows: “Numbers […]

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Paul Buckingham

Stepping Into the Arena

May 30, 2017 by Paul Buckingham | 13 Comments on Stepping Into the Arena

We’ve all as editors had the odd grumble over something an author has written. Maybe a string of noun clusters has pushed us to the limit of our patience, or we’ve broken down over a text awash with comma splices. It’s easy to criticize when we’re on the sidelines, though. Our problems are not the […]

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Marianne Grier

German Lessons With Mrs. Cheese

April 4, 2017 by Marianne Grier | 9 Comments on German Lessons With Mrs. Cheese

At the feisty age of 16, I was given an opportunity to study in Switzerland to improve my French language skills. After committing, I found out that the only exchange spot was in Bern, the country’s German-speaking capital. My teenage determination told me I could learn the language quickly enough to complete my school year […]

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Tracey Anderson

Editing the Work of Writers Whose First Language Isn’t English

March 7, 2017 by Tracey Anderson | 20 Comments on Editing the Work of Writers Whose First Language Isn’t English

Canada is a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages from around the world. As the number of residents whose native language isn’t English increases, the need for editors who can edit their writing effectively and sensitively grows, too. Before my editing career began, I taught English as a second language for over 15 years in China, […]

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Sue Archer

Review: The Complete Canadian Book Editor by Leslie Vermeer

November 29, 2016 by Sue Archer | 3 Comments on Review: The Complete Canadian Book Editor by Leslie Vermeer

When I first heard about The Complete Canadian Book Editor, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the notion of a “complete” resource on book editing. I edit the works of self-publishing authors, so my knowledge of the world of traditional book publishing is limited — gained mostly through conversations with other editors and my […]

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: Channelling Orwell

November 1, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 2 Comments on Wasted Words: Channelling Orwell

“Insincerity,” says George Orwell in his classic commentary of 70 years ago, is the “great enemy of clear language.” Political discourse is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable…” For Orwell, insincerity was more a result of lazy writing than a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth: “…if thought corrupts language, language can […]

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Melva McLean

What’s in a Name?

October 18, 2016 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on What’s in a Name?

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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Rosemary Shipton

Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

October 11, 2016 by Rosemary Shipton | 25 Comments on Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

We’ve all had them – those manuscripts that arrive on our desks that should not be published. They have little merit in either content or expression, and our initial impulse is to return them immediately. How do we deal with them? If the project comes from a trade publisher, the contract with the author was probably […]

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Paul Buckingham

Ours Is Not to Reason Why — Or Is It?

October 4, 2016 by Paul Buckingham | 7 Comments on Ours Is Not to Reason Why — Or Is It?

You’re editing a biography of Lester Pearson, and you see a line that says, “It is a fitting coincidence that Pearson was born the same year another great Liberal leader, Wilfrid Laurier, took the Canadian helm.” You’re drawn to the interesting coincidence of dates and decide to look up the facts. You discover that Pearson […]

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Cathy McPhalen

Editing Niches: Back to School With Thesis Editing

September 20, 2016 by Cathy McPhalen | 2 Comments on Editing Niches: Back to School With Thesis Editing

Editors may spurn thesis (or dissertation) work for graduate students, but that shuts off fascinating pathways. Students become academics who need editors for journal articles, monographs, textbooks and grant applications. Those who become non-academics need business reports, web pages, novels and [insert the types of documents you edit here ] edited. Catching them young can forge […]

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Melva McLean

Writing Wrongs in Fiction

September 6, 2016 by Melva McLean | 1 Comment on Writing Wrongs in Fiction

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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Paul Cipywnyk

Know Your Subject, Watch That Continuity

August 9, 2016 by Paul Cipywnyk | 9 Comments on Know Your Subject, Watch That Continuity

Blam! Blam! Black Sombrero fired his Colt .45 at the shadow in the barn, then spun and snapped three shots at the posse approaching across the coral. Zing! A shot from behind creased his shoulder, and he wheeled back, fanning four quick shots at the figure in the gaping doorway. Snick. Damn, he was empty! […]

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Rosemary Shipton

Should Editors Be Able to Write?

April 28, 2015 by Rosemary Shipton | 15 Comments on Should Editors Be Able to Write?

We editors talk at length about different kinds of editing and who does what, and we generally assume that we’re working on a text written by someone else. Together with the author, we massage the content, the structure and the presentation into the best possible shape for its intended readers. But should we also be […]

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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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Victoria Neufeldt

What’s an Editor to Do?

January 6, 2015 by Victoria Neufeldt | 2 Comments on What’s an Editor to Do?

The vagaries of language can cause even the most experienced editors headaches. Editors as a group are more attuned to the whims and ways of language than the average speaker, but many strange and challenging usages regularly fly under the radar and pass into public text, despite our best efforts. When should an editor accept […]

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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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Abby Egerter

Keenness of Eye and Humble Pie, Along That Path Awards Will Lie

September 2, 2014 by Abby Egerter | Leave a Comment

In this instalment of our “Editors in the Spotlight” series, Abby Egerter interviews editor Jennifer Foster, who worked on the award-winning Dirty Science: 25 Experiments with Soil, by Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone. Jennifer Foster has been editing for 17 years and freelancing for 10. However, book publishing is something of a new venture for […]

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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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Kimmy Beach

An Intricate Relief Carving on an Eggshell: Working With Peter Midgley on The Last Temptation of Bond

July 22, 2014 by Kimmy Beach | 2 Comments on An Intricate Relief Carving on an Eggshell: Working With Peter Midgley on The Last Temptation of Bond

This is the first in our new “Editors in the Spotlight” series, spotlighting editors who have won awards or participated in award-winning projects. In this post, Kimmy Beach interviews Peter Midgley, who won the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence for editing her book, The Last Temptation of Bond. ~~~ Peter and I meet at […]

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