Blog

If you’re an editorial professional, or you need the help of one, this is a blog worth reading! It’s packed full of useful insights and handy hints, and anyone who wants to know more about ‘making words count’ will not want to miss these posts.

The emotional editor

Post by Chris Bryce

You never know what’s coming next, do you? That’s one of the things I enjoy most about being a working word geek. And, work can, of course, be like political scandals; nothing for a couple of weeks then three turn up, jostling for attention.

So, what stood out in 2017?

Well, one of Scotland’s specialist construction companies needed a new website and invited me to provide the wording (web copy) for it. The guys were great to work for and were delighted with the friendly yet professional tone of their new site. Their web designers told me they couldn’t remember the last time a new website build had gone so smoothly. Normally it’s a lack of web copy that slows the whole thing up. Everyone felt relieved, including me.

OK, job done, what was next?

Opening my inbox, I found a request from a PhD student who was looking for help with their thesis. It was evident, from a sample of text, that English was not their first language. Their methodology, research and conclusions were all strong, but their lack of experience of writing in English was reducing the impact of their hard work.

After agreeing on a fee, I sorted out a range of issues: grammar, punctuation, format and some egregious typos. The research explored the effects of the Civil War in Uganda on the Acholi people, following decades spent in refugee camps. I learned a great deal about Uganda and its Civil War and was particularly moved by the Acholi people’s plight, which continued even after their return to their homelands. Knowing that his work was in safe hands and being attended to by a thoughtful brain, the PhD student stopped worrying. I felt happy to have helped.

Then something completely different appeared; I received a poem.

Not just any old four-line poem, but a poem for a gravestone, to mark the passing of a dearly-loved father and husband, a man who had admired the works of Robert Burns and hailed from Dumfriesshire. I will probably not connect so strongly with a piece of work for a long time.

The task was to convert the poem, composed by the deceased’s daughter, into the language of Burns. When you know your work will be carved in stone, it has to be right. Throughout my time working on this, it was as though the gentleman was by my shoulder and from time to time I’d find myself reassuring him that I’d do a good job for both him and his daughter.

After a time, I reached what I thought was the final draft, but something niggled away at me. Following some contemplation, I found the addition of ‘aye’ in the last line made it considerably more meaningful.

As I sent my final version on, I felt a lump rise in my throat.

Faither, husband, man o’th shaw;

Noo ye’v returned whaur frae ye cam,

Swith wild wi maukin, burn and sea;

Oh, what wildness aye bides in ye.

Whoever would imagine that editing and proofreading tasks could generate so many different feelings?

Right, 2018, what’s next?!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

An experienced copywriter, copy-editor, proofreader and all-round friendly word geek, Chris Bryce of Spotlight Editorial also co-ordinates the local Glasgow SfEP group. You can follow Chris on Twitter @Spotlight_Ed

Behind the scenes at this year’s SfEP conference

Post by Stephen Cashmore

Wyboston Lakes, SfEP conference 2017: if you weren’t there, you missed a great conference and social gathering.

Lots of people have already blogged about the conference, much better bloggers than I am, using words such as ‘great’, ‘fantastic’, and ‘best ever’. All true, but I can add another perspective.

Right up until the AGM of this conference, I was the SfEP training director. What that means is that I was on the council while the conference was being planned and organised. And what that means is that I can add some more words to the collective description: ‘detailed planning’, ‘hard work’, and ‘attention to detail’, to name but a few.

Conference director Beth Hamer and her team bore the brunt of the hard work developing the conference itself. Sure, Beth occasionally posed questions to the council: ‘I want to do x. That OK?’ And the council would hold forth and almost invariably do exactly what Beth had thought of. Chair (Sabine Citron) and Vice-chair (Lucy Metzger) meticulously checked all the bye-laws and constitutional AGM-like points – the things that send most of us to sleep in seconds – to make sure the AGM passed off smoothly. The office staff set up everything on the day and bossed everyone who came in the door, even the huge security guys that were turning up for their own conference.

So, as an ex-director, I have seen more or less at first-hand how much hard work – a year’s worth of hard work – goes into making the conference such a great occasion. And guess what? It’s going to happen all over again in 2018, this time at Lancaster University. So, if you missed SfEP conference 2017, be sure to be there next year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen is an advanced member of the SfEP who lives in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland. He is an ex-teacher, ex-accountant, ex-bridge player and ex-auditor, but threw all that over to become an editor after taking early retirement. Check out cashmoreeditorial.com or follow Stephen on Twitter @sceditorial

Tiny macros

Post by Stephen Cashmore

If I say the word ‘macro’, what effect does it have on you? Do you think, ‘Let’s change the subject and move on?’ Do you run screaming from the room? Do you perhaps think, ‘Yes, yes, they can be useful sometimes; I’ve downloaded a few. But let’s not get carried away by them.’?

If you are a serious editor and one of these descriptions fits you, I suggest you brace yourself and think again. Macros can be useful ALL THE TIME.

They don’t have to be gigantic, use once-in-an-edit affairs. They can be tiny little constructions that can save you time simply because they crop up time and time again. They can be devised specifically for the job at hand. If you find yourself doing the same thing – typing the same keystrokes – over and over and over again, the chances are that a simple macro will do the job for you.

Let me give you some examples.

In a novel I was editing recently, the author had a terrible habit of using comma splices.

The sun shone through the window, he decided to get up and do some editing.

Time and time again. Gah.

Some were best dealt with by inserting ’and’ or suchlike, but most needed a new sentence. Delete comma. Full point. Skip a space. Delete small letter. Replace with capital letter. Again and again. You can see what’s coming. I recorded a simple macro that did all this with one click. What a relief.

The same author continually muddled the punctuation at the end of dialogue.

‘I think this should be a comma.’ He said.

I imagine the author thought the dialogue needed a full stop as it’s a complete sentence, and Word did the rest. So, a simple macro to do the opposite of the previous one, only skipping an extra space (because of the quote mark). By the time I’d got about a quarter of the way through the edit, I had a little row of tiny macros that speeded up my working enormously.

How about this, from a maths book?

–9+16=7

Full marks, I hear you say. The trouble is, the publisher wanted thin spaces marked with red hashes around all operands such as minus sign, equals sign, plus sign and so forth. So I used the FRedit macro do to that for me and it save me hours and hours of work. But it also did this:

#–#9#+#16#=#7

Almost perfect, but those two initial hashes aren’t needed. So I recorded a tiny macro to do <delete><skip space><delete> and that speeded up all these problems for me, including some that I hadn’t thought of.  I also wrote a tiny macro that surrounded a character with red hashes, for instances that I hadn’t thought of when I made up my FRedit script. And I recorded a macro that changed the number of a question from

12. Question

to

12             Question

and I …

Well, I’m sure you get the idea. Write a tiny macro for keystrokes that you find yourself doing over and over again, and before you know it you’ll have a little group of them that will, believe me, save you both a lot of time and your sanity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen is an advanced member of the SfEP who lives in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland. He is an ex-teacher, ex-accountant, ex-bridge player and ex-auditor, but threw all that over to become an editor after taking early retirement. Check out cashmoreeditorial.com or follow Stephen on Twitter @sceditorial

My top takeaways from the 2017 SfEP Scottish mini-conference

Post by Jill Broom

As I sat on the 8.15 train from Glasgow Queen Street to Edinburgh last Friday morning, I was feeling excited about what the day would bring. Some of that excitement may have had something to do with the promise of my bestie’s hen weekend beginning later that evening, but the rest of the day was shaping up to be good too … I was off to the SfEP Scottish mini-conference.

As someone who works from home, I look upon it as a rare treat to get caught up in the bustle of rush hour. (I know. I’m probably mad.) And to have an hour’s commute when I can get through my admin before the ‘real’ start of the day? Well, that is awesome.

Although that morning my admin mostly consisted of organising my kids’ social lives by text, my mind was ultimately focused on my profession. This was going to be a day about developing and reaffirming my skills.

Why did I go to this SfEP conference?

Freelancing can be a lonely business. Holed up in a home office for days on end without seeing many people doesn’t always a fun Jill make. So, these events are important to me. Meeting up with, learning from and chatting to other editorial professionals every so often makes me feel less isolated.

What did I get out of it?

Well, loads of course … but there were three key things for me.

1. Trust your instinct (& don’t fret about strict grammar conventions)

Did you know that most current grammar books are outdated? Some merely contain rehashed guidance written 100+ years ago. OK, so don’t panic! There’s no need to burn them all. But this fact does rather rain on the whole idea of the fluidity of language.

Well, while Professor of Linguistics Geoff Pullum didn’t urge us to ditch all grammar rules immediately, he did ask us to be sensible in our approach.

The issue at the heart of Pullum’s entertaining talk on Freedom and tyranny in English grammar was that we should be editing written work to sound like it belongs in 2017. He pointed out that usages people regard as grammatical errors are often just a less formal style. So, don’t over-correct. If it sounds OK, leave it alone.

This resonated with me and many other conference attendees – hence the ‘trust your instinct’ subhead. But it’s nice to have your working practices reaffirmed by a linguistics prof.

I particularly liked this example:

  • ‘Don’t worry about the passive voice; just don’t be dull.’ Hooray! This is something that’s bugged me for ages. Even Word and some Content Management Systems obsess over this. WordPress’s insistence on using instances of the passive voice to score readability drives me bonkers. If it reads well, surely that’s the most important thing?

Pullum highlighted that the same goes for a whole host of other grammar ‘rules’. For example, you don’t need to ‘un-split a split infinitive if it makes sense’ and you don’t need to remove all adjectives and adverbs if they lend meaning.

And, if you’re dithering over whether to change a word to something that ‘makes more grammatical sense’, look around to see what occurs elsewhere. Ask Google. You may well find enough relevant examples to give you the confidence to leave it be.

2. Investigate and use tools that can make you more efficient

One of the things I love about SfEP conferences is that members are always willing to share their experiences to help their colleagues. And Ashley Craig’s session on commercial super-macros didn’t disappoint.

Ashley gave us live demos of Wordsnsync EditTools v8.0 and Editorium Editor’s Toolkit PLUS 2014, proving that super-macros save a lot of time by automating some of the copy-editing process.

Wordsnsync EditTools’ journal checker, which checks and corrects journal names, looked particularly handy for those regularly dealing with references, and its Insert Query tool saves you having to copy and paste or rewrite the same types of queries over and over again. But take a look for yourself. There are a whole load of other useful things these super-macros can do for you.

I’m terrible for setting aside time to look into these things and then getting caught up in some other work … But I’ve given myself a talking to after Ashley’s session.

3. Remember to be confident in what you do

How many times have you used the words ‘only’ and ‘just’ when talking about what you do for a living? Well … stop it.

Laura Poole’s pep talk reminded us that we’re not ‘only’ editors who ‘just’ tidy up other people’s writing. We provide an extremely valuable service to many different businesses, and we should talk about it using less apologetic language.

Laura also spoke about networking – something many of us recoil from. She pointed out that you don’t need to be ‘salesy’. In fact, don’t be. It’ll put people off. Just be yourself and start a natural conversation. Be interested in who you’re talking to. And when they ask what you do … think about how to talk about it in a nutshell. Can you do this in a creative way? Can you make yourself stand out from the crowd?

A week later, I’m still working on the perfect ‘elevator pitch’.  But … I know which words I won’t be including in it; I know how to make myself the most efficient proofreader and copy-editor I can be; and I know that I’m making the right calls when it comes to rejecting outdated grammatical conventions.

All in all, #SfEPSco17 was a very good day ‘out of the office’.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jill is a copywriter, proofreader and copy-editor, but her biggest job is being mum to three small children, which has helped her to sharpen one of her key writing and editorial skills … adaptability! Check out her LinkedIn page or follow her on Twitter @honeybroom.

My journey into editing (so far) – Alison’s story

Post by Alison Chand

Ever wondered how a person becomes ‘an editor’? This post is the second in our ‘How I got into editing’ series. These pieces are designed to give you some insight into the varied backgrounds of our members (we’ve come from all walks of life) and how we became embroiled in the wonderful world of editing.

Here is Alison’s story …

Careers and work identities are often arrived at by accident rather than by design, and that was certainly the case for me! I began studying for my PhD (an oral history-based project exploring masculinities in male civilian workers in Clydeside during the Second World War) at the University of Strathclyde in 2009, and had grand plans of becoming a full-time academic upon completion. However, in (what I thought was) the short term, I started doing some casual proof-editing of other postgraduates’ work to make a bit of extra cash.

This continued as I progressed with my PhD and, approximately nine months before I was due to submit, I discovered that I was pregnant with my daughter. After the initial euphoria/panic waves had passed, my thoughts strayed to my working life after my studies, and I decided to look into the idea of setting up as a sole trader in proofreading and copy-editing.

Getting trained and finding support  

After a bit of (not as much as I should have done) Google exploration, I signed up for Chapterhouse’s distance learning course in proofreading and copy-editing, confidently expecting that, because I saw myself as pretty good with all things written and grammatical, the course would be fairly straightforward. I was horrified by how much I missed in the first assessment, quickly realising that I’d need to apply myself a bit more to gain the skills I needed. After nine months, I passed the course, although not exactly with flying colours. I found the online experience fairly isolating, and lacking in support for learning about a world of symbols which, as it turned out, was entirely new to me.

Luckily for me, I also discovered the Society for Editors and Proofreaders on my foray into Google, and decided to go along to a meeting of my local group, in Glasgow, in June 2012. There, I found real, friendly people, offering real advice about work options and training courses. I joined the SfEP, first as an associate, later upgrading to intermediate member, and decided to sign up to the SfEP introductory day courses on proofreading and copy-editing.

At these courses, I enjoyed being able to ask questions in person and develop my skills among other interested professionals. I set up a basic website and LinkedIn page and, before and after having my daughter, Ailsa, in October 2012, I continued to pick up work proof-editing for students, from Strathclyde and elsewhere, also passing the editing test to work freelance for ProofreadMyEssay, a company offering proof-editing to students across the English-speaking world.

The variety of [freelancing] life

When I returned to more regular working when Ailsa was nine months’ old, I gradually started to work on material other than student dissertations and theses, receiving enquiries from authors of fiction, a CV writing company, and a variety of businesses.

I studied online for the SfEP’s Proofreading Progress course and was pleased to pass this, despite finding the return to marking a hard copy with symbols a bit of a challenge! Alongside editing, I taught freelance in the History department at the University of Strathclyde and spent two evenings per week as a children’s swimming instructor, making my working life varied to say the least!

In November 2015, I gave birth to my son, Euan, and another quiet working spell followed, before I returned to the fray in summer 2016, continuing to complete editing work for students and an assortment of others, and also returning to university teaching work and swimming instruction.

What’s next?

So, to 2017! Not knowing where the next byway may lead, I plan to keep pushing for improvement and thus to undertake further training. This year, I’d like to take the SfEP’s editing test and upgrade my membership status to professional member. With this in mind, I’m currently working online on the Copy-editing Headway course, with a view to following this up with Copy-editing Progress.

As my children grow up and the work I do sprouts arms and legs, only time will tell where my road as a sole trader will take me.

I feel that I’ve come a long way since 2012. I love the flexibility of my working life now, but I still have days where I feel woefully inadequate at addressing my different areas of work, as though I’m being pulled in too many directions at one time. Nonetheless, I want to be ready for whichever path I take next, and I certainly plan for proofreading and copy-editing to be part of that …

So, I’ll keep on appearing at the always-friendly and always-helpful meetings of the Glasgow SfEP group, the members of which helped draw me into the editing world to start with and now give me a great deal of motivation to stay there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alison Chand is a freelance proofreader, copy-editor and oral historian (and swimming teacher!). Her editing work is mostly in academic material, including student dissertations and theses, and academic books and journal articles. She is an Intermediate Member of the SfEP.

Tips for editing tables in Word

Post by Merle Read and Susan Milligan

February’s Local SfEP Group meeting in Glasgow covered some exciting topics, including training events north of the border, writing more useful blog posts and the coming Scottish mini-conference. But there was also the added bonus of an extremely handy presentation on Word tables by two of the Glasgow Editors’ Network’s most experienced members, Merle Read and Susan Milligan. And this was just too useful not to share!

Whether you’re an experienced copy-editor or just starting out, editing tables can be tricky and, frankly, a bit of a faff. But with these tips* from Word gurus Merle and Susan under your belt, your efficiency will increase in no time.

* Instructions given refer to Word 2013, but plenty of the advice will apply to other versions of the program.

Getting organised in Word

Authors often use tabs or hard returns in the wrong places to make the table look right in Word: toggle Ctrl/Shift+8 to show these (or use on the Home tab). Remove unwanted spaces/tabs/returns. The typesetter will take care of the look.

Show the ruler (via the View tab) to enable easy resizing of columns, alignment of decimal tabs etc.

Use Tab to move forward and Shift+Tab to move backward in a table. Use Tab in the last cell of a table to add an extra row, or press Return with the cursor at the very far end of a row to insert a new row immediately below.

If you want an actual tab, use Ctrl+Tab.

Make a few keyboard shortcuts (instructions below) to add/delete table rows, e.g.

Alt+F9    insert row above the cursor
Alt+F10  insert row below the cursor
Alt+F11  delete current row (repeat as required to delete the table)

Changing the design and layout

To alter the table design or layout, place the cursor in the table and use the Design or Layout tabs that then appear on the ribbon or right-click for a menu that allows you to insert/delete/merge cells/rows/columns, change text direction or alter other table properties. NB merging neighbouring cells can sometimes mess things up: use with care, preferably once the rest of the table editing is complete.

You can also use the mouse to hover over various parts of the table to enable you to alter the design/layout. Hover over a line to click and drag the column width, or click on the 4-arrowed cross at the top left corner (appears when the cursor is within the table) to bring up a mini-ribbon of options:

Screenshot of mouse hover over a Word table

Click on the cross and then press Delete to remove the table content but leave the structure intact (it may be useful to copy & paste the skeleton if you have similar tables to edit).

Use the Border Painter in the Design tab to remove/add lines (set to No Border or a specific line width as required) by drawing the cursor over the lines. Esc key to cancel.

Screenshot of Border Painter

Choose the View Gridlines option in the Layout tab (the cursor must be in the table unless you have set up a shortcut to ShowTableGridlines).

SCreenshot of a Word table with gridlines showing

This allows the structure of the table to be clear even though various cell borders will be invisible in the final version:

Screenshot of a Word table without gridlines showing

To view an extra-wide table that disappears off the edge of the page, use Draft view (but when editing it check that it is not too wide for the page size for which is it destined in print). You could also select the table and reduce the font size for a better fit: let the designer worry about the look! Or change the page format to landscape (you may need to insert section breaks if the other pages are to remain portrait).

If copy & pasting, make sure the number of rows/columns being copied is no larger than the area of the table being pasted to.

Avoid using Track Changes when editing tables if possible (or at least don’t use it when formatting).

Checking your table is correct

Convert table to text and text to table (Insert tab, Table menu) as a temporary tool while editing (e.g. 2-column lists). This is also a way of testing whether a table is presented correctly – a correct table should convert to text and back again (one cell – one entry – no hard returns within cells).

To align numbers in columns on the decimal point (or on the right-hand digit if there is no decimal point), first left-align the column and then select the decimal tab from the top left of the ruler; then, with the whole column selected, place the tab on the ruler above the column heading at your chosen position.

Achieving consistency with Word tables

To format a series of tables consistently, use Word’s styles (either in the document or, preferably, in a custom template attached to the document). You can create paragraph styles for table title, column heading, table stub, table body, table bottom row (for tables that have a ‘Total’ row at the end), etc. If you base them all on one core style (e.g. ‘table text’), all will change if you make a change to that style (e.g. to change the font).

Screenshot of Word Styles dialog box

It’s fine to use the same font, size, formatting, and paragraph attributes for all the table styles if you are using styles not for the sake of the appearance of the tables (as it is the typesetter’s job to design them) but for efficiency and consistency. List the styles used for the typesetter, who can then convert the Word styles to the desired formatting in InDesign.

What if there are footnotes in the table?

If your author has embedded tables in a document that have auto-numbered notes, check that the tables don’t contain footnotes that are part of this numbering system. If they do, take these notes out of auto-numbering (or cut and paste the tables into a new document) and manually renumber the table footnotes (using alphabetic rather than numeric numbering). If a table just has one note, you can use an asterisk to indicate it (depending on house style). If it is a note that applies to the whole table, it will just appear below the table as ‘Note. …’.

There may also be a ‘Source’ below the table, normally positioned after any table note(s).

How to add a keyboard shortcut

Go to File/Options/Customize Ribbon/

Creating a Word keyboard shortcut

In the Categories box choose Table Tools | Layout Tab.

In the Commands box choose e.g. TableInsertRowAbove.

In the Press new shortcut key box, type the desired key combination, e.g. Alt+F9 (check it’s not already assigned to something you already use: if so, “Currently assigned to …” will be displayed).

Click Assign (essential!) then either return to the Commands box to add another shortcut, or click Close.

Keep a reminder of your shortcuts by printing them out. Bring up the Print dialog box. Under the Settings heading click on the Print All Pages dropdown. Under Document Info, choose Key Assignments, then click Print.

 

Do you have any tips of your own to add to these? Be sure to leave a comment. Or if you’d like to find out more, we’ve listed some relevant resources below.

Further reading

Butcher’s Copy-editing, 4th edn, pp. 220–9

Scientific Style and Format, 8th edn, ch. 30; 6th edn, ch. 31, pp. 678–93

See also https://wordribbon.tips.net/C0683_Tables.html

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Susan has learned about tables over the years by having to deal with them when editing on screen, as well as from an SfEP conference workshop on the subject by Penny Howes in 2009. Tables used to be a chore but she now enjoys getting to grips with them.

Merle (@MA_Read) has been wrangling with Word tables for over 20 years and tries to do so as efficiently as possible.

Everyone needs an editor

Post by Chris Bryce

‘If only I hadn’t said that’ … a phrase familiar to the broken-hearted following a heated row, or the regretful employee the morning after the office party. What would the miserable lover or tipsy partygoer have given for a filter on their spoken words? The answer would probably be … anything!

Given half a chance, they would have spotted their errors, stopped the conversation, cut out the offending sections of dialogue, reformatted the chat and started again.

Luckily, it’s different for the written word, because the writer can choose to get a fresh pair of eyes to act as that filter. And if those eyes are inside the head of a professional editor, who understands exactly where and why mistakes are made, then the writer will never have the unpleasant task of trying to claw back the words they’ve put on paper.

What do editors do?

Copy-editors know how to make words work well and deal with a wide variety of text – from T-shirt slogans, website wording and marketing materials, to academic papers, technical manuals and published books.

Whatever they’re working on, the copy-editor’s aim is always to improve the wording and format. Often referred to as the seven Cs of editing, an editor’s focus is to make the text: clear, correct, coherent, complete, concise, consistent and credible.

The human brain is hard-wired to fill in the blanks as we read. This gives us the ability to speed-read or scan our eyes over text. It’s a useful skill when we want to take in lots of information quickly, but it can also lead to us skipping over some outrageous errors without seeing them.

Here’s an example of what can go wrong. A healthcare provider had thousands of flyers printed to invite the local community to a ‘Pubic Health Day’. Of course, the flyers were meant to read ‘Public’. A funny mistake? The Chief Executive wasn’t laughing. Money was wasted on printing those useless flyers.

This example also perfectly demonstrates the unreliable nature of spellcheckers. ‘Pubic’ wouldn’t have been picked up by a computer program because it is a word; just not the right word here. Involving an editor or proofreader in the process would have saved a lot of time, money and embarrassment.

Who edits the editors?

It’s amazing how often good writers develop blind spots and fail to notice clanging typos and clichéd or overused words or terms.

Mismatched images and captions are another common area for mistakes, along with wonky formatting, punctuation and grammar. A text can have too few or too many headings, a variety of fonts and a host of other issues. Even copy-editors benefit from help with their own text and regularly seek the assistance of proofreaders to pick up on the unintentional typos and grammatical slips that can plague even the most elegant writing. Proof-editing (a combination of copy-editing and proofreading) is a comprehensive way to capture all of the problems with a piece of text, and turn good writing into excellent writing.

Don’t live to regret your words

It’s an editor’s job to help you make the most of your writing. But, perhaps more importantly, an editor will also help you to keep your reputation intact, making sure any written mistakes are never made public. (Or should that be pubic?)

As far as a verbal filter is concerned … well, drop me a line if you find the answer to that one!

 

For local, qualified copy-editors and proofreaders, take a look at our Directory now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris is an editor, proofreader and copywriter, with over ten years of experience across business, organisational and creative writing areas.

 

Cutting … cutting … cutting

Post by Lucy Metzger

Have you seen the Python sketch (episode 9) in which Michael Palin is a barber who is clearly disturbed and constantly almost on the point of stabbing his client, while trying to restrain himself? The client (Terry Jones) just wants a haircut.

Barber  You wouldn’t rather forget all about it?
Customer  No, no, no, I want it cut.Barber  Cut, cut, cut, blood, spurt, artery, murder, Hitchcock, Psycho … right sir … well …

Barber [later]  I’ve finished cutting … cutting … cutting your hair. It’s all done.

Because this leads into the Lumberjack Sketch, people tend not to remember the psychotic barber. But I do.
I mention this because I have an enthusiastic and perhaps unhealthy interest in cutting text. An early editorial gig of mine was in encyclopedias. I would be given an entry of perhaps 2,000 words, written by a specialist who just wanted to say everything about the topic, that I had to cut down to 200 words. I loved doing this.It wasn’t purely destructive: I liked the challenge of preserving the best and most interesting of the author’s offering while paring away the unnecessary. Destruction is fun, though. I like stripping wallpaper and breaking down old cupboards and chopping dead bits off trees. But there again, I’m getting rid of what I don’t want and leaving the good stuff.

An experienced colleague told me ‘You can cut anything by ten per cent’. (One time when I couldn’t sleep I tried to work out if you could go on doing this and have anything left. You approach zero pretty fast.) I tend to cut my own writing obsessively. You have no idea how long this post was before I posted it. Sometimes I feel I should just let myself write and leave it, but then I spot a word I don’t need … and another …

I bet YOU could cut this post by ten per cent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lucy Metzger is a freelance copy-editor and proofreader, working mostly in teaching materials and academic and reference books, and a member of the Glasgow SfEP group. She is also the vice-chair of the SfEP.

How I got into editing – Max’s story

Post by Max Hepburn

Ever wondered how a person becomes ‘an editor’? This post is the first in our ‘How I got into editing’ series. These pieces are designed to give you some insight into the varied backgrounds of our members (we’ve come from all walks of life) and how we became embroiled in the wonderful world of editing.

Here is Max Hepburn’s story.

After completing my degree in French and German at Strathclyde University in the 1990s, I planned to pursue an academic career. First, I taught English at university in the north of France and then I spent two years as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in French back at Strathclyde. These years in academia helped me to work out where my true passion lay – not in teaching, but in pure language itself. (I attribute this in part to a rather unhealthy addiction to French puns, which I developed while teaching in Amiens.)

An intriguing job advertisement in Strathclyde’s careers advice department caught my attention with its headline ‘Linguists for Translation Work’. A technical translation agency near London was looking for Translation Checkers (bilingual proofreaders) to work in their office, and I leapt at the chance.

Exercising the little grey cells

For 10 years, I munched my way through thousands of intellectual property documents, ensuring the accuracy of translations from German and French into English. I also had to correct grammar, punctuation, syntax etc. to make sure that the text of the English translation flowed smoothly, and that it was easy to understand. The source documents we worked from were often full of mistakes, and so I had to draw on all my language training to untangle the mess. It really was a full workout for the brain every day.

The scientific, technical, legal, financial and medical texts we dealt with were very often exceptionally complex, especially the German ones with their mile-long sentences and sub-sub-sub clauses! I seemed to encounter every subject matter under the sun: gene technology, automotive engineering, nuclear power plants, shampoo formulae, cutting-edge medical research papers, underwear fabric design, bouncy castles, cow-scrubbing devices … the list is infinite.

GSOH required

It goes without saying that this kind of work could become tedious after a while. Of course, it was always fun to receive an amusing document, the subject matter of which raised the occasional eyebrow, but for the most part the reading was mind-numbing. Therefore, my colleagues and I would devise various ways to amuse ourselves and stave off the inevitable boredom that stalked us daily. Puns were our favourite, and whenever someone in our team happened upon a ripe phrase in the document they were working on, he or she would announce it, and the pun marathon would begin. Chickens, cheese and anything vaguely saucy were always reliable subjects for endless hours of linguistic tomfoolery.

This work, I have to say, embedded in me a profound affinity with, and love for, the myriad intricacies of language in all its manifestations, especially at the interface between different languages. Needless to say, my ‘proofreader’ head is now permanently on, as it will often be for most editors. I have worked in other industries, completely unrelated to language, but those 10 years in England put me squarely on the path to becoming an editor.

Support is all around

It has been a real boon to discover the Glasgow Editors’ Network, and to get to know other editors through the Society for Editors and Proofreaders Glasgow area group. The meetings are always fun and I am absorbing lots of useful advice from fellow group members about starting out as a freelance editor. I look forward to developing my career in such great company.

Just beginning a career as a freelance copy-editor or proofreader? Come along to the next SfEP Glasgow group meeting. Contact Denise Cowle for details.

Looking for an editor or proofreader? Head to our Directory now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Max Hepburn is an Entry-Level Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, after 10 years working in the translation industry. Alongside building up his career as a freelance editor and proofreader, Max enjoys singing in choirs, playing piano, cycling long distances and eating cake.

How to return a job to your client

Post by Jill Broom, based on meeting notes written by Lucy Metzger

While it’s true that there are lots of ways to go about returning a piece of work to a client – every editor has their own ‘style’, and every job is different – there are some things that we commonly include in our handover notes. For example, we’ll often compile a style sheet and word list; notes for the typesetter or designer; and a list of queries or issues that the client will need to resolve or be aware of. Clients also regularly ask for a list of running heads and/or a list or log of artwork, figures and tables. But is there a ‘best practice’ for returning a job?

Recently, members of the Glasgow Editors’ Network got together to explore this idea. We shared our approaches to producing comprehensive, clear explanatory notes to accompany our work. And it became clear that the following practices work well for many in the group.

3 tips for producing a stellar handover note

1. Produce a good style sheet with the job.

This may evolve into a style guide, particularly with an ongoing project involving multiple publications. Note: Could you get yourself commissioned to produce the style guide for an appropriate additional fee?

One of our colleagues uses an Excel workbook to send information to the client, with different tabs for general style principles, exceptions to these, a word list, and a list of outstanding issues needing the client’s attention. (This is handy as it collects all the info into one easily referenced file.)

2. Include author queries and the author’s answers with the returned job.

And here’s some food for thought when it comes to framing and formatting those queries:

  • Prepare three columns: the first with a pasted-in chunk of text, the next with the associated query, and the third with space for the author to answer.
  • Remember that brief, succinct queries are more likely to get useful answers.
  • If it’s a sizeable job, you could send author queries in batches, e.g. a list for each chapter or group of chapters.
  • Do a preliminary read-through or skim to assess what kinds of issues, and therefore queries, are likely to come up.
  • Send a document to the author with Track Changes, allowing him/her to reply to particular comments on the spot. (But watch out, some authors may be tempted to tinker with other parts of the document while they’re doing this.)
  • If more than one person is working on your document, take care! For example, a shared document in Dropbox can cause difficulties. Avoid problems by taking the document out of Dropbox, working on it, and then putting it back with a different version name. This also avoids the problem of thousands of notifications being sent to all sharers of the document while you edit it.
  • Use Google Docs? Ever had the creepy experience of working on a document at the same time that another person is observing what you are doing and commenting on it? Ask them to stop (politely).


3. ALWAYS return a job well.

Ok, so some clients appreciate a good handover note more than others. Some, perhaps in particular non-publishers, may not be interested in (or just don’t have time to go through) word lists and style decisions. They simply want the job done well. However, others WILL be grateful and perhaps surprised to know about what kinds of issues have come up and what decisions have had to be made.

A good handover note can help the client to see what value you have added to their project, and – importantly – how you could help them in the future.

Need an editor or proofreader with great communication skills? Search our Directory now.

Want more tips from Glasgow’s best editors? Come along to the next local SfEP meeting. Contact Denise Cowle for more info.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jill Broom is a copywriter, proofreader and copy-editor, but her biggest job is being mum to three small children, which has helped her to sharpen one of her key writing/editing skills – adaptability! Check out her LinkedIn page or follow her on Twitter @honeybroom
Jill based this post on group meeting notes written by Lucy Metzger. Lucy is a freelance copy-editor and proofreader, working mostly in teaching materials and academic and reference books, and a member of the Glasgow SfEP group. She is also the vice-chair of the SfEP.