Tag: Glasgow Editors’ Network

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.

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 market yourself (& where to find other great tips for freelance editors)

Post by Jill Broom

Despite being chained to our desks, dealing with looming deadlines most of the time, every so often Glasgow’s freelance editors like to get out to catch up with other like-minded beings. Consequently, many of us belong to the local Society for Editors and Proofreaders group which meets once a month at The Singl End café in Garnethill – where, by the way, the cakes are delicious.

But we’re not just there to guzzle great food and bemoan the misuse of apostrophes (there’s another dedicated society for that). We’re there to get support from our freelance colleagues and gather useful tips that will help us in our quest to become editorial ninjas.

Often, one of us will share our expertise on a particular topic – for example, using Word Styles or PerfectIt – or lead a discussion about how to improve or update our methodology. As freelancers, these meetings are an invaluable part of our ongoing professional development.

In March, it was time to find out more about how to market our services. And our resident expert, Chris Bryce, was there to help. Chris holds a Masters in Business Administration and has spent the best part of a year refreshing her marketing mojo in preparation for ramping up her editorial business. Here are her eight top tips …

8 steps to marketing magic

1. Get a marketing plan

The very nature of freelancing means that marketing yourself often ends up being bumped down the to-do list in favour of getting actual paid work done. But it should really be treated with the respect it deserves – especially if you want to ensure your quieter times are no longer quiet.

Good information about building a marketing plan specific to our kind of business can be found in the SfEP guide by Sara Hulse, Marketing Yourself: Strategies to promote your editorial business, and Louise Harnby’s Marketing your Editing and Proofreading Business.

2. Prepare a CV

You need something written down that tells people about your experience and what you can do for them. This could be in the form of a CV that’s informative but concise and easily adaptable to each target client. Or, if a traditional CV seems a bit stuffy, change it into a smart, compelling flyer instead – sell your skills! And, when you know exactly what services you’re going to provide, get yourself listed on as many free online directories as possible.

3. Nail your direct marketing

Even though you’re just a little-ol’ sole trader, you should be thinking of yourself as a brand. And to help ‘build your brand’, you must have a consistent style across your communication formats. Your website, flyers, social media profiles and business cards must all look, sound and ‘feel’ the same. This makes you more memorable, and ­– hey ­– you’re an editor, so consistency’s kind of important anyway.

But when it comes to targeting the right people, you’re also going to have to be prepared to engage with them for the long haul. And this means gathering and storing knowledge about them. Build a database detailing conversations you’ve had with individuals in organisations you’d like to work for … Remembering someone’s birthday or asking about their holiday in Greece might just swing a job in your favour.

4. Network, network, network

I know, I know … I give an involuntary shudder at the thought of this, too. But, as Chris points out, networking is really just making the most of human connections.

In Glasgow there are loads of networking opportunities, for example, Jobs and Business Glasgow and Business Gateway hold regular events. And (the one we all can’t wait to try) Weegie Wednesdays is a regular meeting of people interested in all aspects of publishing. So, why not give it a whirl? You never know what might turn up as a result of simply getting to know more people.

5. Get any financial help going!

Setting up as a sole trader and new business? There IS funding out there! You may be able to apply for a New Enterprise Allowance (approx. £1200), which will give you access to advice and support as well as money. Or try Jobs and Business Glasgow for help with your plans and access to a £200 start-up grant. This funding can help cover the costs of training, equipment and professional development as well as marketing.

6. Take advantage of free marketing courses

Did you know that you don’t even have to pay a fortune to learn the basics of marketing? Scotland’s Local Authorities run free training courses in things like Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation. You don’t even have to live in a specific authority to access its events!

7. Head to your local library

If you can trust yourself not to get distracted by all those fabulous books you’ve been meaning to read, Glasgow’s libraries provide resources that can help you target your direct marketing. For example, you can search for the contact details of up to 1000 businesses each year. And, the good news is, you don’t have to pay a penny.

8. Always ask for client feedback

This is for three reasons. One, you can find out where a new client got your details from (i.e. ‘Yes! That flyer was a winner’) and use this information to inform your marketing plan. Two, you can address any concerns that may not lead to repeat business. And, three, if your client is delighted with your work, you can ask them for a testimonial – one of the best marketing tools out there.

To find out more about Chris Bryce, head to her website at www.spotlighteditorial.com

Like to learn more about how to run your freelance editorial business, or how to improve your editing/proofreading skills? Come along to the next Glasgow SfEP meeting on Wednesday 18th May. For more information, contact Group Coordinator Denise Cowle.

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.

What’s so good about THIS blog?

post by GEN

As slaves to ‘the deadline’, we editor-types know that time is precious. And, as a result, most of us don’t have time to peruse all the editorial blogs we’d like. So we’re using this inaugural post to tell you why our blog is worth taking the time to read. Here goes …

Who writes the posts?

Members of the Glasgow Editors’ Network take it in turn to write these little gems of wisdom. This means you’ll find information and experience from an array of editorial professionals who work with a variety of clients, including authors, publishers, large companies, charities and SMEs.

Who will find this blog useful?

Lots of people! (Because we blog about a whole host of stuff that’s good to know.) But, specifically, our posts are designed to be interesting and informative for:

  1. Editorial professionals – our members are generous with their knowledge and regularly share their on-the-job experiences (& some nice handy tips) to help others in their work.
  2. Those wishing to use the services of an editorial professional – this blog is also for individuals, businesses and organisations looking to improve the quality of their online and paper publications – and, consequently, the reputation of their brand. (You’ll even glean little titbits worth knowing – the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ – before employing one!)

So, go on. Take five minutes and dive in. You never know what you might find out about Glasgow’s editors and what we can do for you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Glasgow Editors’ Network  – GEN – is a group of independent professional editors and proofreaders with a wide range of skills and extensive experience.