The self-paced Editing for Point of View and Perspective class from Club Ed delves into finer editing considerations of particular benefit to developmental editors and line editors. As with all Club Ed courses, the materials and exercises are first-rate. After having taken many quality courses from Club Ed creator Jennifer Lawler, I’d picked up this […]
Too often people view editing as a one-way service in which the editor “corrects” the author’s prose. To get the most out of the author–editor relationship, however, it’s important to remember two things: • Editing is a conversation. • Edits are suggestions. (Though general principles still apply, the following is geared toward the relationship between […]
Isolating in our homes during the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly increased the amount of time we’re spending in virtual spaces for business, pleasure, and education. Before the pandemic, I had weekly meetings with clients on Google Hangouts and Skype, but since the shelter-in-place guidance I’ve seen a big increase in meetings via Zoom (not to […]
Lifting the lid on a slow cooker, even for a second, supposedly adds thirty minutes to cooking time. In much the same way, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of time lost when an interruption takes editors out of their editing groove. If I’m editing a manuscript and have to stop to address a […]
The other day I summed the word counts on my books-edited spreadsheet and saw that in the last two years I’ve edited over 3.5 million words. That’s a big number, the kind of number that’s impossible to fully imagine. Most of the books I copy edit or proofread range from 70,000 to 100,000 words, so […]
After a publisher client suggested that all its editors try Word’s Read Aloud feature to help eliminate errors such as missing or repeated words, I decided to give it a shot. I hadn’t used the feature before and suspected I’d react badly to another voice in my head while editing. But for a last look […]
Reading a manuscript aloud or listening to it being read can help writers and editors identify errors of spelling, grammar, or tone that they might miss otherwise. If you want to give this a whirl, you can read the manuscript out loud yourself, have someone else read it to you, or use a text-to-speech (TTS) […]
When used by doctors and air-traffic controllers, checklists save lives by ensuring that critical steps aren’t missed during high-stress situations. Editing doesn’t involve life-or-death stakes (usually), but checklists are still helpful for reducing complexity and lessening the burden on memory for routine tasks. Even after spending forty or more hours on a manuscript, it’s easy, […]
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is fast approaching, and many writers are biting their nails hoping they can find the time to pound out 50,000 words in November. “Not enough time” is a constant refrain among hopeful writers — and an understandable one. Day jobs, family, friends, chores, outside-of-work appointments, life(!) all come between writers […]
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