What Editors Do

I'm a published chapter author!

Editor Peter Ginna put together a book commissioned by the University of Chicago Press: What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing.


And I was asked to write the chapter on what it is that freelance editors do, how they come to be self-employed, and what professional and business issues they must deal with. Take a look at page 2 of the table of contents to see the listing for chapter 24, which is mine. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.) I hope all of you self-employed editors feel, when you read my chapter, that I have represented us well.

Some very cool people whom I admire also contributed chapters, including Scott Norton, who wrote the book Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers; the Carol Fisher Saller​, who wrote the book The Subversive Copy Editor; and Jane Friedman.

As Peter says in his most recent blog post, the book was written because

It seems ironic that for those who are interested in going into the book business, or those outside it who want to understand it, there is a dearth of published guidance about how editors do what they do, or why, or what constitutes best practices in editing. There are a few very good exceptions to that statement, most notably the late Gerald Gross's essay collection Editors on Editing, first published in 1962, updated twice since, and still in print. I read the second edition avidly when I got into publishing in the early 1980s, and it is still well worth reading, with contributions from many accomplished (in some cases legendary) editors. But EoE was last updated in the early 90s, before Amazon and the internet, among other factors, transformed the industry. It was long past time for another crack at the subject.

You are invited to preorder the book now; it will be available in October. It will come out first in paperback and hardcover, and then there will be an e-book version later.

Why Editors Don't Work for Free

Would you ask a computer repair technician or a real estate agent to work for free? Of course not. Then why would you ask an editor to work for free? Editing isn't a hobby or a cause; it's a profession that requires training.

But maybe you don't know what editing entails. Maybe you think anyone can do it because it's just like reading for pleasure (hint: it's not!), so you think it should be done for free. Here are links to articles and blog posts about what thorough work editing really is:

• "Let Us Now Praise Editors," from Salon

• "Why Every Author Needs an Editor," from EditorMom

• "Why Editors Should Build Relationships with Authors, and How They Can Do So," from the American Society of Business Publication Editors

• "Why Does Editing Take So Much Longer Than Reading for Pleasure or Interest?" from EditorMom

• "One Editor’s Editing Process," from the blog of the Indian Copyeditors Forum

And here are links to blog posts about the training and continuing professional development necessary to be an editor:

• "How to Transition to Copyediting From Another Career," from EditorMom

• "How to Become a Medical Editor," from The Editors' Weekly

An Editor's View of Manuscript-Editing Services for Academic Authors

Editor at work

From what I have observed over the years, editing services put their editors under pressure to cut corners and do lower-quality work to meet deadlines. And it stands to reason that publishers of academic journals who partner with editing services would exert the same kind of pressure. Authors who use these services may be unhappy with the outcome. Some authors may even be inexperienced enough that they do not realize that the editing could have been much better, and then they may be unhappy when publishers reject their manuscripts for poor-quality writing.

See a definition of the term editing services in the section "Editing Services" on this page:

Editing firms may employ a team of in-house editors, rely on a network of individual contractors or both. ... Such firms are able to handle editing in a wide range of topics and genres, depending on the skills of individual editors. The services provided by these editors may be varied and can include proofreading, copy editing, online editing, developmental editing, editing for search engine optimization (SEO), etc.

I do understand that some self-employed editors may have to work with editing services for a while to build up their experience, and that some editors prefer to work through services rather than on their own. But I cannot believe that the authors who obtain editing through editing services are getting top-quality work for the low fees they pay. Cheaper is not always better.

A newsletter article about American Journal Experts (AJE), an academic editing service for authors that says it has a partnership with Cambridge University Press, talks about how editing services work. The article reads less like news than like a promo for the editing service.

Many of these services don't allow direct contact with authors, which makes it harder for editors to do good work: Authors are the ones who know what they're trying to say in their manuscript, so it works best when the editors working on the manuscripts can have conversations with the authors about problematic passages.

Take a look at this article in the journal Nature for more on how editing services work in the academic world: "The Manuscript-Editing Marketplace." The article talks about AJE, Edanz, Editage, and MacMillan Science Communication, the latter of which is owned by Nature's parent company. It compares how those companies work with how the online editorial marketplace Peerwith works.

I looked at this page today (April 3) of Peerwith's website and saw very low rates that some Peerwith editors charge their clients: US$400 for a 10,000-word manuscript on Asian studies, US$220 for a 4500-word manuscript on medical mycology, and US$300 for a 4700-word manuscript on molecular biology. On top of that, Peerwith charges editors a service fee of 10% to 20%. (Find the information on services fees by clicking the "Fees & Payments" button on this page.)

Peerwith's structure, like that of editing services, does not seem to be designed for editors to earn livable incomes. Editors who want to work through such an intermediary will have to work on a lot of manuscripts in a very short period to earn much money at all, which can mean they must do lower-quality editing. That's a losing proposition for editors and authors alike.

Full disclosure: I do not work with editing services. Instead, I work directly with physician-authors who are non-native English speakers. In 2016, I took part in a panel presentation at the annual meeting of the Council of Science Editors. For that session, I spoke about being a sole proprietor who works directly with authors, and AJE's quality manager spoke about self-employed editors who accept project assignments through AJE.

Tutorials and Tools for Doing PDF Markup

If you have to annotate PDFs, you can find plenty of help and answers to your questions. Both Adobe and several of my colleagues have provided video tutorials, blog posts, and articles on the topic.

• Video series "Annotating PDFs: A Piece of the Digital Workflow":
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

• Blog post "Basic PDF Mark-Up for Copy Editors and Proofreaders"

• Blog post "Create a Checklist of Your PDF Mark-up in 2 Clicks"

• Adobe tutorials:
• "Creating a Custom Dynamic Stamp Using Acrobat XI"
• "Creating custom stamps in Acrobat 9"
• "Keyboard shortcuts" for Acrobat DC

• Blog post "Edit Tools for Marking up PDFs in Acrobat"

• Blog post "Key Mark-Up Techniques for Proofreading PDFs"

• Blog post "Roundup: PDF Proofreading Stamps"

• Collection of blog posts about working with PDFs (Note that there are 3 pages' worth of links to posts!)

The Nitty-Gritty of the Editing Process

Each editor approaches the editing process differently. I wrote a post in April 2016 for the blog of the Indian Copyeditors' Forum on my particular process, in the hope that other editors would find it useful.

How to Become a Medical Editor

There is no single official way to become a medical editor, but fellow editors frequently ask how to get into this niche. I wrote a post on the topic in 2016 for The Editors' Weekly, the blog of Editors Canada/Réviseurs Canada, that outlines the steps I recommend. It is reprinted below, with some updates made to this version.

As a medical editor, I think I have the best job in the world. While I’m getting paid to edit medical manuscripts, I get to keep up with the latest research findings and treatment practices. There is a lot of this kind of work if you know where to look. Although there is no single way to become a medical editor, I have suggestions for you.

This was my path to becoming a medical editor: I earned a degree in journalism, worked as a newspaper reporter and ended up on the medical beat, moved into general publishing as a production editor, became a production editor for a medical publisher, started freelancing and then took an exam to obtain board certification as an editor in the life sciences. Journalism and publishing have both changed so much in the last few years, however, that you’ll have to take another path. It won’t be quick, but starting a new career or moving into a new niche never is.

Try all of these things, but not all at once:

• Learn the medical style manual most often used in your country. In the United States, that is the AMA Manual of Style. I am told that Vancouver style is sometimes preferred in Canada. If learning a new style seems overwhelming, read “How to Learn a Style Guide in 10 Days,” a handout from the 2012 national conference of ACES: The Society for Editing.

• Read medical journals frequently to get familiar with the language and style and to assess how well their editors follow the style manual that you’re studying.

• Read books on medical terminology. Search for the word medical on the “Editing Tools” page of the Copyeditors’ Knowledge Base for links to appropriate books.

• Read the “New Medical Writers Toolkit” from the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA).

• Take online courses from the AMWA.

• Earn the Certificate in Medical Editing from AMWA (new as of 2024).

• Take online courses from the Drug Information Association.

• Take online courses in medical writing and editing from

• The University of Chicago Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies


• The University of California San Diego Extension


• Medical writer Emma Hitt Nichols, who offers a six-week course in medical writing a few times a year.

• Join AMWA to

• Take advantage of lower prices for courses and annual meetings


• Have access via email discussion lists to colleagues willing to answer questions


• Have access to current issues of the AMWA Journal.

• Read back issues of Science Editor, the journal of the Council of Science Editors.

• Read back issues of European Science Editing, the journal of the European Association of Science Editors.

• Consider freelancing initially for science and medical packagers (intermediaries) and editing services. The pay will be low, but you will learn a lot and can move on to better-paying clients. I periodically update a PDF with links to these organizations.

• Contact medical publishers and journals about editing for them. You’ll be required to take an unpaid editing test.

• Follow the advice in “How to Find Medical Editing Freelance Work.”

I know that some of the advice I’ve provided here is U.S.-centric. Do you have additional Canadian resources to provide? Please share links to them in the comments, and I’ll gladly share them in other venues.


Note: Some links in this post were updated on January 25, 2019; others were updated December 15, 2024. Reprinted here with the permission of The Editors’ Weekly and Editors Canada.

Editing Research: The Author Editing Approach to Providing Effective Support to Writers of Research Papers

Note: This is not a book review, because I am an expert quoted in the book. Even if I were not quoted, though, I would still think Editing Research to be a well-written, important resource for those who need to know more about editing for authors of scholarly manuscripts.

Valerie Matarese, a biomedical writer and editor, has written Editing Research: The Author Editing Approach to Providing Effective Support to Writers of Research Papers. If you do scholarly editing and work with authors (called author editing) who are non-native English speakers—or if you’d like to move into this specialty—this is the book you want.

Matarese interviewed 8 experienced authors’ editors, including me, about many aspects of this editorial niche. Because there hasn’t been much documentation of this specialty, Matarese’s research is both valuable and immensely helpful to practitioners of authors’ editing and to those in other areas of publishing, such as journal publishers, journal editors-in-chief, journal staff members, and peer reviewers who aren’t familiar with what these practitioners do.

The following organizations and discussion lists for editorial professionals are quoted and/or profiled in the book:

• American Medical Writers Association (AMWA); www.amwa.org

• Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS); www.bels.org

• Copyediting-L (CE-L); www.copyediting-l.info

• Council of Science Editors (CSE); www.councilscienceeditors.org

• Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC); www.editors.ca

• European Medical Writers Association (EMWA); www.emwa.org

• European Association of Science Editors (EASE); www.ease.org.uk

• Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA); www.the-efa.org

• Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd); http://iped-editors.org

• Mediterranean Editors and Translators (MET); www.metmeetings.org

• Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP); www.sfep.org.uk

• Society for Technical Communication (STC); http://stc.org

• Society of English Native-Speaking Editors (SENSE); www.sense-online.nl

Here is the table of contents:

Chapter 1: Aims and Challenges of Writing for Publication in Today’s Global Research Environment

The Research Publishing Landscape

The State of Scholarly Writing

The Internationalization of Scholarly Writing

Writing in Isolation

Less Support from Publishers

Chapter 2: Editing in the Sciences and Other Scholarly Disciplines

Editing Defined

The First Publishers and Editors

Levels of Editing

A Temporal Classification of Editing

Chapter 3: Authors’ Editors: Partners in Communication at the Service of Researchers and Editors

The First Authors' Editors

Development of Author Editing for Research

Do We Call Ourselves Authors' Editors?

Chapter 4: Authors’ Editors in Action: A Qualitative Research Foray

Research Design

Expert Informants

Bibliographic Research and Integration with Qualitative Research Findings

Chapter 5: View from the Academy: The Delicate Position of Editing Services among Needs and Concerns

Researchers’ Motivations to Seek Editing

Researchers’ Vocalization of the Editing Request

Alternative Academic Views of Editors and Editing

Chapter 6: Editing Research Articles and Other Genres for Publication in Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Journals

Substantive Editing of Research Papers

Author Editing Requires Dialog with Authors

Added Value for Researcher–Authors

Better Science Communication, Less Research Waste, and Safeguarded Investments

What Author Editing Is Not

Acknowledgments and Editing Certificates

The Impact of Editing

Chapter 7: Becoming and Being an Authors’ Editor

Career Path to Author Editing

Networks for Collegiate Exchange and Training Opportunities

Certificates of Achievement and Certification of Skills

Educational Background

Field Specialization

Multilingualism and Multiculturalism

Rapport with Clients

Versatility

Conclusions

Chapter 8: The Editing Setting

Autonomous Editing (Freelance Editors)

Research Center Editing (In-house Editors)

Service Provider Editing (Editors Working through an Intermediary)

The Business of Author Editing

Chapter 9: Editing Scholarly Genres for Other Media: Common Goals but Unique Issues

Grant Applications

Lay Summaries

Press Releases

Web Content and Other Digital Media

Theses and Dissertations

Chapter 10: Synthesis and Projection

What We Have Learned So Far

What We Have Yet to Learn

Advice to Authors’ Editors

Advice to Research Administrators

The Future of Author Editing

Appendices

Appendix 1: Membership Associations of Particular Relevance to Authors’ Editors

Appendix 2: Peer-Reviewed Journals of Relevance to Author Editing

Updated September 2, 2016: Copyediting newsletter has posted a review of the book on its blog.

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Editing Research: The Author Editing Approach to Providing Effective Support to Writers of Research Papers, by Valerie Matarese. Publisher: Information Today, Inc. Available in paperback (ISBN: 978-1-57387-531-8; US$49.50; preorder price: $34.65); Kindle version coming soon. 244 pages.

Busting the Myth of the Feast-or-Famine Cycle

Dear self-employed editorial colleagues:

It's a myth that our workflow must be in a perpetual feast-or-famine cycle.

If you do at least a few small marketing activities every day (or every business day), even when you have enough work and even when you feel panicky about lack of work, you can eventually get to the point where work finds you instead of the case always being that you must find the work. I’ve been self-employed for 21 years now, and this has happened for me. It has happened for other freelancers I know who have been in the game for a long time.

No, marketing doesn’t mean going around plastering messages everywhere like “I’m the best [editor, proofreader, indexer, designer, etc.] ever” or “Please send me a project so that I can pay my mortgage [or rent].” So many freelancers say things like “I don’t want to blow my own horn.” But that’s not what marketing is.

All that marketing means is doing things so that you’re visible online where your target clients can find you. It means sharing knowledge, not bragging. It can involve teaching courses (to potential clients to show your expertise), writing blog posts, being active in professional associations so that colleagues see what you can do and will think of you for referrals, being active on professional email lists (such as Copyediting-L) and in Facebook editors' groups, posting articles and status updates to LinkedIn, writing articles for professional newsletters and journals, and tweeting about your profession without saying, “Please contract with me now!” It doesn’t have to be done in every possible venue either; choose a few that feel natural to you and start talking.

It’s not going to happen within just a couple of weeks, and you’ll have to be dedicated to marketing your business. Also, not every marketing activity has to be a huge, time-consuming project. There are lots of little things you can do.

You might find these blog posts of mine helpful:

Marketing Tips for Freelancers

Dear Newly Self-Employed Editors . . .

The 1.5-Hour Daily Social Media Schedule

If you’re an introvert, don’t let that stop you. I’m one, and I’m all over the Internet.

How to Be a Good Mentor

I've mentored many editors, including generalists and medical editors, over the years and have developed mentoring practices that work well. The practices that Kelleen Flaherty,* a fellow member of the American Medical Writers Association, described for mentoring medical writers in a recent article in the AMWA Journal are in line with what I do. If you mentor colleagues, consider adapting her practices to your situation:

1. Provide general, concrete guidelines to a mentee. No details, just generalities.
2. Never tell your mentee what to do. Guide them to finding it out on their own.
3. Provide structure without specifics. If you edit excessively, they will not develop the critical thinking skills essential to being a good medical writer. Circle something and say “style,” not “You need a comma here and this is a compound modifier that requires a hyphen.” Use “clarity,” “organization,” and “grammar” as general prompts—do not provide corrections. Provide deadlines, guidelines, and examples, and let them fill in the blanks.
4. When your mentee hits a wall, that’s good. There is no better learning experience. You must convince your mentee that it’s good to have had that experience. This is not a platitude; it is a solid truth. Real science works this way, real life works this way, real jobs work this way. Nothing works perfectly. Nothing. Your survey doesn’t always work. The editor of a journal doesn’t always want to publish your manuscript. Good! Get rejected! Now you know how to get rejected! This person knows more about the industry than someone who has never hit a bump.
5. When a mentee hits a bump, assess your substrate. How do you assist the mentee over the bump? Different substrates require different assists. “Man up” works for some, “Step away from it for a few days and go camping” works for others, while still others might need a 2-hour you-can-do-it-I-have-faith-in-you phone call.
6. Understand your mentee’s limitations. Some have some significant ones. Age, maybe, fear, mental challenges (attention deficit disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum, etc), physical disorders, or family issues. When you’re a mentor, you’re going to get more confessions than any other teacher is going to get. It’s private and absolutely none of your business and you’d never ask, but when the information is offered, it helps you understand more about where your student is coming from.
7. How do I get a job? That’s a major fear with new medical writers—it’s a major fear with experienced jobless medical writers. Counsel them in job-hunting, cold-calling, networking, working with recruiters, and listing themselves on job sites; review their writing tests if they get them, and review their résumés or [curricula vitae]; write recommendations for them or otherwise serve as [a reference].
8. Do not lie. If they have limitations, as a mentor, you are ethically obliged to make them aware of them. This is tough. There are always positives (“You really know your reg guidelines”), and you should start with those. If their organization, clarity, or grammar is compromised, you need to let them know. This does not mean they are unfit medical writers, only that they have limitations. With the structure of a particular job environment, you never know how they’ll do.
9. Provide the basic mechanics of professional guidelines. How do you write emails? Answer job posts? Engage in professional organizational discussion boards? Create a Web page? Work on social media? Hook them up with the right professionals in the field for advice (and hook them up with AMWA as soon as they start their studies. I’m not shilling here; this is just a fact). 
10. ... [C]are deeply about your charges, and let it show. Let them know they can talk to you. Respect them. And of course, you should have every expectation that the respect is reciprocal.

Watch for my own article on how to treat your mentor in the August–September 2016 issue of Copyediting newsletter, available through a paid subscription.
______________

Flaherty is an adjunct assistant professor in the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia Graduate Biomedical Writing Programs, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I have reprinted a segment of her article from the AMWA Journal with her permission. The full article is available online only to AMWA members: Flaherty K. Mentoring new medical writers [in the column Commonplaces]. AMWA Journal. 2016;31(2):64–67.

The Editing Software and Macro Packages I Use

A colleague asked what editing software I use. I'm happy to share that information, but what works for one editor may not be a good fit for other editors who work on manuscripts in different genres or even in different industries. I'm a medical editor, and here's my list:

• Macros for Editors, a free downloadable book of more than 450 macros for use in automating editing tasks

• Edifix, a cloud-based subscription service that edits, styles, links, and tags bibliographic references, using any of multiple standard styles

• FileCleaner, a collection of macros that cleans up common problems in electronic manuscripts within Microsoft Word, including multiple spaces, multiple returns, unnecessary tabs, and improperly typed ellipses (available for Windows and Macintosh)

• ListFixer, a collection of macros that fixes problems with automatically numbered lists and bulleted lists within Microsoft Word (available for Windows and Macintosh)

• NoteStripper, a collection of macros that allows the user to do several things within Microsoft Word to embedded and automatically numbered references and endnotes, including (1) stripping notes to or from the ends of sections or from the end of a document and (2) turning inline tagged notes into embedded notes (available for Windows and Macintosh)

• PerfectIt, a program for enforcing consistency on many levels throughout a manuscript (available for Windows and Macintosh)

• ReferenceChecker, a macro that works within Microsoft Word to verify whether each entry in a reference list is cited correctly in a manuscript; works with name–date citations and with numbered citations (available only for Windows). [Updated March 10, 2017.] Note: March 10, 2017, is the last day that you can buy and download a license for ReferenceChecker. It will no longer be sold by GoodCitations.com but will continue to work, depending on the version of Microsoft Word that you have, if you have downloaded the software and purchased a license.

• Stedman's Plus 2016 Medical/Pharmaceutical Spellchecker, standard edition, which integrates with Microsoft Word's spelling checker (available for Windows and Macintosh)

The Editorium, which creates and sells several of the Word add-ins and macro packages listed above, has other programs that editors find useful.

EditTools is a package of editing macros (available only for Windows) from wordsnSync that is frequently updated. As of this writing, it contains 36 macros to automate editing tasks, including Reference Number Order Check, the only macro I'm aware of that has been written to take human error out of the process of renumbering lists of out-of-order references.

For links to many more programs, macro packages, applications, blog posts, and style guides for editors, see the "Editing Tools" page of my Copyeditors' Knowledge Base.

Surviving Self-Employment When You're a Parent

I've been self-employed for 21 years, for the entire life-spans of two of my three children and now with three grandchildren around, so I know just how challenging it is to juggle parenting and freelancing, just as it is to juggle parenting and in-house employment. Erin Brenner has tips for surviving.

To the links she shares, I would add these:

• “5 Ways to Juggle Freelancing and Parenting—Without Losing Your Mind”

• “Balancing Family and Freelance Journalism”

• “Dear Newly Self-Employed Editors . . .”

• “Freelancing as a Stay-at-Home Parent: 7 Smart Ways to Be More Productive”

• “How to Win as Both a Parent and a Freelancer”

• Juggling on a High Wire: The Art of Work-Life Balance When You're Self-Employed [book]

• “My Husband and I Are Full-Time Freelancers—and Full-Time Parents

A Certificate Program and Professional Certification Are Not the Same

Obtaining a certificate is not the same as achieving professional certification.

Please note that certificate programs can be very valuable. But I want to make sure that editorial professionals don't think they're the same as professional certification. Someone on one of the profession-related email discussion lists that I subscribe to conflated the two concepts today.

When you are given a certificate, it is a usually a piece of paper noting that you have completed a course or a series of courses. In contrast, professional certification requires that you have professional experience and have passed a thorough assessment examination. Passing the examination allows you to use a specific professional designation after your name. For example, because I have achieved professional certification as an editor in the life sciences, I am allowed to use the professional designation ELS after my name.

The page "Professional Certification vs. Certificate Program" of the website of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has a good discussion of the differences between the two concepts. Scroll down to the heading "Difference Between Professional Certification and Certificate Program." The chart in that section is especially helpful.

The United States does not have any organizations that provide professional certification of general editing proficiency. Note, however, that the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences provides professional certification of editing proficiency in the life sciences [updated August 11, 2016].

Editors Canada is one of several professional associations outside the United States that does provide general professional certification. [Updated January 7, 2025:] Editors who live outside Canada can take the organization's certification examinations. The "Qualifying for the Editors Canada Professional Certification Exams" page of the organization's website says:

If you work in English—no matter what country you live in—you're welcome to take Editors Canada's professional certification exams. The benefits of Editors Canada Professional Certification are recognized worldwide.

Editors Canada now offers a remote testing option through which candidates can write anywhere, by organizing their own test location and invigilator [updated July 29, 2019].

For more information, write to info@editors.ca.

How to Become a Medical Editor

There is no standardized process for becoming a medical editor. But in a guest post on The Editors' Weekly, the blog of Editors/Réviseurs Canada, I provide a map for one way to do it.

One Editor's Editing Process

Editing just means reading and looking for typos, right? Wrong. In a guest post on the blog of the Indian Copyeditors Forum, I lay out the steps I follow in editing medical-journal manuscripts.

If you follow additional steps or a different set of steps in your process, please share them in the comments so lots of editors can benefit.

Getting Unstuck from the Editorial Mire

Publishing consultant Iva Cheung has posted her coverage of the panel discussion of project management at the recent national conference of the Northwest Independent Editors Guild. This point from Cheung’s write-up struck me as most important:

Sometimes we all find ourselves so mired that we feel we don’t have time to plan ahead or hire someone to help, but that attitude is self-defeating, said [panelist John] Marsh. “Take the time now, even if you are very pressed, to save time later on.”

Besides applying to project management, Marsh’s advice applies to several other facets of editorial work:

• We get attached to our slowpoke ways of doing things and tell ourselves that we don’t have time to learn faster ways, such as using macros and wildcard searches, using new-to-us software, and using Microsoft Word templates and styles. We wind up working far too many hours on a project and may lose money because our client won’t pay for time that wasn’t in the project budget.

• We get stuck working with clients who pay very low rates, rarely pay in a timely manner, are too demanding, and/or treat us shabbily in other ways. We tell ourselves that we don’t have time to look for better clients. We wind up with financial worries and decreased self-esteem.

• We work ridiculously long hours to finish a huge project, paying penalties of sleep deficits and poor mental and physical health. But if we take just a little time upfront and determine whether we can ask for an extended schedule or hire a subcontractor (or both), we might not end up frazzled or burned out.

• We mistakenly believe that marketing (1) is all about coming across as self-important, (2) requires a huge time investment and thus is intimidating or not doable, (3) is only for marketing experts, and/or (4) doesn’t really work for editorial professionals. Not surprisingly, not too many new clients will find us when we think like that . . . because they don’t know we exist.

Do make time to find ways out of the mire. Getting unstuck feels great, will keep burnout at bay, and will make your joy in your work evident to your clients—which will bring clients back to you for more projects.

Resources Discussing the Use of Singular "They"

Not being a linguist, I don't usually write posts detailing linguistic matters. This post is a reference list of good reading rounded up by my colleagues rather than a discussion of the use of the singular pronoun they. I am for the widespread use of they; the following items explain the issue much better than I can.

• "Dogma vs. Evidence: Singular They," from the blog Lingua Franca of the Chronicle of Higher Education

• "Everybody Has Their Own Opinion About the Singular They" [PDF from the former magazine Editorial Eye; note that there is a compilation of essays from the magazine available in book form, as Stet Again: More Tricks of the Trade for Publications People: Selections from the Editorial Eye]

• "Line 'Em Up, Knock 'Em Down," from John E. McIntyre's blog You Don't Say for the Baltimore Sun

• "Question from ACES2015: Is It Time to Accept ‘They’ as a Singular Pronoun?" from Pointer.org

• "Singular 'They' Is Old, Logical, and Grammatical," from the blog The Lousy Linguist

• "Singular They: The Pronoun That Came in from the Cold," from the journal Vocabula Review [For access, you must either obtain the article through interlibrary loan or purchase a subscription to Vocabula Review]

• "Spelling, Usage and the Singular 'They,' " from Visual Thesaurus

• Conscious Style Guide

• "They," from the blog Sesquiotica

• "They and the Gender-Neutral Pronoun Dilemma," from the blog Arrant Pedantry

• "The 'Singular They' Articles," compiled by Gael Spivak
  

Dear readers, if you have links that you think should be added here, please leave them in comments. Thank you.

Why Does Editing Take So Much Longer Than Reading for Pleasure or Interest?

Dear authors of articles for biomedical journals:

Editing is very unlike reading for pleasure or interest. It involves considering many issues. Here is a partial list of the issues that I address when editing your manuscript:

• Grammar
 
• Punctuation
 
• Spelling
 
• Syntax
 
• Good transition from one topic to another
 
• Overall topic organization
 
• Logic
 
• Accessibility:
• Did the author present enough information so that readers with various levels of expertise—longtime physician, nurse-practitioner, intern, medical student—can understand what is meant, or are there information gaps that should be explicitly addressed?
• Even though a specific abbreviation is already defined in the text, is it also defined in the caption for the figure where it is used, so that skimming readers don’t have to search the entire article to find out what the figure’s abbreviation means?
• Consistency (e.g., did the author use the abbreviation throughout, or did she use the full term sometimes and the abbreviation at other times?)
 
• Topic, figure, and table cross-references in text
 
• Verification of names of drugs, genera and species, and names of actual people, places, and organizations
 
• Appropriate citation of references
 
• Wordiness (getting rid of it)
 
• Jargon (making sure jargon is used appropriately—and that’s if it needs to be used at all)
 
• Bias-free writing:
• Sex
• Gender identification
• Parents versus nonparents
• Emotions (e.g., in research papers, using "killed the rats" instead of the emotion-laden "sacrificed the rats")
• Additional issues
• Style:
• Uppercase versus lowercase
• Standardizing references to follow AMA style
• Trademarks versus generic names
• Additional issues
• Presentation (What works best for reader comprehension here: straight text, a bulleted list versus a numbered list, a sidebar, a table, a figure?)
 
• Meta-issues (e.g., can I add an editorial comment referring readers to another article in the same issue or in a past issue that is about a topic related to the one covered in an article in the current issue?)

It takes time for your editor to address all of these issues and additional issues in helping you make your writing its very best, so please be patient. We editors are on your side.

How to Teach Yourself AMA Style

If you need to learn AMA style (AMA Manual of Style, 10th edition), you can check the websites of various editorial professional associations for courses on the topic. The American Medical Writers Association and the Editorial Freelancers Association, for example, periodically offer courses, workshops, and webinars on medical style.

But while you're waiting for courses to open up, you can cobble together your own program for learning AMA style:

• Buy a hardcover copy of the style manual and a subscription to the online version. There is an online form for ordering an individual subscription. Each day, spend 30 minutes to an hour studying a different portion of the manual until you've worked your way through it.
 
• Follow the advice in the handout "How to Learn a Style Guide in 10 Days" (a PDF) from the 2012 conference of the American Copy Editors Society.
 
• Bookmark the following sections of the manual, both in the hardcover and online:
 
• Proper usage: chapter 11
 
• Abbreviations for clinical, technical, and other common terms: chapter 11, section 14.11
 
• Units of measure: chapter 14, section 14.12
 
• Terminology for various medical specialties: chapter 15
 
• Reference lists: chapter 3
 
• Style for reference-list entries, within chapter 3:
 
• Regarding a journal article: section 3.11 (pages 47–52)
 
• Regarding printed books and chapters within them: section 3.12 (pages 52–56)
 
• Regarding newspaper articles: section 3.13.1 (page 57)
 
• Regarding government or agency bulletins: section 3.13.2 (pages 57–58)
 
• Regarding theses or dissertations: section 3.13.4 (pages 58–59)
 
• Regarding unpublished material: section 3.13.8 (pages 59–61)
 
• Regarding electronic media (such as online journals, websites, online conference proceedings, email list messages): section 3.15 (pages 63–72)

• Follow the blog AMA Style Insider.
 
• Take the many style quizzes available from the online version of the manual.
 
• Look at samples of AMA-style reference-list entries and citations. You can find additional samples via an online search, but check them against the manual itself to make sure they are valid.
 
• Take the inexpensive AMA style test, such as this one and this other one, offered by medical writer Emma Hitt Nichols. If you are subscribed to the HittList, which is a subscription email listing job opportunities for medical writers, watch for occasional announcements there of the availability of additional style tests for purchase.
 
• Purchase and listen to CDs from these audio conferences offered by Copyediting newsletter^*:
 
• "Common Problems in Medical Editing" (presenter: Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, self-employed medical editor and managing editor of the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine)
 
• "Common Problems in Science Editing" (presenter: Carolyn Joyce Brown, self-employed science and medical editor; formerly manager of the journals program for Research Press of the National Research Council of Canada)
 
• "Medical Copyediting: The Mechanics of Medical Editing"  (Daniel Sosnoski, editor-in-chief, Chiropractic Economics)
 
• "Medical Copyediting: Using the AMA Manual" (presenter: Stacy Christiansen, managing editor, JAMA)

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^*Note: After I wrote this post, Copyediting newsletter was redesigned after being sold to new owners. Thus, the links to the audio CDs given above no longer work. That may change as the site redesign continues. I will supply updated links for the CDs when they become available. This post was last updated on July 7, 2016.

When to Give It Away: Helping Writers Help Others

Sometimes we editors have the pleasure, after helping writers who create educational articles for people in service-related professions, of realizing that we have played a small part in making the world a better place. This is the story of one such case.

In June 2012, my colleague Laura Poole wrote a well-done and thorough guest post on my blog called "Copyediting Drug Names," dealing with trademarks, capitalization, and other usage points.

In March 2015, Sergeant William A. Doherty of the Floral Park Police Department, about 50 miles away from where I live on Long Island, wrote to me after finding Laura's post. He was writing an article for The New York State Chief's Chronicle, the journal of the New York State Chiefs of Police Association, and had questions about whether to use the "registered trademark" symbol (®) with drug names, about whether to include disclaimers stating that by mentioning drug brand names the Floral Park department wasn't necessarily endorsing the particular drugs, and whether and how to mention drug manufacturers' names.

Now, I earn income by editing, so I generally don't give away my services without charge. But I couldn't pass up the chance to help out a police sergeant who was reporting on patrol officers' use of a particular drug to help reverse opioid overdoses among people they encounter in emergency situations. So I answered his questions, and he turned in his article.

Now the article has been published (see this also), and Sergeant Doherty and the journal's editor have given me permission to share his article here.

His article will help other officers save lives. And the advice he obtained from Laura's blog post and from me helped ensure that the drug names used in his article were handled in a standardized way that is recognizable across professional disciplines. Sergeant Doherty, I salute you and your colleagues for the help you give to many citizens!

Spellism

Editors are detail people; we pay attention to the smallest parts of every manuscript. Thus, when my people get together in groups, sometimes they'll talk about their pet peeves regarding grammar, clichés, and spelling.

The longer I've been an editor, the less inclined I have become to engage in this airing of gripes. First, life's just too short to focus on irritants. Second, to me it smacks of intolerance for individual differences. The form of this peeving that bothers me the most is what I call "spellism." What is spellism? It's looking down on people who have difficulty spelling correctly.

Being a poor speller does not necessarily indicate low intelligence or a poor education. For example, my husband has always had difficulty spelling. So do our two sons, and so does my daughter from my first marriage. All of them are quite intelligent and have had (or are getting) good educations. Edward O'Moore-Klopf​, my husband, is a gifted cabinetmaker whose custom creations are lovely works of art. Neil​, our oldest son, is a talented apprentice cabinetmaker. Jared, our 13-year-old son, is a highly skilled gamer with an interest in history. He is an avid reader, is a budding leader, and has a wicked sense of humor. Rebecca Sanchez, my daughter, is an empathetic social worker who puts her heart into getting her clients the help that they need within confusing health-care, housing, and financial-aid systems. Should any of them think less of me because I am spatially dyslexic (my self-diagnosis), dislike gaming, or am not cut out to be a social worker?

Spellism doesn't do the reputation of editors any favors. Some people already see editors as hidebound rule followers, comma and hyphen freaks who are out to surgically remove authors' voices and make authors' works into our own because we're failed writers whose work can't find an audience on its own merits. So why engage in spellism? I think it's a tool for setting oneself apart from those "undesirable" others.

But my friend Martha Schueneman, an editor and writer, said today via a Facebook group and a private discussion, quoted here by permission:

This is one of my least favorite topics that comes up among editors. My ex is such a horrible speller that he frequently gets his name wrong. Give me someone who makes me laugh and is good at all the stuff I'm not good at—I'll discuss great books and parse grammar with colleagues, you know? Give me someone who's nice to a hotel maid and a waiter and who makes me laugh, and I'll put up with "between you and I." Even if it takes me a while to figure out what "ornches" [oranges] is on a grocery list.

So yes, if you're an editor, correct the spelling in documents you're paid to edit. But if you want to be seen as a scold and want to lose out on some potentially wonderful relationships, go ahead and make fun of those whose spelling is poor and reject them as unfit to be your friend or mate.