How to Scope Out Associations' Cultures, Keep Up with Their Conferences, and Learn from Them

Here is a 3-part tip for those who can't afford to attend annual conferences of editorial associations and/or who are considering joining one or more associations:

• First, bookmark links to the websites of associations you're interested in. If you want to know about more associations than just the few you've already heard about, check out the association links in the "Networking" section of the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base (CKB).

• Second, watch those websites for notice of upcoming conferences. During conference time, head to Twitter to find the associations' Twitter accounts. (Follow the links to those Twitter accounts that appear in the "Networking" section of the CKB.)

• Third, follow those accounts' tweets that are about the organizations' conferences. Most associations include an appropriate hashtag, or topic marker, in their conference tweets. For example, ACES: the Society for Editing is using the hashtag #ACES2020 for its tweets about its 2020 conference. You can search Twitter for that hashtag if you know it. [Updated October 11, 2019.]

You'll get a good sense of what the organizations have to offer you, and you'll also be engaging in some continuing professional development. Note: You do not have to have a Twitter account of your own to follow those tweets.

A Tale of Parenting and Self-Employment from the Low-Tech Days

This tale may resonate with those of you who are self-employed and have small children at home to care for. It's funny to me now, way after the fact.

Back in 1996, I was already self-employed as an editor. A child of mine, who shall be referred to as Toddler here, was in diapers. [Kind readers, please do not reveal Toddler's real name in the comments.] One morning I was editing a book manuscript—I don't remember whether it was fiction or nonfiction—and needed to do some fact-checking using reference works other than the ones I owned. I didn't yet didn't own a computer or cell phone, much less a smartphone, so I couldn't do Internet searches for the information I needed. That meant a trip to the library.

Did I want to take Toddler with me? No, Toddler would be bored because the reference section was nowhere near the children's section of the library. What to do? Brilliant idea: leave Toddler with my father-in-law, who at the time was a jazz-and-blues musician who worked nights, so both Toddler and I would be happy during the 30 minutes or so when I was at the library. Father-in-Law agreed, so I left him with Toddler and some of Toddler's toys.

I did my research at the library, and I returned home, thinking how happy the book manuscript's author and acquisition editor would be with the thoroughness of my fact-checking. I went to the downstairs apartment within my home, where my in-laws live and where Father-in-Law was taking care of Toddler.

I opened the door, and there stood Toddler, wearing a disposable diaper that was secured on each side with silver duct tape. I found that very odd. How had the duct tape gotten there?

I had forgotten to leave Father-in-Law with extra diapers, so when Toddler filled up his diaper, as toddlers will do, Father-in-Law improvised. He removed the diaper, disposed of its contents, put it back on Toddler, and used duct tape to secure it because he couldn't get the diaper's adhesive strips, put in place by the diaper's manufacturer, to work.

And that happened because I had no cell phone on which Father-in-Law could have called me to request clean diapers.

What You as a Researcher Get for My Fees

As an international physician-researcher, you can pay another editing service less to edit your manuscript, but will you get the same level of attention and care that you can get from KOK Edit?

Medical journal editors want manuscripts that are spelled and punctuated correctly. They want manuscripts to have proper grammar and to follow the journal's preferences. And other editing services will do that for you.

But journal editors want more than that. They want manuscripts to be well structured, to have the right tone for their publication, and to tell a research story rather than just recite data. That's where I can help you.

In addition to having extensive training in editing, I am board-certified as an editor in the life sciences. I will advise you when a table or figure will illustrate your findings better than text alone, help you report your research concisely, and even help you write a cover letter to accompany your submission.

For more than 2 decades, I have been editing manuscripts written by non-native English writers, so I know exactly how to help you hone your writing to meet journals' expectations. Authors whose manuscripts have been rejected by journals often come to me for help and then achieve publication after my in-depth editing.

You will face competition from many other researchers when you submit your manuscript to a journal. I will work with you to set deadlines that will honor your manuscript, so that I can take the time necessary to help you make your manuscript its best.

When I edit for you, I am your advocate in the publishing process. I help you communicate your research well to your English-speaking peers worldwide. I polish your writing so that it sounds as if you are a native English writer. And I help you decrease the amount of jargon in your manuscript so that more people will want to read it.

Contact me today to get started.

Talk Up the Profession of Editing or Watch Editorial Budgets Shrink

Copyeditors at the New York Times have sent a letter to the paper's executive editor and managing editor outlining why the plan to chop the editing staff by half is going to cause big problems, including putting the paper at risk for lawsuits.

From the letter, this is why editors are necessary:

After all, we are, as one senior reporter put it, the immune system of this newspaper, the group that protects the institution from profoundly embarrassing errors, not to mention potentially actionable ones.

I believe that all editors should spend a lot more time, all the time, educating the people who make the budgets about why editing is necessary.

I see lots of posts, in various editors' Facebook groups and on editors' email discussion lists, about how we editors should never toot our own horns. Such self-effacing behavior is exactly what gets editorial budgets cut, and I'm not talking about just newspapers' budgets. Yes, of course remember that the author is the one who created the work and the one whose voice should generally not be tampered with, but why hide from the world and never tell anyone about what makes your profession valuable?

By keeping a very low profile, we editors have helped create this problem. Now we must work to resolve it.

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.

---

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.