Author: WCE Editor

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February 19, 2020: Peer Group “Ant”-ics

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What: Editors BC monthly meeting
When: Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 7:00–9:00 pm
Where: New room | Room 920, 9th floor, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver | map
Cost: Free for Editors BC members, non-members, and students.

Are you a solitary worker ant, dealing with professional isolation in your office, freelance business, or region? Do you want to discuss victories, challenges, and resources with others in your field? Would you like to create a colony of support and learning? Join us at our next monthly meeting for a panel discussion led by Editors BC member Lynn Slobogian on how peer groups can help you.

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February 29, 2020: Usage Woes and Myths

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What: Editors BC professional development seminar
When: Saturday, February 29, 2020, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: Room 400, 4th floor, BCIT Downtown Campus, 555 Seymour Street, Vancouver | map
Cost: $165 for Editors Canada members ($135 early bird), $230 for non-members ($200 early bird), and $100 for student affiliates. Advance registration required. Registration closes February 25; early-bird rates are in effect through February 11.

You’ve sorted out imply and infer. You know it’s not all right to use alright. Hopefully, you accept impact as a verb (not to mention hopefully as a sentence adverb). But what about more troublesome usage points, like the difference between may and might? Or such commonly misused words as dilemma and fulsome? Do you always have to change though to although, till to until? For anyone intent on preventing (not avoiding) word errors and avoiding (not preventing) usage myths, this seminar will help. 

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Book Review: Dreyer’s English

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Written by Frances Peck; copy edited by Annette Gingrich

Review of “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style” by Benjamin Dreyer (Random House, 2019).

"Dreyer's English" by Benjamin Dreyer

Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style hit the shelves a year ago. Or perhaps I should say it briefly touched the shelves, seeing as copies sold as fast as they could be printed. Repeating the improbable success of the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, Benjamin Dreyer’s guide sold umpteen copies and topped bestseller lists.

I’ve long followed Dreyer on Twitter, where he is natty, chatty, and sometimes catty. The same irresistible combination makes his book, from cover to cover, a trove of delights.

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January 25, 2020: The Art of the Query and Style Sheets with Substance

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What: Editors BC professional development seminar
When: Saturday, January 25, 2020, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: Room 555, 5th floor, BCIT Downtown Campus, 555 Seymour Street, Vancouver | map
Cost for both seminars: $165 for Editors Canada members ($135 early bird), $230 for non-members ($200 early bird), and $100 for student affiliates. Advance registration required. Registration closes January 21; early-bird rates are in effect through January 13.

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January 15, 2020: Peer Group “Ant”-ics

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Our January meeting has been cancelled due to bad weather and travel warnings from the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure and from Translink. We hope to re-schedule the meeting for February. In the meantime, please stay safe and warm!

What: Editors BC monthly meeting
When: Wednesday, January 15, 2020, 7:00–9:00 pm
Where: New room | Room 916, 9th floor, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver | map
Cost: Free for Editors BC members, non-members, and students.

Are you a solitary worker ant, dealing with professional isolation in your office, freelance business, or region? Do you want to discuss victories, challenges, and resources with others in your field? Would you like to create a colony of support and learning? Join us at our next monthly meeting for a panel discussion led by Editors BC member Lynn Slobogian on how peer groups can help you.

Continue reading →
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Event Review: Lana Okerlund’s “Do the Work You Want: A Guided Strategic Retreat for Editors”

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Written by Janice Love; copy edited by Emma Caplan

Does your editing career need an edit? Are you doing the kind(s) of editing you want to do? Are you gaining the value, whether monetary or otherwise, you want from the editing work you do?

These are all questions I had, and so Lana Okerlund’s offer to help via her guided strategic retreat for editors was worth the winter trip to Vancouver from Vernon!

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Give the Gift of Boundaries: Navigating Work in the Holiday Season

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Written by Liz Warwick; copy edited by Annette Gingrich

The holiday season has arrived, and if you believe the media, people now spend their days buying presents, baking up delicious goodies, and listening to carols on repeat.

Missing from that picture is any mention of work, especially any last-minute calls from a client or boss asking you to tackle (or finish up) a project that requires working right up to, or even through, the holidays.

Dealing with eleventh-hour requests, at the holidays or anytime, starts long before the call comes. We all need to know our boundaries. Some people are willing to work 14 hours at a stretch to complete a job. Others aren’t. Those boundaries may change depending on the season and an editor’s time of life. But everyone needs them.

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Distilling Words to Their Essence: Editing Poetry for Impact

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Written by Emily Salja; copy edited by Meagan Kus

When we think about editing poetry, we first have to think about what poetry is. This is something that poets and critics have debated for decades—what is poetry?

All writing, to an extent, comes from the heart—creative writing in particular—and poetry is one of those strange, elusive creatures that is stitched together mostly by heartstrings. Poetry is the least efficient way of conveying a message. It is the language of trauma and inarticulable feelings. In poetry, we write around things instead of at them. How do we edit something so personal?

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Meet the Instructor: Lana Okerlund

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Written by Carl Rosenberg; copy edited by Lydia du Bois

A smiling Lana Okerlund faces forward, wearing a grey cardigan, pink sweater, and silver hooped necklace.On Saturday, November 30, Editors BC presents Lana Okerlund’s professional development seminar, “Do the Work You Want (and Earn More Doing It): A Guided Strategic Retreat for Editors.”

This six-hour seminar is designed as a guided strategic retreat to help you envision your ideal editing career, understand your current situation, and develop a plan to close the gap. Through stimulating discussion and hands-on activities, you will:

  • Establish a strategic vision for your editing business or career
  • Set objectives for the clients you want to work with, the projects you want to do, the amount you want to earn, and the work practices and professional development you want to invest in
  • Figure out how to gauge your progress toward your objectives
  • Learn how to analyze information about your business or career so you can adjust or develop new strategies to meet your goals

Whether you’re an experienced editor or new to the editing world, you will come away from the seminar with a draft strategy for taking charge of your business or career so you can steer it in the direction that you want it to go. Freelance editors will find this seminar most useful, though in-house editors can also benefit from thinking about career goals in a more strategic way.

For this seminar, Lana draws on her experience as a freelance editor and as a former business consultant, when she spent nearly a decade working with clients on strategic visioning, business planning, performance measurement, and other business improvement projects. She has found tremendous value in applying these business concepts while building her own editing career. A partner with West Coast Editorial Associates, Lana edits, indexes, and writes non-fiction books and teaches editing and business writing courses.

Carl Rosenberg, a volunteer on Editors BC’s communications and social media committee, spoke to Lana about her forthcoming seminar.

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