What: Editors BC monthly meeting
When: Wednesday, October 16, 2019, 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.
Join us at our next monthly meeting for a special presentation by Moreno Perazzolo, owner of Vancouver Media Marketing, and learn how to increase your visibility as an editor by using the Rapid-Fire Marketing method!
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Written by Nancy Tinari; copy edited by Katie Beaton
Ruth Wilson’s “Advanced Proofreading” seminar provided us with a wealth of information, tips, and exercises derived from Wilson’s decades of experience. The hours flew by as we learned, worked, and occasionally became sidetracked by those minute issues that editors love to debate.
Though the other participants and I had wildly divergent proofreading experiences, I’m confident that all of us found Wilson’s seminar to be valuable. Her material was extensive and broad enough to help near-beginners as well as those more experienced in hard copy markup, online markup, or both.
Written by Nancy Tinari; copy edited by Katie Beaton
The “Three-Degrees-from-Normal” panel event occurred on October 19, 2018, and it featured authors Kevin Chong (The Plague), Claudia Dey (Heartbreaker), Waubgeshig Rice (Moon of the Crusted Snow), and Rabindranath Maharaj (Adjacentland), with Claudia Casper moderating the conversation. In their new books, all of these authors wrote about crisis situations.
These writers also have in common tremendously vivid imaginations; however, the discussions about where the ideas for their books came from made these three-degrees-from-normal scenarios seem eerily plausible. Even though their settings and situations may seem extreme, they are all intimately related to what is happening in the world right now.
We got a taste of each writer’s imaginative world from Casper’s introductions and brief readings by the authors. Casper then asked the panellists to explain how the scenarios and ideas expressed in their novels could be related to current events.
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Written by Nancy Tinari; copy edited by Adrienne Munro
On Friday, October 19, I had the pleasure of attending the Vancouver Writers Festival on Granville Island. I’ve attended sessions there for many years now, and I invariably find the panels of writers inspiring and thought-provoking.
This year was no exception. In this article, I’m writing about an event entitled “Lives Off-Road,” featuring writers Kate Harris, Jan Redford, and Joanna Streetly, with moderator Amanda Lewis. (Lewis is the editorial director of Page Two Strategies, a company that helps writers with all aspects of producing self-published non-fiction books.)
Written by Nancy Tinari; copy edited by Maggie Clark
On the evening of October 18, 2016, three of Canada’s top writers spoke at the Vancouver Writers Fest to give a moving depiction of the late Ellen Seligman. Seligman, an editor with McClelland & Stewart for almost four decades, was esteemed for her work with many of Canada’s best-known writers, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and Jane Urquhart.
The panel discussion was moderated by Jared Bland; the writers taking part were Michael Helm, Steven Price, and Madeleine Thien. Seligman edited Helm’s and Price’s most recently published books (After James and By Gaslight, respectively) during the final year of her life, and she had previously edited Thien’s book Dogs at the Perimeter. These writers’ anecdotes about Seligman revealed an editor who, even in the face of mortal illness, remained unparalleled in her insights, devotion to her writers, and dedication to her work.
Written by Nancy Tinari; copy edited by Karen Barry
Review of “Yes, I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk” by Bill Walsh.
Yes, I Could Care Less is a funny book for editors. It’s for editors because, like Bill Walsh, we care about words deeply. We recognize aspects of our own personalities in his self-mockery about his obsessive-compulsive quirkiness and his editorial pet peeves. It’s a book for editors rather than a general audience because Walsh, a copy editor at The Washington Post since 1997, tackles some of the most difficult copy-editing conundrums that often stymie editors. Topics include subject-verb agreement “follies” with expressions like “a lot” and “one of those people,” restrictive/non-restrictive clauses with their tricky use of commas and the which/that choice, how to handle trademarks, difficult decisions about hyphenation, and the pitfalls of typesetting technology.
Yes, I Could Care Less reveals what a subjective task editing can be. There are rules, style books, and house style guides, but there are many issues upon which even expert copy editors will not agree. The book opened my eyes about the potential for creativity and what Walsh calls “tiny acts of elegance” in editing work.
by Nancy Tinari; review of presentation by Christine Middlemass, Manager of Collections & Technical Services at Vancouver Public Library (VPL) on the evolving landscape of our libraries, held at the March 19, 2014 EAC-BC branch meeting
Christine Middlemass, a librarian since 1978, provided a lively, fast-paced and thorough overview of how libraries have changed over the past two decades. Accelerating times have caused many challenges for libraries. Yet if librarians have half the competence and humour of Middlemass, book lovers can be confident that these establishments will remain the cornerstone of communities. As Vancouverites, we can feel smug: the Vancouver Public Library is the third largest in Canada and recently was rated number one in the world, tied with Montréal’s library network.
West Coast Editor 