Editing / Usage

This week, we wanted to re-post one of our most consistently popular blogs: Barbara's 2015 blog on hyphenation! Even two years later, it's always at the top of our "most viewed" lists -- clearly, tips about hyphenation are never out of season! We hope it reaches some new writers seeking guidance and helps them out too.     They say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. ...

Language & Editing

    The political world gets progressively denser every day, especially the world of US politics. And, though Canadians often pretend at being secure from the political meltdown south of the 49th parallel, the reality is that it's incumbent upon those of us who live north of the border to learn all we can about both the Canadian and US systems of governance . and propaganda.   Participating in, or at...

Editing

    Remember Groucho Marx's famous quip? "One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got into my pyjamas I'll never know. " What makes this joke work is, of course, the misplaced modifier "in my pyjamas. " But what if Groucho hadn't added that second sentence? Would you have noticed a problem?    What Are Misplaced Modifiers? Put simply, misplaced modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses separated from...

Event

    With April's end, we draw ever closer to Editors Canada's 2017 conference, entitled "Guardians of the Lexicons. " With just over a month until the conference's start (the conference runs from June 9 to June 11), panelists and presenters are likely busy working out the kinks in their presentations and finalizing their travel arrangements for their trip to Gatineau, Quebec, where the conference will be held.   But what will the...

Guest Blogger

    Standing up and standing out is easier than you may think!   Picture this scene: You are speaking confidently in front of forty people in your company, delivering a special presentation. Your heart is beating fast, but as you scan the audience, you see smiles and looks of appreciation on the faces of your colleagues. You know all is going very well; you feel confident, proud, appreciated, and skilled.   Now,...

Editing & Technologies

Leafing through a copy of The Editorial Eye, Vol. 17, No. 9 from September 1994, I noticed a helpful article on abbreviations for technical terms. In it, Candee Wilson showcases suggestions from a number of Eye readers on how to appropriately abbreviate the terms kilobyte, kilobit, megabyte, and megabit.   To avoid confusion, some readers suggested using "kbyte" and "kbit. " IBM's practice in 1994 was to use...

Editing

TEC has had a number of dissertations cross our desks over the past few months, and working on these important documents is always a process that requires a lot of attention and an eye for detail. We take editing dissertations (and theses as well) very seriously: when we work on such a document, we know the work we do can have huge impact on our client's life. We...

Editing

  Having your thesis or dissertation edited by a professional editor can be an incredibly valuable investment. After all, a graduate degree is typically a once-in-a-lifetime venture, and is meant to be foundational to your future career. A professional editor is paid to spend substantial amounts of time and energy (something even the best supervisors don't have a lot of) reading your work and providing thorough editorial feedback on...

Language & Editing

    I'm set to play Jack Manningham in The Tipling Stage Company's production of Gaslight. And because the play, Patrick Hamilton's psychological thriller about a husband trying to drive his wife mad in order to benefit from her committal to an insane asylum, is set in Victorian England, I've been thinking about the etymologies of various theatrical terms, myths, and superstitions.   As a theatre student in my 20s, I was...

Event

  If you haven't looked at a calendar yet today, you might not know that today, March 15, is actually the Ides of March. I'm sure you've heard of it before, but what exactly is this special day all about?   History of the Ides of March The origin story of the Ides of March is actually pretty nondescript. Ides was one of the ancient markers used to reference dates in relation...

Usage

    Few punctuation marks are misused as often as the comma. Sadly, many semi-professional or hobby writers of today seem to think that the comma is meant to signify vocal pauses. But, like any punctuation, the comma has specific uses: none of them involve noting vocal pauses.     In The Editorial Eye Vol. 25, No. 11, I saw a comma usage aptitude test entitled, “Be Conservative but Canny...

Books And Reading

  The Book and Periodical Council's Freedom to Read Week, beyond simply being an annual event that showcases and remembers banned books, is an excellent time to consider the merits, or lack thereof, of broadly applied censorship. Last week, as we sat in the office doing exactly that, we fell to wondering how many banned or challenged books we had read or might even have on our bookshelves at home....

Event

Next week, from February 26 to March 4, we will be observing a very important event in Canadian culture: Freedom to Read Week. Freedom to Read Week is a project run by the Book and Periodical Council (BPC), which is an umbrella organization for Canadian associations that are or whose members are primarily involved with the writing, editing, translating publishing, producing, distributing, lending, marketing, reading, and selling of written words.   More...

Editing

  We at TEC welcome phone calls from our potential clients looking for guidance about the editing process and the cost of editing. When we receive calls during our business hours (10 to 6, Monday to Friday), we try to provide as much information as possible but do not always have the time for a long conversation. Unfortunately, if the office is busy, we may have to keep the...

Event

  Recently The Editing Company team participated in the "How to Meet People in a Room Full of Strangers" webinar hosted by Editors Canada. Cheryl Scoffield, the presenter, is a networking coach who shared tips on a number of different strategies by which to meet and follow up with clients and business contacts. Her key piece of advice: "Take action!"   Attending the Networking Event This call to action refers to, among...

Writing

Well, it's February 2017! We're solidly in Canadian winter, but we'll also be transitioning into spring soon (we can hope). In the spirit of great transitions, we've decided to revisit this great post about proper use of transitions in writing! We hope it helps you.   While drafting the February edition of the TEC newsletter, I found myself flipping through Beth's collection of Editorial Eye back issues, searching for inspiration for our...

Book Reviews

A Review of The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time by Keith Houston     Life in the Digital Lane It doesn't really matter where you go today, whether you're riding the subway, sitting in a coffee shop, or crossing the street, it seems that almost everyone's eyes are riveted to the screen of some device or another. Texts, emails, games, movies, TV shows . ...

Language & Editing

        What do the words Y2K, plutoed, tweet, e-, they, and bailout have in common?   Simple. They have all, at one point, been named as "Words of the Year. " You may have noticed this tradition, occurring around the end of each year. Dictionaries and websites come out with their idea of what word best represents the past year. Some of the words of...

Books And Reading

The new year is a time for reflection on the past year: what you did, how you grew, and what you learned. It's also a time to reflect on the coming year and what you'd like to achieve. New Year's resolutions are big -- look at any store catalogue in January, and you'll see exercise equipment and accessories and kitchen appliances for making healthy food for sale in...

Office Happenings

    The holiday season has ended, and, after countless glasses of eggnog, mulled wine, and holiday-themed beer, many revelers are happy to trade in their wine glasses for water glasses. But, every year there's a festive contingent who can't bear the holidays' end. These hardy folk who suffer from party withdrawal in January should be happy to read about the trials and triumphs involved in assembling a functional cocktail...

Office Happenings / Social Media & Community

We at TEC have launched a new event this Holiday Season. Instead of going out for lunch or dinner, we decided we would enjoy a full week of delicious baked goods, wines, eggnog with liqueurs, and hot toddies. We are calling this festive fair, The Week of Indulgences. In this blog, we share with you our buffet of delectable treats. But First, A Little History Indulgences, as it...

Usage

  It sometimes seems like there is a never-ending supply of words that are confusing in one way or another! There are homonyms, synonyms, words that are one letter off in spelling but couldn't be more different, and words that many people argue are not words at all. Every time I look up a new set of "confusables," I learn something new and interesting. I hope that you have...

Editing & Technologies

An author recently asked me how she could keep the page numbers in her document from appearing on the title page. She didn't want the actual numbering to start until after her table of contents and introduction.   When we open a book, regular page numbering usually begins after the front matter (preface, table of contents, dedication, epigraph). And (especially in academic documents) there is numbering in the...

Language & Editing

  The past few years in Toronto have been very eventful for me: I've defended my PhD thesis, got married, started my freelance editing career, and had a baby! As it turns out, the adventure isn't ending there. In the New Year, my family and I will be crossing the Atlantic to move to the UK.   In addition to getting used to driving on the left side of the road,...