Proofreading

“Anthropology!” said a chatty tech support guy who insisted on doing small talk rather than fixing my bank account problem. “That’s, like, about the human body and stuff, right?”   No. Not quite that. Sorry.   Is anthropology such a mystery to the average person? Based on the confused face I get whenever I mention my degree, that might just be the case.   Perhaps people can’t help picturing an explorer...

Creative Women Doing Sixty

It is nothing particularly groundbreaking or controversial to announce that, at eighty-one years old, Alice Munro is still one of the most brilliant writers in Canada. Unlike Margaret Atwood, probably the peer who invites the most comparison, Alice Munro does not experiment freely with form.   Apart from one novel, published in 1971, Munro deals solely in short stories, mostly about women and mostly set in rural areas. There...

Guest Blogger

When I turned 40 someone sent me a postcard with Bette Davis holding a pillow stitched with the words Old Age Ain’t No Place For Sissies. It was like a battle cry for me to do something with my life. So, I finished a degree I had started when I was 18, learned to tap dance and drive a car, got married and moved to Canada.   In...

Creative Women Doing Sixty

  In 1994, when Gloria Steinem turned sixty, she published a collection of essays entitled Moving Beyond Words. Ms. Steinem is, of course, the founder of Ms. magazine, a founder of New York magazine, an author, and a public lecturer. When she spoke at Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto sometime that year, I was in the audience.   At one point in her lecture, she...

Copyright And Permissions

Two big events are happening for me this month. The first is that I’m a dozen items and a handful of loose ends away from completing the gigantic permissions project I’ve been chipping away at since I started my time at TEC. The second is that I’m moving house and having, after years of spontaneous accumulation and haphazard stacking, to not only impose order on my personal library,...

Technology

When I graduated from university, I didn’t imagine that my career would involve working on websites. However, I’ve found the work to be useful and satisfying.   I also work as an editor and writer, and in many ways, the three things – writing, editing, and web/content management – require the same skills: focus and attention to detail. So how did I get here, and what about my path...

Office Happenings / Social Media & Community

It’s getting cold out there in Toronto. Though the heap of projects on our desks grows ever larger, we TEC editors have still been finding the time to appreciate the small things — from watching the first of winter’s flurries out the window to sneaking snacks from the office’s ever-popular jar of treats.   Here’s a look at what’s been keeping us busy over the past few months.   Academic Manuscripts As...

Writing

The Challenge I am a perfectionist.   I realize this might not be the most shocking admission for an editor to make. Still, while it serves me well at work, there are many occasions in life where perfectionism is less an asset than a useless exercise in self-obstruction.   The second-biggest challenge in writing a novel is forcing yourself to make the time and do it. But the very biggest is...

Book Reviews

In Emily Schultz’s The Blondes, women’s preoccupation with hair (especially blonde hair) plays a major role. But there is, of course, something deeper going on here. And it is through the protagonist Hazel Hayes that these deeper meanings are explored.   Hazel is a somewhat innocent yet resourceful young woman working on her dissertation in aesthetology, or the study of looking, at New York University when a viral pandemic...

Guest Blogger

In her blog of August 12, Beth referred to my publication Marguerite Nakhla: Legacy to Modern Egyptian Art. I first learned about Ms. Nakhla (1908–1977) when I became the Volunteer Curator at St. Mark’s Coptic Museum in Scarborough, Ontario.  While we had six of her biblical scenes we did not have much information about her except a few letters indicating that she was a highly respected artist...

Office Happenings

The gusty winds of October are trimming the trees of their leaves here in Toronto. Hard to believe it is autumn and we are heading into winter. When we last wrote an update, it was still summer. The change of seasons is always inspiring and energizing, as is the array of projects we are working on here in the TEC office.   Academic Manuscripts Our academic projects over the...

Technology

Ladies and gentlemen, today The Editing Company is launching their brand new eBook Conversion Services. This means that TEC will now not only edit your book, but we’ll convert it into ePub format for you, too!   In recognition of this event, I have one simple statement to make: Print books are awesome.   Now, don’t get me wrong. I support technological advances as much as every other non-Ludite....

TEC Clients

Robert D. Oke looked us up in the Yellow Pages. It was the summer of 2010. He had recently finished writing a manuscript and was wondering if we at The Editing Company might provide a typing service. He had written the manuscript in longhand and needed a typed copy. My immediate response was that we didn’t really offer typing services, but since we were in...

Event

Recently, a couple of us from The Editing Co. Team descended on the Communications building at Ryerson University for a one-day conference on all things bookish, entitled BookCampTO. This year’s iteration featured a distinct choose-your-own-adventure format in which attendees were expected to be both presenters and participants. No topics were pre-selected, and none scheduled in advance. The result: a pleasantly unconstrained learning and networking environment that,...

Book Design

This summer, I rounded out my Ryerson Publishing credentials with my final course in the certificate program: Book Design. A daunting challenge for someone who works mostly with words, but one I was hoping to master. Art-making is familiar to me, but design is quite a separate beast; art can be chaotic and spontaneous, but in design, functionality and effectiveness are paramount.   There are far too many topics...

Editing

One of the first booklets I read as an editor starting out was Author & Editor: A Working Guide, written by Rick Archbold, Doug Gibson, Dennis Lee, John Pearce, and Jan Walter. These names you may recognize as belonging to Canadian writers and editors. The booklet was published by The Book and Periodical Development Council (1983), and a few years later I purchased a copy through the Editors’...

Office Happenings

It's August 1st and the summer is moving along at a steamy pace here in Toronto. Torontonians have experienced some hot weather and amazing thunderstorms, as well as blissfully beautiful summer days. Here at TEC, we've been keeping up the pace with an amazing array of projects, which we are pleased to highlight for you here.   Academic Manuscripts In the ever-changing world of TEC projects, academic manuscripts are...

Proofreading

Even in the few short weeks I’ve been here at The Editing Company, I’ve gotten to wear a lot of different hats on the job. One of my favourite tasks so far has been helping to proofread a manuscript for UTP Higher Education. I’ve always had a fondness for editing, and I was excited for the opportunity to get to help out with such an interesting project. ...

Social Media

On April 14, 2010, Twitter Incorporated entered into a new partnership with the U. S. Library of Congress, one that would allow the LoC access to the entire archive of public tweets — beginning with Twitter’s inception in 2006 to the present and beyond.    “Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world — from historical elections to devastating disasters,” emphasized Twitter Inc. ...

Office Happenings

Staff Changes It’s always hard to see someone go, but it's equally exciting to welcome new faces to our team. At the end of May we bade a fond farewell to Nadine, our former Permissions Editor, who is heading west to pursue her MFA. Taking up Nadine's mantle is our new Permissions Editor, Jessica Mifsud, who also comes to us with a host of knowledge in the field of...

Office Happenings

Today is my last day at The Editing Company.   I feel sad as I write this because this marks the end of an era for me. However, I am also filled with a sense of excitement as I prepare to embark on a new journey as a master’s student and a soon-to-be resident of the West Coast. In the fall, I will begin my MFA studies in Creative...

Language & Editing

Bookish types, such as we are, can run into problems with pronunciation. As a child, the language I was reading was more advanced than I usually heard spoken, and so I developed a few peculiar pronunciations for words that I had seen but never heard. This led to a particularly embarrassing moment in grade school when I pronounced “chaos” like “cha-hos. ”    Nina had a similar experience, believing that...

Indexing

This is not something I ever wondered before working in publishing. In the past, I saw indexes as a minor annoyance, things that ordered me through a series of bothersome page-flips and never seemed to have what I wanted when I needed it. But I never stopped to think how one might be made.   Indexing does not seem like a human process. The end result comes in...

Editing

Editing isn’t for everyone. It can be quite strenuous and demanding, as well as rewarding and satisfying. Those of us who are editors know that being good at what we do means developing a wide range of skills and attributes. I was recently asked what I look for in an editor, and after giving this some thought, I’ve come up with a list of seven things, each...