Usage

    For centuries, questions of proper usage have provided editorial professionals fodder for debate. Although publishers’ styles are often defined by usage rules, such as never ending a sentence with a preposition, when exposed to a bit of research these rules are often revealed as illogical modern constraints placed on the historically flexible English language. That said, there are some usage rules that even staunch descriptivists must respect when...

Editing

  The publishing world has well-developed rules and guidelines for describing and citing work that exists as printed text. Things can be less clear for a writer when dealing with other kinds of cultural production. Visual art works, for instance, pose particular questions and challenges.   Description as Interpretation and Framing No matter how we go about describing the visual in words, the process inevitably involves imposing a certain way of...

Social Media / Editing & Marketing

Being good at social media is important for everyone. And I mean everyone. From Starbucks to The Editing Company to your own personal account—recognizing the potential of a robust social media presence is key! For the rare breed of niche and underground businesses, not having some or all social media could potentially be a component of their brand. For the rest of us, social media efficiently tackles...

Usage

    Punctuation marks are the signposts of prose. They indicate what’s important and where to pause. They add rhythm to your sentences. They help your readers follow the twists and turns of your thoughts.   But there are so many different kinds of punctuation marks that it can be tricky to decide which one to choose. Periods and commas are the most common, but trying to write with...

Event

If you're looking for an intimate one-person show, a Mirvish-level musical, or a production somewhere between the two, Toronto is a great place to catch any kind of show. With a number of different venues and theatre companies to choose from, it can be difficult to see even half of the productions on offer each year.   The Big Names However, quality live theatre isn't confined by the boundaries of the...

Publishing

  So, you’re moving into the finishing stages of writing your book and you’re beginning to think about acquiring an agent. At TEC, we work with non-fiction writers, academic and business writers, and recently I worked with an author on her memoir to help her shape her manuscript before sending to an agent.   Finding yourself an agent can be a huge step forward in getting your book...

Usage

Commas, for any copy editor—or, for that matter, any copy writer—are a most familiar tool, as well as a potential source of frustration. Correcting punctuation for grammar and clarity is a key part of any copy editor’s job, but commas also play a role in shaping elements of writing that aren’t as simple as “correct” and “incorrect” usage. The comma, we’re often told, corresponds to a “slight pause”...

Usage

Back in September 2017, The Editing Company's own Barbara Kamienski wrote a great blog post about the linguistic challenges presented by subject-verb agreement. As Barbara points out, there are certain subjects that, especially when used in the same sentence, can make it difficult to determine whether verbs in any given construction should be plural or singular. One of Barbara's examples draws particular attention to this difficulty: None of the...

Editing / Usage

      The postgraduate student researching the rise of postmodernism in the postwar period found herself with post-traumatic stress disorder. A wealthy dealer gave the famous post-impressionist artist a post-dated cheque for his painting of a post-apocalyptic landscape. The soccer coach thought it would be best to postpone the weekly postgame festivities and throw one major postseason party instead.   The prefix “post,” it would seem, follows us everywhere. But...

Usage

As a keen-eyed reader, you have no doubt noticed that those little horizontal lines between words and numbers come in varying lengths. As a keen-eyed typist, you'll also have noticed that your keyboard is equipped with only one key: the hyphen/minus key. And you may have observed that sometimes when you type in two hyphens to set off an interjection -- because you just know that a simple hyphen isn't up to...

Editing & Technologies

We loved this blog when Nina first created it back in 2011. We are reposting it this month in honour of this month's TEC theme of comics! Check out last week's blog for Michael's take on creative heroines of the comic book industry, and this month's newsletter for more comic fun.   *** It's official: "LOL" has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. So has "OMG," for that matter....

Editing New Media

      The American comic book industry has historically been a male-dominated enterprise. The names of famous male artists, writers, inkers, and colourists come up over and over again. But, male-dominated as the American comic book industry is, a number of pioneering women have played important roles in creating or developing the characters and settings that make these episodic narratives what they are today.   In fact, there are so many...

Editing / Style

The Latin word ibidem, better known these days by its short form ibid. , is one of the technical tools of academic writing and editing. Literally meaning "in the same place," it's used in footnotes and endnotes to mean that a note refers to the same source as the previous note. This little bit of Latin has long been a way of inducting a writer (in high school...

Editing New Media

Behind every delicious comic is a very sharp-eyed editor. Or at least I'd like to think so! I'm mostly a comic writer/illustrator, but over time I learned how to be a comic editor as well. As an editor, I learned that comic editing is a very finicky business. I've been sharing some of my comic-making conundrums with the staff at The Editing Company as I put together...

Writing

  One of our more popular blogs is 3 Ways to Avoid Repetition in Writing, in which I discus how repetition in writing can disengage your reader from the flow of your work. In this follow-up blog, I add three more strategies for avoiding repetitive words and phrases that can help you write clear and engaging prose.   1.    Limit your research This probably seems counter-productive to some of you, but...

Editing

dramaturgy n. 1 the art of theatrical production; the theory of dramatics. 2 the application of this.  dramaturgical adj.   ~Paperback Oxford Canadian Dictionary: Second Edition     Editors are the unsung heroes of the publishing industry, reading and re-reading tirelessly in an effort to improve others' writing. In the case of substantive editing, a book editor might spend years working with an author, and, though they receive a salary and...

Book Reviews

      It feels appropriate that my first post for the TEC blog is a review of a style guide. In the two months since I've started working at TEC I've spent plenty of time looking through guides like the APA Publication Manual and the massive Chicago Manual of Style. The best style guides are more than a source of rules and answers for specific questions about formatting and referencing:...

Book Reviews

    Ammon Shea's Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation (Penguin, 2014) is a usage guide of sorts, but far from being a prescriptive guide like Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage or Bremner's Words on Words, Shea's book records a variety of grammar and usage peeves, and, by examining their roots, exposes them as unfounded compulsions foisted on English users by grammar scolds.   Having previously written Reading the OED:...

Business

Recently at TEC, I celebrated something of a milestone – my 100th invoice to the company! Maybe it doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal, only 100 invoices, but I invoice every two weeks, so (with vacations and other things) that’s over 200 weeks spent here at TEC. In fact, my four-year anniversary with TEC is coming up in a month.   A Little History I started at TEC...

Book Design

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Really? While the saying may be metaphorically true, in a literal sense, as any book publishing professional can tell you, if a book cover doesn’t give you a pretty good idea of what’s inside, it has failed. A book cover’s visual appeal needs to be such that any prospective book buyer can see at a glance that the...

Editing

  Having worked as a freelance writer and editor in Toronto, Grey County, and now the Hamilton area, I've had the opportunity to learn about some of the pros and cons of doing editorial work in both rural and urban settings. As a returning blogger for The Editing Company, I'm glad that I get to share my experiences serving clarity, consistency, and correctness, and I hope that reading about my...

Writing

I'm open to reading almost anything ­– fiction, nonfiction – as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created. - Amy Tan   One of the most important things a writer...

It’s been a while since I’ve written an “Ask the Editor” blog post! This time, I’m going to talk about how to make the editing process easier for nervous or skittish first-time writers.   While much of this advice might be geared towards how editors can work with writers, these tips can be very beneficial for writers having their work edited for the first time as well. If you are...

Books And Reading

As the holiday season moves into full swing, you probably have holiday traditions that you enjoy with your family and friends, or even some traditions that you do just for yourself. Holiday traditions always seem to help you adopt a more festive mood, no matter what life throws your way! One of the most popular holiday traditions is probably watching holiday films – Elf, A Christmas Carol, Scrooged, It’s...