Category Archives: Specialisms

Resources round-up: Style

Welcome to this round-up of resources compiled by the CIEP. This time, we look at style – specifically, style sheets and style guides. We have divided our picks into:

  • General advice on style
  • CIEP guides
  • From style sheet to language guide
  • Academic publishing
  • Faith-based publishing
  • Fiction
  • Non-traditional publishing
  • Changing styles

General advice on style

If you possess a general handbook about editing, it’s a good place to start when considering style. Chapter 6 of Butcher’s Copy-editing (Cambridge University Press, 2014) covers house style; Part II of Einsohn and Schwartz’s The Copyeditor’s Handbook (University of California Press, 2019) is dedicated to editorial style, and style sheets are covered in its section on basic procedures. If you’d like to consider style in a more holistic way, it’s covered sensibly by Carol Fisher Saller, who was chief copyeditor of the Chicago Manual of Style’s 16th edition, in her essay ‘What copyeditors do’ (in What Editors Do, edited by Peter Ginna, Chicago University Press, 2017), and in her own book The Subversive Copy Editor (Chicago University Press, 2016).

CIEP guides

Style is a thread that runs through editing and proofreading, which is why it’s covered in many CIEP guides. Editing Scientific and Medical Research Articles dedicates a chapter to scientific style, from terminology to capitalisation and abbreviation. The chapter on copyediting in Getting Started in Fiction Editing covers style sheets and the importance of consistency. How to Edit Cookery Books is a great illustration of how defining style is integral to editing specialist texts: in cookery books, for example, keeping to one style for measurements is particularly important. Editing for Communications Professionals, on editing for businesses and other organisations, gives tips on defining a house style, and the Your House Style guide is entirely dedicated to creating a house style. Remember, if you’re a CIEP member you can access these guides for free.

From style sheet to language guide

Certain key style guides have become widely used as sources of advice on language and grammar too. New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press, 2014), the Oxford style guide, is one example, as is the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS). Now in its 17th edition, the CMOS can be purchased in thumpingly large hard copy (University of Chicago, 2017), or as an online version.

It’s worth noting the origins of such giants of style and language advice. As you can read in the preface of New Hart’s Rules, Horace Henry Hart, after whom Hart’s Rules and then New Hart’s Rules were named, was the head of Oxford University Press for many decades until 1915. The first Hart’s Rules was intended for the press’s staff and was only 24 pages long. In ‘What copyeditors do’, Carol Fisher Saller writes about how the Chicago Manual of Style began:

A single style sheet might also be developed for a series of related projects. A successful style sheet might evolve into a company style manual. (The now thousand-page Chicago Manual of Style got its start in exactly that way at the University of Chicago Press.)

Academic publishing

The Chicago Manual of Style and New Hart’s Rules can be useful when defining style in academic texts; however, you may need a more specialised guide. The resources section of Editing Scientific and Medical Research Articles lists guides from such organisations as the American Institute of Physics (AIP Style Manual), the American Mathematical Society (AMS Author Handbook), the American Medical Association (AMA Manual of Style, whose website includes quizzes), the American Psychological Association (APA Style) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE Editorial Style Manual). If you’re editing in the humanities, the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA Style Guide) also provides advice, as does the Modern Language Association (MLA Handbook).

By the way, if you’re editing journal articles, the very best place to go is the website of the journal itself, which is likely to include notes for authors and editors. Similarly, with academic books, it’s likely that the publisher will have a style guide, so if you don’t already have it, ask for it.

If you’re looking for advice on styling citations and references, Cite Them Right by Richard Pears and Graham Shields (Red Globe Press, 2019) gives the rules on a number of academic styles, from Harvard, APA and Chicago to IEEE, MHRA, MLA and Vancouver. The current 11th edition covers how to cite some unusual sources, from Snapchat to sewing patterns.

woman studying with books

Faith-based publishing

Sometimes academic publishing, sometimes non-traditional publishing, faith-based texts also need a clear style on elements like capitalisation of key terms and how to cite scripture. Erin Brenner’s 2021 article on the ACES blog ‘Dealing with religious terms: One faith’ includes links to religious style guides.

Fiction

Style in fiction covers the consistency of the fictional world the author has created, including characters, geography and timelines, so there’s a lot to consider. Crystal Shelley provides a useful introduction in ‘Style sheets: What they are and how to use them’. This blog includes a template adapted from Louise Harnby’s style sheet template for fiction. Fiction editor Kristen Tate’s recent blog ‘What is a style sheet?’ is also worth a read.

If you’re a fiction editor, it may well be worth getting your hands on Amy J Schneider’s Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction (Chicago University Press, 2023) – its entire Part II is dedicated to building your fiction style sheet.

Non-traditional publishing

When you’re building a style guide for a non-traditional publisher like a business or another organisation, you can learn a lot from a simple trawl of the websites of your colleagues, stakeholders, associates and competitors. What do they capitalise? How do they present numbers and statistics? Larger organisations like the Local Government Association and Shelter may even have a section on their website dedicated to house style. The UK Government’s style guide is free to view online, and includes details of updates so you can see what’s changed between visits.

Many news organisations make their style guides available, from the AP (Associated Press) Stylebook to the BBC’s and The Guardian’s A–Z guidelines, free on the web. If you want your style to follow that of The Economist or The Times, you can buy their style guides in book form, in the Economist Style Guide, 12th edition (Economist Books, 2018) and The Times Style Guide: A practical guide to English usage (Times Books, 2022).

Changing styles

Finally, take a look at ‘Chicago Style Then and Now’ which describes Chicago style as it was in 1906. This first-edition Chicago style included an em space (three times a single space) between sentences; apostrophes with plurals; and semicolons inside quote marks. A useful reminder that style is always evolving, so make sure you arm yourself with the latest guidelines.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash, woman studying with books by SHVETS production on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Considerations when curating an NGO’s style sheet

There’s more to compiling a style sheet than deciding on spellings. Lorenzo Fusini describes some of the factors he’s had to consider when trying to ensure consistency among a large, disparate team of writers and editors.

I’ve been a part-time volunteer editor for a young non-governmental organisation (NGO) for a few months. The NGO’s mission is to provide free education to refugees, and my role mostly involves editing web content and grant applications.

When I started there was no style sheet: I observed writers and editors applying styles according to their own preferences or by imitating the styles of existing documents – yes, ‘styles’ plural. It was obvious to most that the situation would soon degenerate, and since I’d been the most vocal about this issue, I was assigned the task of curating a style sheet.

I’m going to share with you the challenges I’ve encountered in this assignment, how I’ve overcome them and the reasons behind the solutions I’ve adopted. As you’ll see, most of the topics are high-level aspects of curating a style sheet, more to do with its management than its content, as that’s what has required most of my attention.

Many decide, one implements

The NGO’s leader wants us to agree on solutions as a group. This is why I’m the curator of the style sheet, but I’m not alone in choosing the rules it contains. Everybody is welcome to suggest additions and changes, which are then discussed openly: all opinions are considered, with extra weight given to suggestions from the more experienced writers and editors, and in the end the group often reaches a unanimous decision. I then modify the style sheet accordingly, and once I’m done I notify the entire team.

New members every week

A team of volunteers working purely online has two distinctive traits: it changes continually (every week some volunteers leave and others join) and its members have vastly different cultural, professional and educational backgrounds. A style sheet is, then, a fundamental tool in ensuring that the NGO’s voice doesn’t change from one week to another.

We have volunteers from all walks of life, and most have never worked in the publishing sector: they might not know what a style sheet is, or that we have one. Our simple remedy is to regularly remind all writers and editors about it, and we’re considering including a link to the document in the welcome email every new volunteer receives.

Target audiences

We have three main audiences:

  • refugees with basic English or no knowledge of English, trying to learn what’s necessary to get on with their lives
  • managers of companies and charitable foundations with the resources to support the refugees
  • the general public, including prospective volunteers, who are curious about the NGO’s mission.

An implication is that text written with one audience in mind might not be appropriate for the others. That’s why we’ve decided to include a brief reminder at the beginning of the style sheet. Material destined to be read by refugees, prospective volunteers and the general public should be simple, direct and welcoming, never forgetting that some of the readers are destitute and desperate. With managers, on the other hand, we should be formal, courteous and concise, showing that the NGO is a serious and trustworthy organisation.

Style sheet - handshake

Modify only when necessary

If I change the style sheet too often with the honourable intention of improving the clarity and appearance of everyone’s writing, the NGO may end up in trouble! Perhaps future documents will look better than the previous ones but at the cost of being different in style. This is not a problem if the change happens together with other big changes in the organisation (such as when its efforts shift towards another category of disadvantaged people, requiring an overhaul of most documents). But if the words written today have, for example, a different spelling or hyphenation to the ones written last week, our reputation could take a hit, especially in the eyes of donors, and lead to the NGO receiving fewer resources.

I do consider modifying the style sheet, however, when I notice that the same questions keep popping up and when new phrases peculiar to the NGO are introduced. Adding relevant entries to the style sheet and amending the less clear ones makes writing and editing faster – no need to ask those questions and wait for the answers – and eliminates ambiguities.

Start with the AP Stylebook

When it comes to the content of the style sheet, the easiest starting point has been, like almost everything else in life, to imitate others. Together, we decided to get inspiration from the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook because it’s one of the most popular for web content, and even those who’ve never heard of AP but consume web content are familiar with the style through exposure.

Our style sheet, however, doesn’t need to be as comprehensive as AP. I started by writing the most relevant sections – abbreviations, spelling, capitalisation, punctuation, date and time, numbers, currencies and titles of publications – and later added further guidelines to solve my fellow editors’ recurring problems.

Spelling

The choice of spelling can be a marketing tool. The NGO is based in Norway, which typically favours British English spelling, yet it’s significantly easier to receive money from American companies and charitable foundations than from European ones (I’ve been told that this is because of some special tax advantages that exist in the US). Since we want to receive positive attention from such entities, we chose not long ago to switch our preferred spelling from British English to American English.

Style sheet - decide, commit, repeat

Capitalisation

The question I’ve received most often is ‘Should I capitalise this?’ The NGO organises courses for refugees and uses many software tools, so it’s a good idea to separate the names of these from normal text. Some suggested using italics, but we agreed on using roman title capitalisation because it’s easier to read, especially when a webpage is littered with the names of courses, companies and software products.

Besides the general guideline, I also added a list of all those terms that are specific to the NGO, to eliminate every possible doubt about their spelling and style.

As a consequence of these changes, the queries on capitalisation have dropped to almost zero.

Currencies

We apply for grants, write web content to describe possible ways to support us and produce brochures that illustrate our progress. We want to reach out to the whole world, so we have to represent money in the most unambiguous way possible – and money holders like to be accurate with their figures. That’s why we’ve chosen to use three-letter codes for currencies rather than their respective symbols.

I hope you’ve found this different angle of working on a style sheet interesting and some aspects worth considering for your next project. If you ever face problems similar to mine, I hope my experiences will help you solve them. I’ve certainly enjoyed having this responsibility and seeing how much it has simplified my colleagues’ jobs – a bit like raising a baby and seeing it walk!

About Lorenzo Fusini

Lorenzo Fusini is an editor, data scientist and swimming instructor with a PhD in Engineering Cybernetics. His favourite activity is to put his hands on different fields of knowledge, professionally or not. He enjoys freediving, playing games (video, board, role-playing), reading science fiction, weird fiction and folklore, and chatting about all sorts of topics.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by NASA, handshake by Cytonn Photography, decide, commit, repeat by Brett Jordan, all on Unsplash. 

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Compiling style guides for Christian publishers

Specialist organisations may require style guides that are tailored to their material. Editors Mary Davis and Fiona Little describe their experiences of compiling style guides to suit the needs of two clients publishing for the Christian market – but the principles are relevant for other subject areas.

Mary Davis: Tulips, chocolate and CPD

Near the start of my freelancing journey, I was asked to copyedit an 11,000-word manuscript by a small, independent religious publisher. Their little production team lacked specialist knowledge but were doing their best to produce quality non-fiction books for their relatively niche target market.

Their house style extended to a few bullet points on a side of A4, requesting that authors follow the Society of Biblical Literature’s SBL Handbook of Style and giving a few pointers on preferred formatting, footnotes, numbering systems and so on.

As I raised author queries and produced style sheets, it became clear to the client that there were significant inconsistencies across their publications. They asked me to do a critique of several books, and I produced a short report looking at design, formatting and style choices. There was a clear need for consistency and one of my main recommendations was the production of a more comprehensive style guide.

How did you go about it?

Soon after, the flu struck and I was in bed for days. I certainly didn’t have the energy for a meticulous copyedit or proofread, but I did have the appetite for a bit of informal continuing professional development (CPD)! I knew the client had a low budget and I decided to produce a style guide for them free of charge. I’d developed a good understanding of their authors and target readership, and my style sheets provided much of the detail. Consulting style guides from other clients and online resources, I focused particularly on presentation, which I felt would be key in encouraging authors to use it.

What did you include?

In consultation with the client, it didn’t take long to compile the finished guide – a carefully designed, six-page PDF.

  • Standard features: It included the things you’d expect, such as a general introduction, notes on abbreviations and contractions, UK spellings, preferred punctuation, numbers, dates and times, and book and hymn titles.
  • Emphasis on clarity: The writing style of some of the authors I had already copyedited was unnecessarily complicated and so the guide included an emphasis on clarity and plain English.
  • Interactive links: To make it user-friendly and easy to navigate, I included internal clickable links and external hyperlinks to resources like the SBL Handbook of Style and preferred dictionary.
  • Clear presentation: Aesthetically, I took great care with the layout, heading size and examples of correct usage, ensuring that authors would find it visually appealing and easy to use.
  • Personalised features: Working from my style sheets, I compiled a list of commonly used words, indicating preferred capitalisation and spelling. I also specified preferred formatting for Bible references and Bible ‘shortforms’ (abbreviations for each book of the Bible), as authors had been simply adopting their own preferred convention.
  • Ongoing: To facilitate updates, I supplied the client with a Word document in addition to the PDF.

someone making notes from the Bible

What did the client think?

They sent me some tulips and chocolate in the post to say thank you! They also asked me to do some paid training with their publications manager, which I conducted online.

The guide is a number of years old now, but I asked the current publications manager to comment on its usefulness. She replied:

Our style guide has greatly benefited our publishing organisation. It provides clarity for authors who need to know what our expectations are and helps us to create a quality uniform product. From basic expectations (like grammar) to more niche requirements (like capitalisation of terminology), both our writers and editors appreciate the consistency that the style guide gives.

I didn’t get paid for this work but the six hours or so I spent on it was immensely worthwhile. Careful reading of a number of style guides was valuable in itself – and, on top of that, the project cultivated strong working relationships and resulted in a stream of ongoing work. They weren’t and aren’t my highest-paying clients – but, as well as tulips and chocolates, this project gave me confidence and specialist knowledge at a key stage in my career.

Mary’s top tips for compiling a specialist style sheet

  • Assess the material produced by the organisation and current authors’ writing styles. Does it match the client’s requirements?
  • Decide what standard features are required in the guide. Do you want to reference an existing guide or dictionary?
  • Working from style sheets and other sources, compile a list of commonly used words, noting preferred capitalisation and spelling.
  • What other guidance will be needed? The inconsistencies between publications will give you a steer on what may be required.
  • Take care over presentation, and include clear examples of correct usage. Internal links and external hyperlinks may be useful.

Fiona Little: Discussion and flexibility

When a client asked me to produce a style guide for an ongoing series of church reports, I welcomed the challenge. The client wanted to review the styles used in the existing reports and create a more comprehensive style guide that would ensure greater consistency in future reports in the series. Although the authors were theologians and clergy, the reports were intended to be available to lay people, so a style guide for academic theological writing might not be suitable. A tailored guide would help authors, editors and proofreaders working on the series.

Starting points

I was able to refer to previous reports in the series, all of which were in British English. The client had begun to draw up a list of preferred spellings, hyphenations, capitalisations and so on, and an author had added comments to it. There seemed to be omissions and contradictions, but the document gave me some idea of the priorities.

The main issues

Spelling

I found spelling inconsistencies not just in the existing reports but also in the client’s word list – for example, Oxford-style ‘-ize’ spellings seemed to be favoured for most words, but ‘baptise’ was preferred over ‘baptize’. After some discussion, the client decided to standardise on ‘-ize’, and we chose the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (NODWE) as a default guide.

Punctuation

We also agreed on Oxford style (as described in New Hart’s Rules) for dates, serial commas, dashes and other aspects of punctuation. The style guide would need to outline these.

Capitalisation

Capitalisation was the biggest issue. We agreed easily on initial capitals for specific meanings as opposed to general ones (eg ‘the Father’ in reference to God); words with multiple senses needed particularly careful treatment – for example, ‘church’ was used, variously with and without capital C, for a building, a congregation, a Christian denomination (such as ‘the Church of England’) and Christian believers worldwide. The client opted for ‘the Bible’ but ‘a bible’, unlike NODWE, but followed NODWE in downcasing pronouns for God. The style guide would need to give clear examples of these usages.

References

While detailed bibliographical references were not covered, we agreed a format for references to other reports in the series, including their numbered sections.

For the frequent Bible references, the client wished to stick with the abbreviations for books of the Bible used in the New Revised Standard Version, along with a distinctive chapter-and-verse format used by a larger publisher. These choices seemed to work because their parameters were clear.

A style was also needed for the titles of documents in Latin; the client wanted italic with maximum capitals, even though normally a Latin title would have sentence-style capitalisation.

Numbers and dates

We agreed on maximum elision for number ranges (eg 341–2) and years (1988–9), following New Hart’s Rules, but we treated chapter and verse numbers in Bible references differently (see ‘References’ above).

Abbreviations

The reports used abbreviations for the names of various publications and organisations, and these needed to be listed in the style guide.

Because of the simple format of the reports, headings, lists and footnotes – among other features – were not covered.

The result

The completed style guide had short sections on all the categories highlighted above. The general reference to NODWE made a long word list unnecessary, but I listed recurrent words and names where the chosen style differed from NODWE.

Fiona’s top tips for compiling a specialist style sheet

  • Look carefully at the material to get a sense of the content, presentation, tone and intended readership.
  • Discuss the client’s preferences with them, and if their ideas appear unfeasible or inconsistent, explain the alternative options as straightforwardly as possible.
  • Consider whether a published style guide (eg Chicago Manual of Style, New Hart’s Rules or the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide) would cover all or most of the requirements, but don’t assume that the client will be familiar with it.
  • You may also find ideas in publishers’ copyediting guidelines and specific copyediting briefs.
  • If you base your style guide on an existing one, set out any exceptions to its guidelines clearly.
  • Consider organising the guide by type of text (eg headings, book titles) – this can be easier to navigate than a list of formats (eg italic, maximum capitalisation).
  • A couple of well-chosen examples may be easier to follow than a lengthy explanation; for instance, maximum elision of page ranges can be shown with ‘301–2, 341–5, but 315–16’.

 

About Mary Davis

Mary DavisMary Davis’ first job was for someone who was obsessed with clear, beautifully written English. Her freelance work started soon after, alongside other jobs. It developed more formally when she undertook some training to check if her skills were fit for purpose – they were! Mary is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP and is delighted to be doing a job that never fails to put her head in a good place.

About Fiona Little

Fiona LittleFiona Little, an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP, began her editing career with work on Grove music dictionaries and later copyedited material for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Now based in Washington DC, USA, she copyedits academic texts mainly on music, history and religion.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by Michael Morse on Pexels, someone taking notes from a Bible by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Bridging the gap: Translation editing of Chinese texts published in English

In this post, Magda Wojcik considers some of the challenges in editing text that has been translated from Chinese to English.

Translation editing has a dual function when preparing a text for publishing. It performs the function of conventional copyediting, to ensure the text is clear, consistent and correct. It also provides harmony between the message, style and tone of the translated and original versions of the text.

Achieving such unity between two languages from the same language group spoken on the same continent may be easier. However, translation editing becomes more complex when the original (source) and the target (translated) languages differ profoundly in how they express, for example:

  • grammatical gender systems
  • time dependence
  • directionality
  • physical attributes such as colours.

This blog post explores the process of translation editing a text written in putonghua, which is the standard modern Chinese of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), for publication in English. Putonghua is one of the localisations of Mandarin Chinese, alongside those spoken in Taiwan and Singapore. In this post, the term ‘Chinese’ is used to refer to putonghua. Regarding English, for the sake of simplicity, this post does not delve too much into its complexities and variations.

Chinese vs English: How do they differ?

In (a very simplified) summary, Chinese expresses spatial and physical attributes and time dependence (including tenses, grammatical gender systems and numbers) differently from Indo-European languages (of which English is one). And unlike a Latin-based alphabet, Chinese uses a logographic writing system. In other words, each character represents a specific word or concept that can function as a standalone word or component of a word.

So what does that mean in practice? Let’s have a look at some simple examples.

Directionality and time

In Chinese, time progresses vertically rather than horizontally. So instead of thinking about the past as being ‘behind’ us, it is ‘above’ us; instead of thinking about the future as being ‘in front’ of us, it is ‘below’ us. For example, the character xia conveys not only ‘down’ or ‘below’ but also ‘next’. Likewise, shang denotes ‘up’, ‘above’, and ‘previous’. This distinctive understanding of time in the Chinese language, and its connection to spatial orientation, may present challenges in translation editing.

Colours

Some words in the Chinese language have been transforming, potentially aligning more with the Indo-European speaker’s understanding. For instance, modern Chinese distinguishes between blue (lan) and green (). However, a word that predates them both – qing, signifying blue-green – is also still in use. This does not mean that blue and green (as distinct colours) do not occur in Chinese-speaking contexts but may be conveyed (and perceived) differently, not necessarily as distinct shades.

Numerals

Separating every three digits with a comma or a period is common in many Indo-European languages and enhances readability and comprehension. For instance, five hundred million (500,000,000) separates three clusters of three-digit groups. In contrast, Chinese divides numbers into groups of four. The character wan represents the value of ten thousand, and yi means a hundred million. So five hundred million is expressed by placing the number five (wu) in front of the hundred million (wu yi). While China uses the international numeric system with three-digit groupings and Arabic numerals, wan and yi remain prevalent and may influence how Chinese speakers convey numerical values.

A teacher stands in front of a blackboard in a Chinese school

What about translation editing?

These simple examples may demonstrate that language and how we think about and perceive the world may be intricately intertwined and mutually influence each other. Aside from communication, people use language to think. How the language is structured, with its syntax and specific logical rules, may affect how speakers of different languages perceive the world and convey their thoughts (Casasanto 2008). And this is when translation editing and its components of transcreation and language localisation come into play.

Localisation ensures that the target audience will understand the text’s terminology, cultural references and style carried over from the original text. Transcreation complements localisation and ensures that the translated text accurately conveys the message and tone of the source text.

These processes are critical in translation editing text from one distinct language to another. However, considering them is essential even for texts published in the same language spoken in different locations. For instance, Spanish speakers from Colombia and Spain may not resonate with the same references to a brand of sweets or a national newspaper in a text because these references are absent from their corresponding socio-cultural contexts. And so many other idiosyncrasies relevant to location and culture may need to be adapted in the localisation process to resonate with the target audience successfully.

Localisation: What to do with Chinese idioms in English?

An example of such idiosyncrasy is Chinese four-character idiomatic expressions (chengyu). These are the dominant form of Chinese idioms, comprising nearly 90% of those used today in speech and writing (Xu 2006). They reflect complex meanings drawn from literature and culture using four characters (or four syllables), which may take a paragraph to explain in English.

An example of such chengyu is ‘drawing legs on a snake’ (hua she tian zu; lit. ‘draw snake, add feet’). It signifies adding unnecessary or excessive elements to an already complete or perfect thing. When translated word for word, it may appear entirely obscure to a speaker unfamiliar with the context of Chinese philosophy and literature.

Hua she tian zu derives from one of the Zhuangzi stories, a collection of Daoist essays dating back to the fourth century BC. It describes a talented painter participating in a painting competition.

In the story, the first competitor to complete a snake drawing was to be the winner. The painter who finished first decided to add legs to his snake in an attempt to showcase his skills, technically making it into a lizard instead. Thus, he did not win because by making the addition, he missed the brief.

In this case, the translation editor could ensure effective localisation and transcreation by referring to an equivalent British English idiom familiar to the audience. For instance, it could be ‘gilding the lily’, which originates from Shakespeare’s play King John. Alternatively, the translation editor could ensure the text describes the concept to the reader on a more abstract level without referring to the snake, legs and painter.

Conclusion

Translation editing plays a vital role in bridging the gap between Chinese texts and their English translations. The complexities arising from differences in grammar, expressions and cultural nuances require careful consideration during the editing process. By understanding the intricacies of both languages and cultures, translation editors can bring Chinese texts to life in English while preserving their intrinsic meaning and engaging English-speaking readers.

The unique features of the Chinese language, such as spatial and temporal orientation, a logographic writing system, and numerical representation, pose specific challenges in translation editing. Language and thought are intricately intertwined, influencing how we perceive the world and convey our thoughts. Therefore, localisation and transcreation are essential components to ensure that the translated text accurately conveys the message and tone of the source text while catering to the target audience’s understanding and cultural context.

In this journey of translation editing, it is crucial to balance staying true to the original text with making it accessible to the target audience. And as we navigate the complexities, we must remember not to draw legs on a snake.

References

Xu, SH (2006). Proximity and complementation: Studies of the formation mechanism of idioms from cognitive point of view (II). Jinan daxue huawen xueyuan xuebao [Journal of College of Chinese Language and Culture of Jinan University], (3): 33–41.

Casasanto, D (2008). Space for thinking. In P Calvo and P Gomila (eds), Handbook of cognitive science: An embodied approach. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 641–52.

About Magda Wojcik

Magda Wojcik is an Intermediate Member of the CIEP who primarily works with non-fiction and academic authors. She is also a translation editor preparing texts translated from Chinese for publication in English. Before becoming an editor, Magda completed a PhD in Chinese literary history at SOAS, University of London.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: Chinese lanterns by Henry & Co; teacher in Chinese school by Yu Wei; both on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Editing fiction: Point of view

In this post, Rachel Rowlands looks at how fiction editors can help authors to use point of view consistently and in a way that works well for the story.

Point of view is a crucial element of fiction editing – and it’s something newer writers often struggle to get to grips with. As editors, it’s part of our job to be able to point out to an author when they’ve broken out of their chosen perspective, and to advise them on what will work best for the type of story they’re telling.

Point of view is the lens through which we view the story – whose eyes we experience the story’s events through. This could be a single main character or multiple characters. It’s a huge topic (there have been entire books written on the subject!), so after a quick crash course in the different types, I’ll list some of the main sticking points I’ve come across as a fiction editor, and how you can help authors deal with them too.

Point of view: The different types

  • First-person: this one is pretty straightforward! A character narrates the story using ‘I’ (‘I headed into the woods to search for him’, ‘I laughed’). The benefit here is that this can make the narrative feel much closer to the main character. It’s common in certain genres and age categories, such as young adult books.
  • Second-person: second-person point of view involves the use of ‘you’ (‘you walked across the street’, ‘you said’). This is quite an uncommon choice, and is best used carefully – some readers hate it with a passion! However, it can be a good way of making the reader feel more involved in the story.
  • Third-person limited: in third-person limited, we use pronouns such as ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’ (for example ‘she grabbed his hand’ and ‘they weren’t listening to her’). The clue to this one is in the name: we’re limited to one character’s perspective and are zoomed in on them. We experience one point of view. This can be per chapter, per scene or for the whole book, depending on the author’s choice.
  • Third-person omniscient: in this point of view, we again use pronouns such as ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’. But in omniscient, we are more zoomed out. The narrator is godlike, and knows everything about the story and characters, meaning we can enter anyone’s mind we like. The narrator can also know things the characters can’t. This point of view is more common in classic literature, and so is often seen as slightly old-fashioned now, but for some stories, it can work.

The sticking points

There are common problems that come up when it comes to point of view, and some of them can be trickier than others to communicate to authors.

Some point-of-view problems may mean you have to advise an author to completely scrap a perspective, or even rewrite their book in another perspective entirely.

Here are some of the most common point-of-view problems, and how you can help authors overcome them.

The chosen point of view doesn’t work for the book

Sometimes, the point of view just doesn’t work for the type of book the author is writing. A good example of this would be a middle-grade author writing for children, using the omniscient viewpoint, and diving into the perspective of all the adult characters.

This likely doesn’t work for a few reasons: omniscient has become a bit old-fashioned and outdated, particularly for children’s books (it was used, for example, in JM Barrie’s Peter Pan way back in 1904). It can also muddle the target audience. In a middle-grade book, we want to be focusing on the children’s point of view, not the adults’. In children’s books, the general rule of thumb is that children read about people their own age or slightly older. Having the point of view of characters over the age of 18 muddies the waters and pushes the book out of its intended age category.

The author is head-hopping

Head-hopping tends to occur when an author is writing in third-person limited, and is zoomed in on one character. Sometimes, the author slips up, and gives us the thoughts and feelings of a non-viewpoint character.

For example, let’s say the author is writing a chapter in third-person limited, following a character called Tom. The chapter is clearly zoomed in on Tom, and we get insight into his thoughts and feelings throughout:

Tom heaved a sigh. How was he supposed to get on with his week now, with his sister being so difficult? ‘I don’t want to talk about it right now,’ he told her.

The chapter is written this way, close to Tom, consistently. Then, suddenly, we get a sentence where we know what his sister, Michelle, is thinking:

Michelle crossed her arms. She’d expected this reaction but it still made her cheeks feel hot with fury.

This would be considered head-hopping – we’ve dipped into Michelle’s head to learn about what she’s thinking and feeling, but we need to be following Tom. In this case, the sentence could be cut down so only the first half remains, or rewritten so the second half focuses on Tom.

Some forms of head-hopping can be more subtle than this, so make sure you’re on the lookout for this kind of switch!

a group of three friends in conversation at a cafe table

Using too many points of view

Sometimes an author wants to write from the point of view of lots of different characters, and so we get lots of scenes or chapters from the perspective of different people. Even the most skilled authors can find this difficult!

For new writers in particular, using lots of perspectives can occasionally cause issues: there may be so many point-of-view chapters or scenes that readers will struggle trying to keep up with them. It might be harder to give each character a unique voice, because the author has spread themselves too thin. And it may be difficult to develop a protagonist with a clear goal and well-defined personality, because the author is juggling too many storylines and points of view.

As an editor, if you think a manuscript is struggling with any of these issues, odds are a reader will think the same. The author in many of these cases might be better off scaling back on some of the perspectives so they can focus on what matters most to the story.

The author’s own voice intrudes on the narrative

This is a common issue when the author has chosen to use third-person limited, but occasionally slips into omniscient by having their own ‘author voice’ intrude on the narrative. This is a difficult thing to spot, because it requires having a good knowledge of the differences between third-person limited and omniscient, and having a honed eye for each! Here’s an example of how the author’s voice can intrude.

If the entire book has been clearly written in the point of view of a character called Cassandra, in third-person limited (so kept very close to Cassandra throughout), keeping this consistent is important. The author voice suddenly intruding may look something like this:

Cassandra twisted her hands, her cheeks burning. She had to do something to stop this. Little did Cassandra know that things were about to get much worse …

Here, the author’s own ‘godlike’ voice has intruded to give the reader a glimpse of the future. We’ve slipped into omniscient, and the author has spoken directly to the reader. As the book was written in third-person limited elsewhere, we’ve broken out of our intended point of view. An intruding author voice can be more obvious (like the movie-trailer-style example above), or more subtle, so getting a good handle on both perspectives can help you identify this issue.

The easiest way to practise identifying this type of slip is to read novels that use both types of third-person point of view, so you become familiar with how each of them works. Some examples of books written in third-person limited are The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon and The Giver by Lois Lowry. Third-person omniscient books are less common these days, but some popular examples are Dune by Frank Herbert and Peter Pan by JM Barrie.


Those are some of the common issues with point of view that I’ve come across while editing fiction, but there are more that you’ll no doubt encounter! There are lots of great resources out there that you can check out to learn more. Here is some recommended reading to brush up:

  • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Dave King and Renni Browne (chapter 3: Point of View)
  • Point of View by Sandra Gerth

About Rachel Rowlands

Rachel Rowlands is a fiction editor, author and Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP. She has a degree in English and creative writing and has worked on around 200 books for publishing houses (including HarperCollins, Hachette, Canelo and Penguin Random House), as well as for independent authors.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: faces by geralt on Pixabay; group of friends by William Fortunato on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Definite articles: AI

Welcome to ‘Definite articles’, our pick of recent editing-related internet content, most of which are definitely articles. This time, our theme is the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on editing and proofreading. It’s a hot topic of conversation among editorial professionals, which is why some of the links in this article were sourced from a CIEP forum thread about ChatGPT. Thank you to the CIEP members who shared them.

Because nothing related to discussions about AI can be guaranteed a long shelf life, you should know that this edition of ‘Definite articles’ was put together at the beginning of June 2023. It covers:

  • What’s been happening?
  • What can AI actually do?
  • How can editorial professionals move forward with AI?

What’s been happening?

On 30 November 2022, the AI chatbot ChatGPT was released by OpenAI. Since then, people who work with words, who include editors, proofreaders and writers, have had the unnerving feeling that the fundamentals of what they do might change, at least in some areas. If you haven’t been keeping a close eye on events, Forbes has written a short history of ChatGPT and two professors have summarised some of the implications of ChatGPT in usefully easy-to-understand terms. You can get an overview of Microsoft’s Copilot, an AI assistance feature being launched this summer, from CNN and Microsoft itself.

As well as the obvious nervousness about whether AI would replace various categories of worker, concerns were quickly raised about the effects of AI on assessing student work and what AI might mean for copyright.

By late spring 2023, loud noises were being made about regulation of AI. As lawmakers in Europe worked on an AI Act, workers in the UK reported that they would like to see the regulation of generative AI technologies.

It’s a subject that’s currently being written and thought about on a daily, if not hourly, basis. But, in practice, and at this point in time, what can AI actually do?

What can AI actually do?

If you didn’t catch Harriet Power’s CIEP blog, ‘ChatGPT versus a human editor’, it’s an enlightening and entertaining read that went down well with our social media followers on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Harriet instructed ChatGPT to take a proofreading test, write a blog post, and edit some fiction and a set of references. In the proofreading and editing tasks, it did ‘pretty well’ and was impressive in simplifying a fiction passage while keeping its main points. It also wrote a serviceable blog draft.

The two main problems Harriet noticed in the technology were a distinct lack of sparkle in ChatGPT’s writing and editing, and its ‘tendency to “hallucinate”: it’s very good at making stuff up with complete confidence’. (This tendency was also written about by Susanne Dunlap for Jane Friedman’s website, in an article called ‘Using ChatGPT for book research? Take exceeding care’.) Weighing up her test run, Harriet concluded:

ChatGPT apparently struggles to remain coherent when responding to much longer pieces of text (like whole books). It isn’t always factually accurate: you can’t entirely trust anything it’s saying. I can’t imagine how it’d make a good development editor, or how it’d handle raising complex, sensitive author queries. It can’t track changes well. It can’t think like a human, even when it can convincingly sound like one.

However, Harriet added the caveat that in her view it may be ‘years or even months’ before ChatGPT might be able to start competing with human editors. So, how should we respond to that?

computer screen showing OpenAI logo and text

How can editorial professionals move forward with AI?

Perhaps there’s no choice but to look at the possible upsides of the AI debate. Anne McCarthy for the New York Book Forum starts us off in ‘The potential impact of AI on editing and proofreading’ by reminding us that lightbulbs and the ‘horseless carriage’ inspired dire predictions in their day. She concludes: ‘Books always have (and always will) require a human touch: it’s what draws us readers to them.’

Amanda Goldrick-Jones, in an article for the Editors Toronto blog called ‘ChatGPT and the role of editors’, offers some wise and hopeful advice: there’s a point at which we, as editorial professionals, have to trust ourselves.

If anyone is well-positioned to explore and critique the possibilities and challenges of AI-generated writing, it’s an editor … So, as with other communication technologies, editors must self-educate about its affordances, propose clear ethical boundaries, and critically engage with its limitations. It’s a tool, not our robot overlord.

Part of this consideration and engagement is understanding AI’s risks, and Michelle Garrett lays these out very effectively in a blog post from March, ‘The realities of using ChatGPT to write for you – what to consider when it comes to legalities, reputation, search and originality’.

Moving one step further, a Q&A with writer Elisa Lorello on Jane Friedman’s website talks about actively using ChatGPT to become ‘creatively fertile’. Lorello testifies that when she started using the technology in earnest, ‘It’s like I suddenly gained an edge in productivity, organization, and creativity’.

And finally, Alex Hern in The Guardian described what happened when he spent a week using ChatGPT to enhance his leisure activities. If you’re not ready to use AI at work, perhaps you could at least get a couple of recipes out of it.

With thanks to the users of the CIEP’s forums for the links they shared in recent discussions.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: robot hand by Tara Winstead on Pexels; OpenAI screen by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Forum matters: Getting to grips with the publishing process

This feature comes from the band of CIEP members who volunteer as forum moderators. You will only be able to access links to the posts if you’re a forum user and logged in. Find out how to register.

Many CIEP members are either specialists or, at least, tend to offer a limited range of services. We are often just one cog in the long and complicated process that takes a raw manuscript and converts it into a published product. While many of us are shielded from the labyrinthine complexity of the full publishing process, circumstances can sometimes find us having to get up to speed quickly on aspects of the job.

Whether it’s newcomers seeking to make those first important contacts and secure their first clients or more experienced members presented with new processes or having to get to grips with unfamiliar programs, the CIEP forums have proved to be a helpful source of advice and information for members seeking to navigate the complicated and confusing world of publishing.

Working with publishers

New members in particular regularly find sound advice about getting established. How to find work with publishers is a common theme on the forums. There have been a number of discussions about the best way to approach publishers, including this thread in the Fiction forum, and the rights and wrongs of editorial tests as well as the experience and qualifications that publishers might be looking for. The question of publishers asking freelance editors and proofreaders to sign non-disclosure agreements has also been discussed on the forums. Anyone frustrated by a lack of response to initial contacts or to editorial tests will draw comfort from a recent thread in which members described how, even if it takes years, that initial contact with a publisher or potential client can eventually lead to work.

The question of what different publishers mean by copy-editing and proofreading may not always be entirely clear. A recent thread raised concerns about proofreaders being expected to identify and correct problems in texts that should perhaps have been picked up earlier in the publication process.

For certain publications, fact-checking is an important part of the process, and this is something that editors can be asked to do. This thread explored some of the considerations an editor would want to take into account before agreeing to do such work, and deciding on how much to charge for it.

Working with publishing technology

Many editors and proofreaders are perhaps lucky in never having to venture beyond Word and the occasional pdf. But there are a host of other programs that the publishing industry uses and you will find experts in these among the CIEP membership, many of them happy to share advice and expertise through the forums. Recent forum threads have focused on LaTeX, InDesign and MathType. If you find yourself faced with a tricky problem in relation to design or typesetting, the forums will often be a great place to find answers. A similar thread explored the options for formatting books for sale on Kindle and other electronic devices.

Sharing experiences

The forums are also a useful place for members to discuss experiences, good and bad, with individual publishers – though such conversations often switch quickly to private messages, away from the main forums.

If you’re a CIEP member seeking to expand your knowledge about any aspect of your work and the variety of ways in which we interact with the publishing industry, our forums are always there to offer advice and help. See you there!

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by Prettysleepy on Pixabay, office meeting by Kampus Production on Pexels.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

A week in the life of a freelance commissioning editor

If you’ve ever wondered what a freelance commissioning editor gets up to, in this post Sarah Lustig has provided some answers!

I work as a freelance commissioning editor for several different educational publishers. Before starting my business, I worked in-house for a large educational publisher. I had a lot of experience as a project manager, but almost none as a commissioning editor.

Slowly, project management jobs morphed into commissioning (sometimes by way of nebulous ‘author management’). Before I knew it, I was overseeing large multi-component courses. Now it’s a core part of my services. My in-house experience was with international curricula and I still do a lot of work on them now, as well as occasional UK and vocational titles.

Before I go into what a typical week might look like, let’s clear up some confusions around the work of a commissioning editor.

How is it different from project management?

In many ways, it isn’t. The work of the commissioning editor is largely the same as that of the project manager, which is why my project management skills helped me segue so neatly into commissioning.

The key distinguishing feature of the commissioning editor’s work is that it centres on the early development of the content. A project manager (PM) may take over later. The handover to the PM often happens after any manuscript development has been completed and the materials are ready for copyediting. In that case, the freelance commissioning editor may stay on the project, but in a reduced role, or they may hand over to an in-house colleague.

In the same way that a designer maintains a key relationship with their illustrators, the commissioning editor takes ownership of the relationship with any authors. Throughout the project, they are the author’s first point of contact. In some cases, all author queries go through the commissioning editor and the rest of the team has little to no contact with them.

The commissioning editor also has overall responsibility for the project; team members (including the PM) will escalate issues to the commissioning editor, who makes a decision on how to address them. For that reason, freelance commissioning editors may work very closely with an in-house team member, such as a publisher. A freelancer can reasonably make decisions about text features or style, but they probably cannot make business-critical decisions, such as a decision to delay publication if there is an urgent issue with the content.

Back to a typical week: let’s assume I’m at the start of a new project. What would my week involve?

Commissioning authors

One key task of the commissioning editor is to commission the authors to write the content. The commissioning editor might choose them from contacts the publisher has supplied, from their own list of contacts or by sourcing someone new through sites such as LinkedIn.

At the start of a new project, I compose a standard email to send out to prospective authors. It will include:

  • Details of the project.
  • The schedule.
  • The remuneration being offered (if known at this stage).

Depending on how urgently we need to find someone, I might email several people simultaneously (and explain that in the email). Otherwise I approach one or two people and wait for their responses.

A typical week might include a phone call with a new author who has questions about the project. Some prefer to iron out any questions over email, but a phone call can be especially useful if you do go on to work together on the project.

a woman sitting at a desk holds a phone to her ear

Author briefing

While I am approaching potential authors and waiting for replies, I also start drafting the author briefing document. The publisher may have a template that they ask me to work from. If not, I have my own template that I adapt. The brief always includes:

  • A project overview and contents list for the proposed publication.
  • Any series features.
  • Special requirements.
  • Rights and permissions guidelines – the publisher usually supplies some standard wording; I add to that any artwork and/or photo budgets.
  • Workflow and contacts.

The author briefing can be an exciting part of the job. It’s often one of the most creative tasks. It’s at this stage that the vision for the product is laid out. Will you add any new features? How will you address a unique requirement from the subject specification, such as scientific practicals or field work?

This brief is a really important part of the project materials. It will be used by several other team members to get to grips with the expected content. It might also be used in briefing freelancers later down the line.

Another key task of the commissioning editor is to check that the material submitted by the author matches the brief. Some small variances are normal and can be resolved during development editing. But it’s more troubling if the author has not submitted a section or has not briefed any photos, in a brief that asks for 100 photos.

Liaising with reviewers and development editors

After the author has submitted their manuscript, it may go to reviewers or a development editor to check. Often, the commissioning editor will commission and brief any reviewers or development editors, in the same way they did with the authors. They will also liaise with them throughout their work.

Since the work of these freelancers is necessarily in-depth, there are likely to be content amendments to the text and author queries. In a normal week, I might receive some of these comments back from the freelancers. I go through them to see if there are any simple issues I can resolve myself in the manuscript – a question about the grammatical style used or a simple error found. I then send everything else back to the author to work on.

There may be some work to do between the author and the reviewer or development editor, to agree on the best solution to a problem. As commissioning editor, I have the ultimate decision-making responsibility in any disagreements. They don’t happen very often. Usually I can defer to the author.

Team meetings

Part of the commissioning editor’s role is to attend – and sometimes run – team meetings. These meetings could include a project kick-off and regular team update meetings. The commissioning editor usually runs the project kick-off. This is a time for them to brief the rest of the team on the project.

In most weeks, it’s likely that I will attend an update meeting with the team. Early in the project, when the manuscript is with me, I use the team meeting to tell others what the author has delivered and the progress of any editorial work, such as development editing.

Later, when the manuscript has passed to a project editor, the project editor or project manager will provide the team with updates. At that stage, my role in the meeting is mostly to answer any queries.

close up of people having a meeting round a table

I might also be called on to make decisions when there is a problem. For example, the typesetter has been delayed and won’t return the proofs on the agreed date. Can we afford to delay the schedule? If we delay now, can we save time later on? Do we want to batch the content to keep it moving? A project manager will advise on all these points but often the commissioning editor will decide what course of action to take. A wise commissioning editor listens to the project manager’s suggestion.

The rewards and the challenges

I find commissioning work very rewarding. I’m there at the very beginning of the project, when the concept is still being scoped out. I then get to see the vision realised in the final product.

It can be very challenging, especially when there are problems and I need to try to provide solutions and answers. Sometimes the problem-solving itself is a good challenge; sometimes it isn’t. However, for me, the satisfaction of seeing something develop from nothing, until it’s a real product out in the world, outweighs the difficulties.

About Sarah Lustig

Sarah Lustig has been working in educational publishing since 2010. She has been freelance since 2014, providing educational publishers with proofreading, commissioning and project management services. She specialises in international curricula, as well as some non-fiction subjects. She is also the author of the middle-grade novel Mystery in the Palace of Westminster.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: office desk by Dose Media on Unsplash; phone call by Marcus Aurelius on Pexels; team meeting by Headway on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Marketing and networking through Twitch

In this Q&A, Kat Betts talks about using the streaming platform Twitch to market her editing business and to network with writers and other editors. For the past five years, she’s live-streamed edits on Twitch.

What is Twitch?

Twitch.tv is a streaming platform used mostly, but not exclusively, by gamers to live-stream games as they are being played. Through using software such as OBS or Streamlabs you can share what’s on your screen to anyone watching online. You can also share a camera view of yourself, if that’s something you want. There is a wide community of writers and editors on the platform; accountability or coworking streams are a large part of Twitch.

What do you need to be a successful Twitch streamer?

To be able to stream, you don’t need much: a camera (if you choose to use one), a screen layout overlay (available through Streamlabs, create your own, or have someone design one!) and something to stream. This might be as little as a Pomodoro timer all on its own, or it might be your writing or an edit you’re working on.

To be a successful streamer takes time and effort. Not only do you need to be active in the community to cultivate a viewership (usually through having a strong streaming schedule), but you also need to advertise streams (on social media) as well as in various Discord groups. For me, diving into such depth is beyond my ability. I just don’t have the time, and while it doesn’t take long to put out a post on social media, my primary focus on those platforms is to share myself as an editor first and foremost, rather than a streamer. Still, being active in the community has me meeting writers worldwide, and other streamers through them and their viewers. It’s a web of friends that I spend time with daily, whether or not I’m streaming.

Why did you start streaming on Twitch?

Way back when I started (2018), I wanted to add to my income and add to my pool of potential leads. I thought streaming on Twitch would be a good way to do this. I do not get paid much through subscriptions (where viewers can pay to have no ads while watching my channel), bits (tips) or ad revenue. Being present and active in the Twitch writing and editing community has led to new, long-lasting client relationships though. That said, the value in it is the company. Most of us work from home. Alone. And some days this is lovely. For me, though, I get lonely quickly, and being able to chat with friends I’ve made across the world is a great social outlet. Plus, if you get your social bar filled, all you have to do is hit that little browser X. 😉

editing on Twitch

Do you ever get nervous or make mistakes?

In the beginning, I would get nervous all the time. I knew the people, I loved the community, but having your face up there, and people watching your every digital move? Sounds like a disaster! But the community are wonderful. They are supportive.

What still makes me nervous these days is when the author of the work I am editing onscreen comes into the stream. In almost every case, my nerves are unfounded. The clients are excited to see the edit, they’re excited to get to know me more, and I them! They love when you’re umming and ahhing over the same pesky comma they were. Take it out? Leave it in? Clients being in the chat and viewing the stream is not a bad thing, either; they can often clear up queries on the fly, rather than you having to wait until they return an email or Discord message.

It’s important to understand that Twitch is a live environment, and viewers aren’t looking for perfection. Anything too cultivated screams promotional content only. In my experience, this just doesn’t work within the writing and editing community on Twitch. Most viewers are there to create a bond, to make a friend, and this is a great way to develop relationships that turn into leads.

Do you get many questions while streaming?

Absolutely, and I love being able to share what I do. It’s important to me to show authors that editors are there to support them, to be their partner in the process, to make their work shine.

Regarding editing, there are three common questions I get asked repeatedly:

  • What’s your website? A link to my website shows up periodically using an automated chatbot system I have set up, but I’m always happy to share it!
  • What are your rates? I redirect to my website, with an explanation that the rates listed are just a guide, and that manuscripts are assessed individually.
  • Will you look at my story for me? There are, of course, many people in the community who want work done for free, and there are writers and editors on Twitch who do give feedback (usually developmental advice). This is not something I do (I like to think of myself as a coin-operated editor), and I have lost only a few potential viewers as a result.

How do you decide which manuscripts to edit live?

Whether to edit a manuscript live first comes down to what the author decides. I include in my contracts multiple versions of the confidentiality clause, which allow the client to choose what depth of clause they’d like. Twitch streaming is one of these options, and every client is walked through what Twitch is and how it works before they decide. If an author chooses Twitch streaming, the decision of when and how long to stream for is made at my discretion. Some days I might choose not to stream the manuscript; it all depends on what I am doing at the time, and whether the manuscript lends itself well to streaming.

Works are never streamed in their entirety, and at no point are any recordings or clips made. If an author wishes to rescind streaming permissions for their work, it is made clear that this is always an option; it is their work, and when it comes to confidentiality (among so much more!), it’s entirely their choice. Most authors I work with (about 9 out of 10) choose to have their edit streamed, and while I’ve never had a client pull their manuscript permissions, it is important that they know this is always an option.

Where can you be found?

I’m always happy to answer questions about streaming. If you’re curious, stop by twitch.tv/elementeds, hit the follow button and turn on notifications. I don’t have a stream schedule (though I do recommend it if you can stick to one), but the notification option will send you an email letting you know I’ve gone live. Come hang out and let’s make some work progress together!

About Kat Betts

Kat BettsKat Betts has been an editor for just over 12 years and maintains that it is, in fact, an addiction. She generalises in speculative fiction, specialising in fantasy and science fiction. Kat spends most of her time editing or wrangling her three young boys, and when she gets spare time, she writes portal fantasies, plays World of Warcraft or sculpts cute little dragons from polymer clay. You can find her at elementeds.com and on most social media platforms as @elementeds.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by ilgmyzin on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Editing fiction: Worldbuilding

In this post, Andrew Hodges looks at how editors can help authors to create convincing and consistent worlds in their fantasy and science fiction novels.

Worldbuilding is the creation of fictional worlds in stories. In this blog post, I’ll cover some common problems editors encounter with worldbuilding. These can be tackled in a developmental edit, a line edit, or both.

Defining worldbuilding

First up, here’s some exciting news: in April 2023, the Merriam-Webster dictionary added worldbuilding to the dictionary! Here’s their definition:

The creation of a fictional world (especially within the science fiction and fantasy genres) that is believable and consistent within the context of the story.

Merriam-Webster also notes three variant spellings: worldbuilding, world building, and world-building. I prefer the joined-up version, but Merriam-Webster favours world-building while accepting all three variants. The Oxford English Dictionary hasn’t included the term (yet!).

So what is worldbuilding exactly? Well, it involves big ideas, which the fantasy author MD Presley calls a fantasy conceit, such as:

  • How might people live if the ground were poisonous at night?
  • What if people’s height was proportional to how healthy they were?
  • What if people were only allowed to live until they reached 30 years old?

And it also involves nuances of setting, such as clothes, technologies, medicines, architecture, food items, weapons, vocabulary and so on.

What problems come up with worldbuilding when editing?

1 Unclear worldbuilding

Sometimes, authors don’t mark the fictional world as different enough from our world. They may describe scenes on another planet that make a reader think of 2020s London, for example.

Imagine two characters making milkshakes in a kitchen. That kitchen may be designed roughly the same whether it is in a semi-detached house in a Dorset village, on the USS Enterprise’s holodeck or on a spaceship circling around Jupiter. The broader context needs to be as clear as the immediate setting. The kitchen could be beautifully clear in the narration and the worldbuilding vague, or vice versa.

AQ: Can you make the wider setting clearer to the reader here? For example, you could mention the view through the kitchen window briefly. This would make it clear to readers that the characters have a view of Saturn’s rings while drinking their milkshakes.

Library blurring into a sunny sky

2 Infodumping

This is when the author includes too much information in one go about how certain aspects of the world work. These details often slow down the pacing and can break reader immersion in the story. The relaying of such background details is called exposition, and it can happen in narrative or dialogue (especially ‘As You Know, Bob’ dialogue).

For editors, it’s useful to know about any subject expertise or interests the author has here. Asking the author a few questions about their writing context and general life background in an onboarding questionnaire can really help. Infodumping can creep in when the author discusses a subject they know a lot about, are passionate about, or both.

It’s especially problematic when it happens in the first few chapters. On this note, the science fiction and fantasy author Brandon Sanderson coined the term ‘infodump equity’. This is the idea that the more readers are invested in the story, the greater patience (or even desire!) they will have to learn more worldbuilding details. Like readers’ tolerance for more backstory as they get to know and relate to the characters, readers will have more patience for worldbuilding once they’ve entered and got to know the fictional world.

Line editors and developmental editors should point out excessive infodumping in a tactful way, and make calls within the context of the story and the audience.

AQ: You’ve discussed tree physiology on the planet Iror-B for three pages here. I suggest you remove any details that aren’t relevant to the plot, as not all readers will be interested in this topic.

3 Inconsistent worldbuilding

The big ideas linked to worldbuilding have ripple effects that some authors have not carefully figured out. If the most obvious implications are simply avoided or treated inconsistently, then readers will find the world unconvincing and unbelievable.

For example, in a novel about vampires, if on page six Edward says he burns on contact with daylight, then it makes no sense if he’s baling hay in the afternoon sun on page ninety-seven. You could introduce new worldbuilding details that make this possible. For example, a vendor selling sunscreen to vampires could launch a successful business on page eighty-five. But then there’s a danger of points seeming contrived to fit plot points.

If inconsistencies leap out at you when editing, readers are likely to notice too. And that’s why it’s important to raise an author query (if your role permits it). Inconsistencies can create problems with believability and plausibility, which can break reader immersion in the story.

Man reading a book under a tree at night

4 Harmful stereotypes

Harmful stereotypes exist in all genres of fiction. But with science fiction and fantasy, editors need to pay special attention to the new social groups that writers invent in their worlds. These are sometimes based closely on real-world cultures, and draw on stereotypes that link to, for example, colonialist, orientalist or racist descriptors. Editors need to watch out for such stereotypes and raise a tactful author query when necessary.

AQ: The orcs in your manuscript are dark-skinned. This seems inconsistent with their living underground in the Misty Mountains, and these racial stereotypes will alienate many modern readers.

When raising an author query about conscious and inclusive language, Crystal Shelley’s course on conscious language offers important tips on how to do so in a way that does not come across as a personal attack on the author. A focus on possible reader and audience perceptions the author may not have been aware of or considered can help.

And the orcs example is a useful one for another reason too: worldbuilding is never about building a world completely separate from ours. It is always based on a comparison with the real world and all details not discussed explicitly are usually assumed to be the same as in the real world (for example, that a group living underground for generations would be pale-skinned because they would have little melanin).

What to include on a style sheet

Science fiction and fantasy novels have longer style sheets than other fiction genres because they include detailed worldbuilding notes. For instance, I include brief notes on all the social groups in the story, a special column for worldbuilding details (objects and nuances of setting) on my style sheet, and a separate section for any big worldbuilding concepts or rules. Timelines may also be more complex if the story involves time travel or moving between various worlds.

Summary

In short, the experience of reading a science fiction or fantasy novel involves getting to grips with a new vocabulary and world in which different rules operate. These rules need to be consistent and believable, and drip-fed to the reader in a way that doesn’t bore them or pull them out of the story. These are challenges that developmental editors, line editors and copyeditors grapple with every day in their work. If you’re interested in learning more, I highly recommend these resources:

  • Mythcreants have loads of articles on worldbuilding and other aspects of fiction developmental editing. You can check out their site or join their Patreon to support their work.
  • Club Ed offers a specialist course in Editing for Worldbuilding and Setting.
  • MD Presley has lots of useful resources – including books and workbooks – on worldbuilding.
  • I run a newsletter where you can ask me worldbuilding questions. I’m also developing courses on worldbuilding and on fiction craft for new science fiction and fantasy writers.

About Andrew Hodges

Headshot of Andrew HodgesAndrew Hodges runs an editorial business called The Narrative Craft in Edinburgh, UK. He loves line-editing fiction and ethnography and enjoys chatting with science fiction and fantasy authors about worldbuilding and point of view issues whenever he can.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

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Photo credits: header image by David Menidrey on Unsplash, library blurring into a sunny sky by Mysticsartdesign on Pixabay, man reading a book under a tree at night by Josh Hild on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.