Category Archives: Working practices

ChatGPT versus a human editor

Can ChatGPT hold its own against a human editor? Can it tackle typical editorial tasks? Harriet Power puts it through its paces.

ChatGPT describes itself as an ‘AI language model’: it’s essentially a clever chatbot that you can have human-like conversations with. It’s been trained on enormous amounts of text data (such as websites and books) to learn how language works. ChatGPT tells me that when someone gives it a question or prompt, it ‘breaks down the text into individual words and analyses them to understand the user’s intent. It then generates a response by predicting the most likely next words based on its training data’.

It turns out that ChatGPT is quite good at a variety of things, from writing marketing copy to summarising policy documents to creating computer code, and there’s been a fair bit of noise online about how it’s going to take over all our office-based jobs. But could it take over editing and proofreading? Could it start writing posts for the CIEP blog? I decided to put ChatGPT-4 through its paces with some typical editorial tasks.

Take a proofreading test

How does ChatGPT fare with the CIEP’s proofreading test? This test is available here; it’s a 270-word piece of text with 20 ‘common’ errors. I pasted the text into ChatGPT with the prompt ‘Please point out the proofreading errors in this text’ (it’s hard to let go of ingrained politeness, even when talking to a machine).[1]

If we ignore the 3 formatting errors that didn’t copy across, ChatGPT caught 15 out of 17 errors. It did well at spotting spelling mistakes (such as ‘peaking’ rather than ‘peeking’) and repeated words (‘There had certainly had been one or two eccentric characters’). It spotted that Anne’s cup of tea had morphed into a cup of coffee three paragraphs later, which according to my programming boyfriend is an impressive catch to make.

It missed a hyphen that should have been an en dash, and didn’t change ‘Jones’ geraniums’ to ‘Jones’s geraniums’, although that’s arguably just a style choice (as the test itself acknowledges). Another thing it didn’t do was query how Ann spells her name: it assumed ‘Anne’ was right (probably because it was spelled this way where it first occurs in the text).

So perhaps ChatGPT’s main failing here was to not question the text in a way a human would: to ask about style or spelling preferences. Plus of course it can’t see formatting errors, or track changes in a useful way, but both of those issues might be solved once Microsoft’s Copilot is launched sometime ‘in the months ahead’. This will basically integrate ChatGPT into Microsoft programs. At that point it might be perfectly possible for Copilot to proofread text in Word and mark up corrections using Track Changes and use a style guide for reference. Scary, right?

Write a blog post

How about writing posts for the CIEP blog? ChatGPT is certainly much quicker at this than us slow and plodding humans, taking under a minute to write a post. The results are quite bland and generic, but are also pretty serviceable. For example, here’s the start of a blog post about how to start out as a freelance copyeditor:

Embarking on a freelance copyediting career can be both an exciting and daunting prospect. With the right preparation and know-how, however, you can set yourself up for success in this rewarding field. In this blog post, we’ll explore the essential training and resources you’ll need to get started, as well as tips for finding your first copyediting jobs.

Part A: Training for Success

Understand the basics

Before diving into the world of freelance copyediting, it’s essential to familiarize yourself with the basic principles of the English language. This includes understanding grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling rules. There are numerous online resources and books available to help you strengthen your foundation in these areas.

Formal training

While it’s not strictly necessary to have formal training to become a freelance copyeditor, it can help you refine your skills and lend credibility to your services. Many organizations offer courses and certifications to help aspiring copyeditors learn the ropes. Some recommended courses and programs include:

- The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP): CIEP offers a range of courses, from basic proofreading and copyediting to more advanced courses on specific topics. Their Introduction to Copyediting and Proofreading courses are great starting points.
- The Publishing Training Centre (PTC): The PTC provides a comprehensive copyediting course called ‘Basic Editing by Distance Learning’ that covers grammar, punctuation, and syntax, as well as editing techniques and best practices.
- The Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA): EFA’s ‘Copyediting: Beginning to Intermediate’ course is designed to help you build skills and knowledge in various areas of freelance editing, including copyediting, with a focus on practical applications and exercises.

With a little tweaking that could turn into a passable (if not sparkling) blog post. The main problem with it is that no courses exist with the exact titles ‘Basic Editing by Distance Learning’ or ‘Copyediting: Beginning to Intermediate’. This illustrates one of ChatGPT’s main limitations, which is its tendency to ‘hallucinate’: it’s very good at making stuff up with complete confidence, rather than simply admitting when it doesn’t know something.

Edit fiction

I amused myself with writing some terrible fiction, then asked ChatGPT to improve it. Here’s what we started with:

Outside, the trees swayed ominously in the howling wind while dark, menacing clouds raced overheard. Rachel was gazing wistfully out of the window longing to be out in the paddock with her horse Ophelia irregardless of the fetid weather, when there was a resoundingly loud crash and a blood curdling screaming from above and she jumped ten feet in the air. Panicked thoughts flew threw her mind as she wrenched open the kitchen door, which persistently stuck as it grazed the uneven flagstones, and pelted downstairs where she found her brother tangled on the floor of the hallway in the rich velveteen curtains with the bust of Artemis, the goddess of love, shattered and lying in forlorn pieces around his beautiful golden-flecked hair.

“Jasper!” whispered Rachael frantically. “What happened!”

She roughly shaked him until he groaned and groggily opened one eye, gazing not at her but staring inwards at the visage that had shaken him to his very core.

“Rachel”, he moaned. “I saw him.”

“Saw who? Who did you see?” she exclaimed fearfully.

Asking ChatGPT to ‘line edit’ this led to a simple copyedit, where it corrected things like ‘overheard’ to ‘overhead’, ‘fetid weather’ to ‘foul weather’, ‘Artemis’ to ‘Aphrodite’ and so on. I then asked ChatGPT to ‘simplify the text a little’, and questioned whether the fact that Rachel heard the crash from upstairs but then ran downstairs is inconsistent. Here’s ChatGPT’s reply:

Yes, it is inconsistent. The story indicates that the crash and screams come from above, suggesting that Rachel should run upstairs instead of downstairs. Here’s the revised text to fix the inconsistency:

Outside, the trees swayed in the strong wind as dark clouds raced overhead. Rachel gazed out of the window, wishing she could be in the paddock with her horse, Ophelia, despite the poor weather. Suddenly, a loud crash and a scream from above startled her. Panicked, she opened the kitchen door, which stuck as it scraped the uneven flagstones, and rushed upstairs. She found her brother on the floor, entangled in the curtains, with the broken bust of Aphrodite scattered around his golden-flecked hair.

“Jasper!” whispered Rachel anxiously. “What happened?”

She gently shook him until he groaned and opened one eye, not looking at her but appearing deeply shaken.

“Rachel,” he murmured. “I saw him.”

“Saw who? Who did you see?” she asked nervously.

This clearly isn’t prize-winning fiction, but I was impressed that ChatGPT could take my original text and rewrite it while still keeping the essential bits of the narrative, and present them in a coherent way. It’s an example of how powerful ChatGPT can potentially be when it comes to simplifying text.

Edit references

I took a list of references, introduced a bunch of mistakes, and then asked ChatGPT to edit them so they were consistent.

ChatGPT did pretty well. It made corrections like replacing ‘and’ with ‘&’, moving the year to the correct place, changing the volume and issue number from ‘18:2’ to ‘18(2)’, and deleting the word ‘pages’ before the page range. The thing that impressed me was when I gave it a reference where I’d deleted one of the author’s initials, and ChatGPT filled them in correctly. It managed to do that correctly a couple more times, so it didn’t feel like a fluke. (Though if ChatGPT is simply making educated guesses about how to fill in the blanks then this is far from infallible.)

If ChatGPT could track changes (and my guess is that it will be able to do this in Microsoft’s Copilot) then I’d happily use it to help me edit references.

Can ChatGPT replace me?

ChatGPT is remarkable, in that it can edit and write text and you can hold a semi-intelligent conversation with it when its basic function is simply to guess what the next word should be.

As things stand, there are some stumbling blocks when it comes to using it as an editor or proofreader: 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.

So I don’t think that it currently competes with a human proofreader or editor (or blog writer), but I do wonder how many years or even months it might be before it can. Things are moving at speed: in the time it’s taken to write this blog post, ChatGPT has already announced two upgrades (one from ChatGPT-3.5 to ChatGPT-4, and one to launch plugins). And when Microsoft’s Copilot launches sometime in the coming months, that’ll be another giant leap forwards.

John Naughton, professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, has described ChatGPT like this: just as Google became a prosthesis for memory, so will ChatGPT (or similar AI) become ‘a prosthesis for something that many people find very difficult to do: writing competent prose’. I’m certain that it’s going to have a seismic influence on an industry that helps people to write and publish competent prose; the question is just how quickly, and what editors and proofreaders can or should do about it.

[1] When I asked ChatGPT later on, ‘Do you appreciate it if I start my requests with the word “Please”?’ its answer was: ‘As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to feel emotions. However, using “please” in your requests is a courteous and polite way to ask for something, and it can help make the conversation more pleasant and respectful.’

About Harriet Power

Harriet Power develops and copyedits nonfiction books and educational materials. She is a commissioning editor for the CIEP information team, and a Professional Member of the CIEP.

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: Motherboard by Pixabay on Pexels; Glasses and smartphone by Mateus Bertelli on Pexels; ChatGPT screen by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

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

First principles: Using 5Cs with any format

Leave a Reply

Whether you’re a professional copyeditor or have been asked to check text as part of your wider job, the focus is always on communication. As Cathy Tingle, author of the new CIEP guide Editing for Communications Professionals, explains, there are other Cs that can provide a framework for making sure that text communicates the right message.

Many copyeditors work with books, or book-like formats such as journal articles or reports. But what if you’re asked to work on something with quite another shape entirely, like a board game or a set of exhibition labels?

If you’re facing a situation like this, it’s a good idea to go back to basics. Copyeditors have been given a ready-made set of principles with which to tackle any job. The principles are brilliant in their versatility. They’re also brilliant because, like ‘copyediting’, they all begin with a C, so they’re easy to remember, even when you’re in a flat panic about where to start.

And they all sit under one overarching C. Amy Einsohn and Marilyn Schwartz in The Copyeditor’s Handbook call this the ‘cardinal C’: communication.

Which Cs?

Different copyeditors apply slightly different C-based principles to their work, as demonstrated in a January 2022 Twitter chat instigated by editor Jonathon Owen. Some cite three Cs, some four, some seven. The two that are usually included are clarity and consistency. Einsohn and Schwartz add coherency and correctness; others cite concision and comprehensiveness. Some copyeditors don’t use the Cs at all. In Owen’s thread, Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer comments, ‘Wait, is this really a thing?’

I’ve found a certain set of Cs useful. I learned them when training, and editing experience has only increased my enthusiasm for them. They are a basic four:

Clarity
Consistency
Correctness
Completeness

Plus one, which I’ve added after working with different formats. The five together have enabled me to get my bearings on practically any job:

Convention

For the rest of this article, we’ll look at these 5Cs. For each I’ll suggest two questions you might ask of the text that’s in front of you, even if it’s in a format you haven’t tackled before.

Clarity

When you check the text with clarity in mind, you consider whether the audience will receive the writer’s intended message loud and clear without confusion – or what communications professionals call ‘noise’. Clarity covers the sense of the text, but it can also apply to structure – making sure the reader has an easy time of navigating the points the writer is trying to make.

Here are two questions you could ask to improve clarity:

Does the reader have a clear path through the text?

If not, consider measures like adding subheads, breaking up long paragraphs, putting explanatory information into features like boxes or side bars, ordering and pulling out important points, perhaps with lists and displayed text, and including clear introductory text and a call to action.

Is the language as plain as it can be?

If not, look at how you can break up longer sentences into shorter ones, swap language that has a Latin or Greek origin (like ‘consume’) for more Anglo-Saxon words (like ‘eat’) and generally try to reduce syllable count. Use punctuation correctly to maximise clarity without adding words.

Consistency

Editors look to style and other regular features within the text when they consider consistency. For people working in communications, consistency includes brand consistency, which will affect areas like tone of voice and making sure an organisation’s brand values are reflected in all content.

Here are two questions you could ask to improve consistency:

Is there a house style to follow?

You should have the basics of a house style, even if it’s a reference to an external style guide. If you have to start from scratch in building a house style (and you won’t be the first), it’s important to base it on the overarching principles of what you already do, pairing it with an external style guide, particularly at first, to make any new style decisions.

How does this work with the rest of the suite?

Look at the whole picture when you’re applying the principle of consistency. A piece of text is rarely a one-off. It usually comes from an author who has published other content, or is produced by an organisation that has its own branding, website and social media presence. It’s good practice, and inspires trust in your audience, if you get all the content from one stable as integrated and coherent as possible.

Correctness

When working with book formats, correctness covers checking the sort of details that can reasonably be verified. This helps the reader maintain their trust in the author or publisher. With business content, or marketing content, this trust extends to the organisation and the brand.

Here are two questions you could ask to improve correctness:

Are the facts right?

For an organisation this might extend to checking with colleagues whether claims for a product, service or idea will be delivered as stated. But a good place to start in answering this question is always with the proper nouns in the text – that names, places and events are spelled, hyphenated and capitalised correctly.

Are there any legal or inclusivity issues?

You might have to go to more knowledgeable colleagues for this. At the least, consult outside sources that give the latest information on conscious language or copyright issues. Make yourself as alert as you can to anything in the text that might be a legal issue, including libel, slander and copyright. Then apply the same level of attention to whether the text is inclusive. Is everyone being referred to with dignity and respect? Is there a representative range of voices? Is the text reflecting up-to-date best practice in this area? Familiarising yourself with conscious-language resources like the Diversity Style Guide will help develop your awareness.

Completeness

In book formats, completeness often means the author’s promises are fulfilled – that cross-references work, that the information promised, perhaps in an introduction, is supplied for the expectant reader. In business text, ensuring completeness helps keep the brand promise – the experience the audience expects every time it’s in contact with the brand.

Here are two questions you could ask to improve completeness:

Has all the directly promised information been supplied?

This might range from including clear guidance on payment options in a brochure entitled ‘Your guidance on payment options’ to web links that work. Whenever the author mentions a number of points they will make, check all those points are present.

Has all the indirectly promised information been supplied?

Also think about what the reader might expect, even if you haven’t directly promised it: captions for pictures, a contact email in case of questions. Beta readers can help to find these sorts of gaps.

Convention

There are conventions in every field. A press release will be formatted and worded differently from an entry in a dictionary. An exhibition label in a gallery will need to present information in a format that’s agreed across the sector. Even websites have conventions.

Here are two questions you could ask to make sure you comply with convention:

Am I familiar with the conventions in my field?

Your conventions will act as the boundaries you work within, so make sure you’re clear on what can be done in areas like structure, wording and cross-referencing. Keep guidelines close and refer to them often.

Who’s my audience?

Your audience are likely to pay little regard to whether you’re conforming to convention, but they will know if something’s familiar, consistent and makes sense to them. So far so good. But convention in certain fields can sometimes be expressed as specialist language and jargon. If this is unavoidable, make sure you include a form of explanation – boxes, glossaries, illustrations. Always remember to cater for your least specialist reader.

Ask your own questions

The magic of the 5Cs is that each C means something slightly different, depending on factors such as format, audience, sector, brand and brief. Start a project by considering these 5Cs, and asking your own questions within them. It will help you familiarise yourself with exactly what you have to do, and make sure your audience gets the message they’re supposed to receive. When that happens, you’ll have achieved what we’re all aiming for – the cardinal C of communication.

Resources

Crystal, D. 2020. Imagine an editor. CIEP focus paper. ciep.uk/resources/factsheets/#IAE

Cutts, M. 2020. Oxford Guide to Plain English. 5th edition. Oxford University Press.

The Diversity Style Guide. diversitystyleguide.com

Einsohn, A., and Schwartz, M. 2019. The Copyeditor’s Handbook. 4th edition. University of California Press.

Smart, P. 2022. Copyright. CIEP fact sheet. ciep.uk/resources/factsheets/#COP

Thomas, C., with Saffrey, A. 2020. Your House Style: Styling your words for maximum impact. 3rd edition. CIEP guide. ciep.uk/resources/guides/#YHS

About Cathy Tingle

Cathy Tingle, an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP, is a copyeditor, proofreader, tutor and CIEP information team member.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: header image by Toa Heftiba, question marks by Leeloo Thefirst, documents by Tiger Lily, all on Pexels.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Wise owls: Tips on becoming a trusted freelancer

Leave a Reply

In this post, our parliament of wise owls (all Advanced Professional Members) consider the qualities that turn someone into a trusted freelancer. What keeps clients coming back to them time and time again?

Sue Littleford

Some 95% of my work is for repeat clients. I think that boils down to three things: ability, reliability and understanding the client’s needs. I’m proud of this testimonial from a project manager: ‘All safely received … And all immaculately presented as ever. I like getting jobs back from you as it makes my life so easy.’ I’ve done 39 books so far for this particular client, because, aside from the actual quality of my copyediting, the handover is orderly and complete, and provides what that client wants from me. I don’t miss deadlines and I do flag up emerging problems as early as possible.

It also helps to be organised and easy to work with, and pleasant in your dealings – who wants to work with high drama and flapping about, when you can have peace and quiet?

You don’t have to be a doormat to have repeat clients. With all of mine, I still negotiate on deadlines and on price according to the project. Only today, as I draft this, I agreed with another client an extra week on the deadline for my 23rd book for them. One of the project managers in that same client is also now looking out for books for me on particular subjects rather than sending them out to several freelancers simultaneously to see who’s available. The benefits of becoming a trusted freelancer are manifold.

If you pay attention to your customer service as much as to the quality of your editing or proofreading, you’ll be in a good place to get repeat work. I’m a great proponent of using your imagination in customer service to put yourself in your client’s shoes and, as you can see, my own clients like the results.

Jacqueline Harvey

I’ve been copyediting for over 30 years and almost all my publisher clients have been regulars. What makes them come back to offer me another book? I guess it’s because they liked what I did the last time or on various projects over the years.

A trusted freelancer must at the very least be competent. They need to have an eye for detail, a good understanding of the language, a sense of how a reader will respond to a text, good judgement and a broad general knowledge. A client wants a freelancer they can trust to do a good job and to do it within the agreed time frame.

When I accept a job, I make sure that I set aside enough time for it and complete it by the deadline. I also keep my client informed of the work’s progress and of any problems that may arise. I generally get on with the work fairly independently, but raise questions if I’m unsure about anything or if something unexpected crops up. If I can’t meet a deadline for a good reason (eg the work is taking longer than anticipated), I let them know as soon as possible and we discuss how to proceed: it may be possible to tweak the schedule or I may be able to put in extra hours to finish it on time.

Good communication and courtesy go a long way to sustaining a working relationship, and that goes for my relationship with the author too. I try to approach each text with respect and sensitivity, and to be ready to explain or justify my edits – with reference to style guides if necessary. Some authors may need to be reassured that I am there to help them prepare their work for publication rather than to rewrite it or to censure them for spelling or grammatical mistakes.

In essence, do the job well, keep to deadlines, communicate, and you should gain the experience necessary to become a trusted freelancer.

Sue Browning

I think this depends on the type of client. All clients will appreciate you sticking to an agreed timescale, but this is especially true of publishers, where your work is part of a chain of tasks. Here I suspect that meeting deadlines is the most important factor in keeping them coming back to you time after time. Beyond that, communication is important (especially if you know you are going to miss that deadline), as is working to the brief and doing a good enough job. Being easy to work with also helps. Publisher project managers are often juggling multiple projects, and don’t always have their eye on your particular ball, so keep questions concise and suggest solutions to problems to help them out.

Having a reputation for reliability works both ways – if a publisher knows you will deliver at the agreed time and that you will do a thorough job, they are more likely to stretch deadlines to fit your availability and cut you some slack if something goes wrong.

With independent authors, I find that friendliness and flexibility are key. Communication is even more important, as these clients don’t always know what to expect of an edit, so I tend to explain more, so they come to trust that I get what they are trying to achieve. One of my fiction regulars even says he comes back for the comments that I leave when editing his novels, and the academic authors I work with know I understand the pressures of university life and will always try to fit their invariably last-minute paper in, even if I’m busy. So I’d say don’t be afraid to be yourself – you can be professional and friendly, authoritative and relaxed, serious and silly.

Michael Faulkner

In my experience the first two requirements for winning repeat business, perhaps unsurprisingly, are to do the job right and do it on time!

A close third is to introduce trust and reassurance into the relationship early on – give your credentials due prominence in correspondence, yes, but level up the relationship (don’t talk up your amazing skills and don’t be deferential either); offer a free sample; only insist on a formal contract for good reason (the alternative, of covering the main things in an exchange of emails, is normally fine); don’t get hung up on deposits; be responsive; where payment is staged, make sure the client knows the final tranche of work will go out before the final invoice; and reassure the client that you will be there to help should issues arise after the project has been put to bed.

Finally, I find it pays enormous dividends, both for you and the client, if you can make a project fun. Don’t be afraid to be a little irreverent. Believe it or not, this is possible even in my specialty, which is law. Obviously you have to get a feel for the client’s sense of humour (or lack of one, which is fine) and not become a pain, but a client who smiles a lot and laughs a few times will want more of the same because, well, life and the evening news …

Melanie Thompson

Being a trusted freelancer is no different from being a trustworthy person in any other sphere. Fundamentally it’s about doing what you have been asked to do while keeping the needs of the other party in mind. For editorial freelancers (and pretty much any other aspect of life) this depends on clear communications. Here are my seven steps to successful freelancing:

ensure that you understand what is expected of you, and your client knows what you will/can’t achieve
be upfront about any constraints (I can’t deliver by Thursday, but I can deliver by Friday)
be honest about costs – be prepared for a little flexibility but remember that it works both ways
keep in touch during a project, just enough to provide reassurance that the job is in safe hands
if you encounter a problem of any kind, don’t stick your head in the sand – take action straight away
be accessible and willing to give a little free-of-charge consultancy now and then
pay it forward – if you can’t take on a job, offer to help find some other trustworthy freelancer to help out.

That all boils down to ‘be a nice human’.

But there are times when being ‘trusted’ can mean being ‘taken for granted’, so take care not to undervalue yourself. Being a ‘trusted freelancer’ for one client should not have a detrimental impact on your wellbeing, or your ability to be a ‘trusted freelancer’ for other clients.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: owl by Erik Karits on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

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

Flying solo: Time management for yourself and for your business. Part II: Action!

2 Replies

In this two-part article, Sue Littleford takes a fresh look at time management. She starts by covering the diagnosis – how much time you actually have – then goes on to examine what can go wrong with time management, and how to counter this.

In Part I of this article I looked at the basic information you need to improve your time management – knowing how much time you have, and how much time you need. Now we’re going to run through the main ways that spanners land in the works.

We can mess things up in all kinds of ways, and others can have a very good go at messing things up for us. As with all problems, knowing yourself and making appropriate adjustments is key. It’s part of running your business to manage your time effectively (and ideally efficiently). There are several points of weakness when it comes to managing our time. I’m going to address some of them here, in no particular order.

The first step in not messing things up is spotting your weak spot. Do you recognise any of these?

Procrastination

Putting off getting started is not going to help anything, or anyone, least of all you – learn to swallow the frog (do the horrible thing) as early in the day as possible so it’s not looming over you.

I read an interesting theory somewhere that procrastination is the body’s way of telling you you’re exhausted, mentally or physically. Does that strike a chord with you?

The difference between a professional and an amateur, I discovered a long time ago, is that the professional gets on with work even if they don’t feel like it (within reason!). So, how do you actually knuckle down to work when every cell of your body is screaming that you don’t want to?

I sidle up to things. I’m not going to start this scary edit. I’m just going to … remove all the excess spaces. Maybe check the headings are capitalised correctly. I’m definitely not going to do any work. Before I know it, I’ve been sucked in and am bouncing along, merrily working. Some Cloud Club chums tried this and have attested it works for them, too.

I discovered this way of approaching things when I had essays I had to write at university but wanted to do anything else but. So, I decided, the hardest part is beginning. Skip the beginning, then!

Thus I developed The Sidle. Maybe I’d jot down a few notes for the middle bit. If I knew what I was going to be introducing, I reasoned, surely writing the introduction would be a breeze instead of the insurmountable barrier I felt it to be.

It works a treat. It worked for this article! If getting started is a problem for you, try sidling up to things – definitely not working on them, just … doing work-adjacent things.

Researchers suggest different ploys – one size not fitting all – and suggest sticking reminders in your calendar (do actually set the reminder function to thrust the offending deadline in your face) or imagining Future You faced with the undone thing and having to deal with it in less time.

Jobs not arriving on time

Aaargh – you’re sitting there twiddling your thumbs, waiting for a job, watching the start date for the job afterwards getting closer and closer. Communicate with the erring client. Get a revised date and see what you can juggle.

If the client doesn’t have the same commitment to calendars that you have, you may have to tell the client they’ve missed the boat and they’ll have to reschedule when they’re ready. Or you could decide to make a rare exception to help them out and work silly hours for a short while. But do make such exceptions genuinely rare if you want to be the one in control of your time, rather than have clients – who don’t see the whole picture – dictating things.

Jobs taking longer than expected

It happens, no matter how accurate your preparations and brief from the client were. There’s something nasty buried in the middle of the text that no one spotted, and the essential decision-maker is off sick – we’ve all been there. Aside from considering whether you need to renegotiate the fee, you need possibly to renegotiate the deadline.

However, if the job itself is as expected, and the problem lies in your estimating ability, read on …

Lack of data

This one is easy to do something about, starting right now. See ‘Using your records to price jobs and make business decisions’ and ‘Facts for fiction editors’. If you’re a CIEP member, get your work record spreadsheet from the Going Solo toolkit to get you on the right track.

If you don’t know how long things really take you, you don’t know how much time you’re going to need when you estimate price and duration for a new job. If you don’t know how much time you need to get a job done, how are you going to manage your time effectively?

The CIEP’s course Efficient Editing: Strategies and Tactics will help you discover how long the various elements of a job take you and how to put them together to calculate a probable duration – or how to work out how much of a job you can do in the time budget set by the client.

Lack of planning

Do you deliberately include wiggle room in your estimation of time? If you don’t, start right now! How much you include will be personal to you – your health, your commitments outside of work and your personal preferences. I allow at least two spare days per book, for instance. At least two.

Do you intend to be finished by the deadline, or a day or two before it? Guess which plan best allows you to deal with disruption.

Overcommitting

I’m a great proponent of saying no! Hardly anyone is ever offended, it’s truly a liberating feeling and you get to manage your time better.

Sometimes you have to say no to something you really wanted to work on, and that’s sad. Sadder is saying yes and messing up because you really didn’t have the time to do the text justice. Ditto for agreeing to too-short deadlines.

Remember – you can say no without explaining yourself, or feeling you have to provide an alternative editor. Just say ‘I’m fully booked and won’t be able to help you on this occasion.’ If you want, you can always send the potential client to the CIEP directory to find someone else.

Poor prioritising

I’ve already mentioned swallowing any frogs you have in your virtual in-tray. But there are other ways that poor prioritising can have an impact on you.

Take a look at the job as soon as it arrives, to make sure you have all the material and all the instructions, and that the instructions are workable. If you put this off until you’re ready to start and you encounter problems, you’re losing time that could have been spent doing the work – you need to allow time for other people to respond.

I always try to think of what happens next to the piece of work I have in hand. If someone else has to do something before the work comes back to me, can I arrange my work so that their bit is done first and give them the maximum time to meet the deadline?

If I’m incorporating an author’s responses into the file, then this is my line of thinking. It’s the reason I much prefer to send queries out chapter by chapter rather than when I’ve got to the end of the book.

Lack of rest

If you’re exhausted from working too long without a break, your working days are just too long anyway, or you’re living with or recovering from an illness, work is going to take longer and longer and longer. Grinding on is inefficient, no matter how noble it makes you feel.

Take the time off – nap, go for a walk in the fresh air, take a full hour for lunch – and come back ready to tackle work again with a clearer head and more energy.

The (un)expected invasion of real life

If you have allowed some of my infamous wiggle room and planned to finish the work a day or two earlier than required, then real life barging into your work life is easier to manage.
Of course, it depends on what the issue is. Some things you’ll be able to cope with because you’ve granted yourself the bandwidth to be able to deal with things besides work. Other things will be bona fide catastrophes, and a couple of days of slack built into your schedule is not going to help.

But these aren’t run-of-the-mill occurrences. If they are, then you need to pay attention to where the weak spots are that are causing the disruption and take some form of action. You’ll feel better for being proactive, and you may be able to reduce, even if you can’t remove, the impact.

Force majeure

This is the unforeseeable circumstance that stops you from fulfilling a contract. The key word there is ‘unforeseeable’.

For a freelancer, it’s probably going to be something that’s pretty devastating in your personal life. But the news is full of people to whom bad things have happened, so do include some mention of force majeure in your boilerplate contracts / terms and conditions.

Even problems short of force majeure should be allowed for in your contracts, by the way. Include clauses about what happens if the client – or you – are late delivering the files.

Lack of a disaster recovery plan

Some disasters can be anticipated. A dead computer, lost files, these are things you can plan for and take some early action.

Other disasters will be tackled via thought experiments, from which some action, or at least some ideas, may flow. What do I do if the house burns down? What do I do if my life partner is seriously ill or dies? Or another family member, or a dear friend? What will others do if I am seriously ill or die? The CIEP’s Wise Owls took a look at this, and there’s a CIEP fact sheet on the subject, too.

A lack of such preparation means that when (if) disaster strikes, the stress is so much the worse as is the loss of valuable time while you scurry around trying to deal with the problem with that increased stress level in the middle of the maelstrom.

If you’ve not yet read Part I of this article, do take a look at it if you want to figure out how much time you actually have for work, and how much work you can accept.

Over to you

What time-management ploys have worked for you? Tell us in the comments!

About Sue Littleford

Sue Littleford is the author of the CIEP guide Going Solo, now in its second edition. She went solo with her own freelance copyediting business, Apt Words, in March 2007 and specialises in scholarly humanities and social sciences.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Aron Visuals, Procrastination by Annie Spratt, chaos by Brett Jordan, sleeping cat by Kate Stone Matherson, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Flying solo: Time management for yourself and for your business. Part I: Diagnosis

Leave a Reply

For freelancers, without the discipline of a line manager breathing down your neck and looking over your shoulder at what’s on your screen, without the structure of fixed working hours, time-management skills can get a bit flabby.

Time management boils down to three main elements: knowing how much time you have; knowing how much time you need; and not messing things up. In this article, we’ll take a look at the first two, and in a separate article, we’ll run through the not-messing-things-up aspect (this turned out to be a subject on which I had a lot to say!)

Knowing how much time you have

Take a good hard look at your week. How much time is available to work? How much time – and when – does your family need? How much time – and when – do other commitments take? How much time do you need for the essentials – eating, sleeping, household tasks? How much downtime do you need? Pro tip: do not skimp on sleeping time or relaxation time.

How about your month? Your year? Figure out how much time is available for work. That may vary from day to day, from week to week, as other commitments and wishes take priority. But come up with a basic work diary that will show you your work time, and block out the time you need for everything else. If you have holidays in mind, into the diary they go.

Researchers have figured out that five hours per day of intensive work is all you’re going to do, healthily, if you want to have a long-term career without burnout.

Do you use the popular Pomodoro technique of 25 minutes’ work then a 5-minute break? I don’t. The brain starts to lose concentration after around 45 minutes. But did you know it takes more than 20 minutes to get back into a deep-work state?

Those two figures together mean I’m not a fan of Pomodoro. Editorial work is deep work, and breaking off halfway through my capacity to concentrate, only to take most of the next work period to get back into the flow, is anything but helpful for time management. I’ve found I come up for air at around 50–65 minutes, so that’s when I take a break. I get much more work done than when I was trying to work to the Pomodoro timings.

In an ideal world, you’d arrange your work to suit your personal rhythm – are you a morning person or an evening one? It’s useful to know when you find it easiest to concentrate and work efficiently and effectively, but in some people’s lives, that’s a luxury for some future year.

Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World is an excellent read for people doing editorial work.

Taking holidays: Respecting yourself

When you think of scheduling time off, what barriers do you put up? That clients will never approach you again if you’re away when they contact you? (Answer: let clients likely to contact you know you’re going to be away from your desk. One person I spoke to about this suggested putting your holiday dates in your email signature – neat. And learn how to turn on your out-of-office autoresponder for your email. Clients take holidays themselves: they’ll understand.)

Or do you have FOMO – fear of missing out – on a plum job?

Or perhaps you feel you can’t afford it. That’s more likely in the early years when you’re building up your business – especially if you’re the only or principal breadwinner. If you’re not at work, you’re not earning. That’s an argument for ensuring your fee rates cover not-work time as well as all your other overheads, something I wrote about on my own blog (the key bit is towards the end of the article).

It’s sage advice to add to your cushion of cash whenever you can – a counsel of perfection, I know, but one worth aiming for. Part of that cushion is for non-working times, whether that’s voluntary holidays, work famines or some other rainy-day need.

If you fail to take holidays because the client always comes first, then it’s time to set yourself some personal boundaries, and learn to respect yourself, and them. It’s far healthier, mentally and physically.

People who don’t have partners or children at home probably find it easier to cave in and fill a holiday week with work than those who have given commitments to other people. If this is you, is there someone you could give an equivalent commitment to? If you’re not going away, then perhaps you could book in some activities or trips with a friend?

Knowing how much time you need

Now you know how much time you have for work, how much work can you take on to fill that time? It bears repeating – do not plan to work 100% of your available time. You’ll need a buffer for the unexpected. If you are fully committed, every moment of your waking life, where’s your capacity to cope if something happens off-schedule? If you catch a bad cold, let alone anything more time-consuming?

If you’re worried about having gaps in your diary, know that you can fill them with marketing, with training or continual professional development, with reviewing your processes – all things that contribute to your business, but that are less riveted to the spot in terms of deadlines. It also leaves you the capacity perhaps to say yes to an unexpected job offer if you want to.

Know your work speed if you want to schedule jobs accurately

I started keeping stats on my work throughput as part of my invoicing system when I started freelance editing in 2007. I’ve made various improvements since then, and you’ve seen the result in the Going Solo toolkit’s business records.

After years of data collection, I know how fast I usually work on different kinds of material, what my slowest is, what my fastest is, how work from repeat clients is likely to absorb my time – all kinds of essential information.

I have, essentially, a database to compare new jobs to, which will tell me how much time I’m likely to need (and then I add wiggle room). But from the moment you record your first job, you’re on your way to building up your own database, which will just get more and more useful.

Without information on how long things take, you can’t schedule work with confidence, because you’re basically guessing.

Now you know how much time you have available, and how long various kinds of work take. If you’ve taken my advice, you’re not trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot (a litre into a half-litre pot doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?).

Planning a timetable

Rough out a timetable with milestones, so you know how far through the job you need to be every two or three days. It will help you work out whether the deadline is feasible, and it will draw some lines in the sand so you’ll know if you start to lag behind.

For books, I do this by printing out the contents page, and noting how many pages in each chapter, then use my knowledge of my work speed to figure out how long each chapter will take me. Then I assign each chapter to a day, or two days, depending on length and complexity.

For articles and other short pieces of writing, this isn’t nearly so complicated, but if you’re doing a lot on a fast turnaround, treat each piece as part of a larger whole – do you have to finish three today and three by the end of the week? There’ll be some kind of expectation, so jot it down so you know that you’ve done enough for today, or that you need to make an earlier start tomorrow.

There’s no need to draw up fancy charts, which themselves are time-consuming to produce. But do remember to fit your timetable around your other commitments – it has to be realistic (and include some wiggle room, of course).

Ready to read Part II of this article?

Over to you

What time-management ploys have worked for you? Tell us in the comments!

About Sue Littleford

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Agê Barros, beach holiday by S’well, diary by Jeshoots, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Talking tech: Clipboards

1 Reply

In this month’s Talking tech column, Andy Coulson looks at getting the most out of your clipboards. There’s more than one, for a start, and they include several tools and functions you might not have known about.

We all use the clipboard frequently: that useful little bit of temporary storage that allows you to copy a bit of text and repeatedly paste it into a document can often simplify repetitive jobs. However, a recent job that meant adding a lot of tags to the text to tell the typesetter how to style the paragraph, like <A> to flag that the current line is an A head, really highlighted the limitations of this and got me looking at whether there might be better ways to do things.

Office clipboard

In Windows there are in fact two clipboards if you use Office, as that has its own clipboard. The Office clipboard lets you review the last 24 items stored to it. You can access this by clicking on the little arrow in a box in the Clipboard section of the Home ribbon in Word (indicated by the red arrow here).

You then have a sidebar that gives you access to up to 24 items on the clipboard. You can click on these and paste them into your document. When you get to 24 items the next item you copy goes to the top of the list and the bottom item is removed from the list. This means if you are repeatedly using items then your regularly used items can drop off the bottom of the list. Closing all Office programs will also empty the Office clipboard, so if you are doing something like tagging, it is worth keeping a Word or Excel Window open to preserve your clipboard list.

If you are using the clipboard to rearrange text, there are a couple of ways of working around this problem by bypassing the clipboard and keeping its content intact. The first of these uses the mouse. Select the text to move with the mouse by left-clicking and dragging, then move the mouse to where you want to move the text, hold the Ctrl key and right-click once where you want the text to go. Your text will pop up in the new destination. You can also drag the selected text by keeping the left button pressed while moving to the new location.

The other tool is the spike (named after the old-fashioned spike often found on editors’ desks). This allows you to collect several bits of text from the document and put them elsewhere in the document, or in a new document. Imagine you need to rearrange some paragraphs, clipping lines from two or three places to create a new paragraph. Spike will paste all the items you collect as a single block of text, so you need to think about the order you collect the text in. The first item you clip will be the first item in the pasted text and so on. So, you select the first item and press Ctrl+F3. This cuts the item to the spike, but if you want to copy, just press Ctrl+Z after: the item is still on the spike, but remains in its original place too. When you have collected all the pieces you want, place the cursor where they are going (or open a new document) and press Ctrl+Shift+F3 to paste all the items.

Windows clipboard

Windows also has a clipboard that operates in a semi-detached fashion from the Office clipboard. Historically this also had a clipboard history tool which disappeared at some point, but is now back in Windows 11. It can be enabled by going to Settings, System, Clipboard and turning ‘Clipboard history’ on at the top of the list. Ctrl+V will then bring up the Windows clipboard history.

You can paste directly from here into Word, and this material is saved even when your Office programs are closed. You will notice, if you have Office clipboard open, that the items copied from the Windows clipboard appear in the Office clipboard. This can be a bit confusing, and I’m not entirely sure about the rationale of having two clipboards – I’m assuming it is for compatibility with the Mac version of Word.

The Windows 11 clipboard history (shown here) has a couple of potentially useful tools. Firstly, you can see that there are various icons across the top. Perhaps the most relevant is the symbols one, second from the right. This is like the ‘Insert Symbol’ command, giving access to all the available symbols for the current font. The other is that you can pin items to the clipboard, by clicking on the little pin to the right of each item (24 in the list in the image is pinned). These are saved until you clear them and are saved in addition to the 24 items in the Windows clipboard, although if you paste into Word they will take up one of the 24 slots in the Office clipboard. You can use this as a way of saving regularly used items (like my tags) and bringing them back into the Office clipboard when you need them. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that there is a macro that does something similar, and I’ll touch on that below.

Useful macros

One particular macro, CopytoClipboard, was discussed on the forums here – contributed by James Baron with a bit of refinement from Paul Beverley. What this does is let you create a Word file and, with the Office clipboard sidebar open, it will populate the clipboard from the file. This is what I ended up using to tag my file. If things dropped off the bottom of the list, I could clear the clipboard and reload from the file. It meant I had a list of tags I could click on to insert, and could import with the correct formatting.

It is also worth looking at Paul’s FRedit macro (or Windows Find and Replace if there are only one or two patterns) to see if there is a pattern you can find to do the pasting or formatting for you. In my tagging example, if there had been numbered headings, you could potentially have searched for heading styles or the pattern of numbering and added the tags automatically. Even if that was only 90% correct in a long manuscript, that could still be a significant time-saving.

Clipboard extenders

Finally, there are various clipboard extender programs that add to the functionality of the clipboard. I have used ClipX in the past, but this hasn’t been updated for several years, so I wouldn’t recommend it. This allowed the clipboard to have more capacity as well as providing ‘stickies’, which were like the pinned items in the Windows 11 clipboard, but were presented in a really useful pop-up menu.

There are many others available, but going by most of the reviews, I have so far avoided trying any, as I think they may actually cause more issues than they solve. If anyone has tried any and rates them, please let me know in the comments, and we can perhaps have a round-up in a future column.

I realise I have not touched on the Mac clipboard, for which I apologise as a non-Mac user. However, the bit of reading around I have done suggests the situation on the Mac is similar. Again, if anyone would like to share their Mac experiences in the comments, we can perhaps revisit this.

To sum up, the clipboard is really several clipboards that operate in similar and overlapping ways. On Windows 11 with Office you have a number of tools for cutting, copying and pasting text that work pretty well. Things start to get a bit trickier if you have to copy and paste a larger number of items frequently – as in my tags example – where copying from another document each time is slow and creates a lot of wear and tear on your mouse hand. It is worth spending some time exploring whether there are better ways of doing this to improve your efficiency and look after your wrists.

About Andy Coulson

Andy Coulson is a reformed engineer and primary teacher, and a Professional Member of the CIEP. He is a copyeditor and proofreader specialising in STEM subjects and odd formats like LaTeX.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Pixabay, someone typing on a laptop by Breakingpic, both on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

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

Editors don’t just spot typos: Breaking down the editing stereotypes

Leave a Reply

Are editorial professionals just hard-hearted pedants? Of course not! Julia Sandford-Cooke looks into four common misconceptions about editors.

When a content creator asks ‘Why do I need an editor?’, it can be hard to know how to respond. We’re so good at quietly enhancing the clarity of texts that our role is often overlooked altogether. The CIEP, of course, is doing a fine job of raising our profile, but editors also have a responsibility to demolish the common stereotypes about our work that make many writers reluctant to hire editors.

Stereotype 1: Editors just spot typos

Even a little research reveals that this is not true. Scan the list of courses offered by the CIEP. Flick through the 12-page CIEP syllabus for the basic editorial test. The word ‘typo’ does not appear but the phrases ‘professional practice’ and ‘editorial knowledge and judgement’ do. The CIEP’s members are described on its homepage as ‘the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose’. That is a broad description. Clearly, there is far more to being an editorial professional than just ‘correcting mistakes’.

Stereotype 2: Editors are the grammar police

Editors and proofreaders may suggest many types of amendments, and some of these suggestions may involve correcting grammar. Good editors and proofreaders will do so respectfully and sensitively. We don’t make judgements about the writer’s education or background. We don’t set out to destroy the writer’s self-confidence or impose our own style of writing on theirs. We won’t force the writer to make the changes we’ve marked up. They are just suggestions that we believe, in our professional capacity, will make the text more effective in achieving its purpose. The writer isn’t obliged to accept them (unless they have been commissioned to write to a specific brief).

We appreciate that seeing a screen of red Track Changes can be intimidating. We know that it can be dispiriting to be told that that long-incubated text is not quite ready for publication. But we are on the writer’s side. It should be more a partnership than a hierarchical relationship, in which we respect the writer’s vision and the writer respects our expertise.

Stereotype 3: Editors are too expensive

‘Expensive’ is a relative term. A good edit or proofread is an investment but budgets are often tight. Several hundred (or thousand) pounds is a lot of money to find, even for established publishers – in some cases, the rates they offer editors and proofreaders have actually reduced over the years.

A self-published author once told me that they’d had the budget to commission either an editor or a cover designer and had opted for the cover designer, believing that marketing was more of a priority. After all, when a book catches your eye, you’re likely to buy it before you read it. But reviews on sites such as Goodreads and Amazon, and old-fashioned word-of-mouth recommendations, also generate sales. When a reading experience is spoilt by inconsistencies, errors and impenetrable prose, those positive reviews and therefore those additional sales will not materialise.

If a client baulks at my fees, that’s their prerogative, just as it’s my prerogative to turn down a job that doesn’t meet my minimum hourly rate. Editorial professionals are running a business and need to pay the bills. And my quote for ‘doing the work’ includes not only the time taken to do the work itself but also 25 years of editing experience, both in-house at publishers and as a freelancer. Factors other than long service may also be significant. For example, those who became editors after a successful career in another field may apply the knowledge from their previous roles and qualifications to provide a specialist service, such as for legal or medical texts. Clients are paying for that knowledge, just as they would for the services of a plumber or solicitor.

Stereotype 4: Editors have been replaced by AI anyway

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days. Can computers do what editors do? Well, some editorial tasks can be performed by software. Microsoft Word has an ‘Editor’ function that suggests ‘refinements’ to aid such aspects as ‘clarity’, ‘conciseness’ and ‘inclusiveness’. The popular app Grammarly promises ‘bold, clear, mistake-free writing’. And editors themselves use a variety of tools to help them work efficiently and accurately. Few of us would contemplate copyediting without running the trusty PerfectIt or our favourite macros.

But extracting meaning from text requires not only an in-depth knowledge of the ‘rules’ of language and punctuation but also an ability to put ourselves in the heads of readers to identify what could be clearer, what could be missing, or what could be cut. We’re not merely correcting grammar and typos – we are interacting with the text, raising queries where we believe it could be made more effective. Our checks may involve formatting and presentation – for example, checking that a page layout is balanced – or they may be to do with the content and the way the argument is expressed. None of these aspects have yet, to my knowledge, been fully grasped by a computer.

Again, our personal experiences bring a very human dimension to the act of editing. Our thought processes have quirks and tangents that are difficult to program. We look at the big picture, as well as the details, and there are subtleties in language and meaning that cannot quite be quantified by a machine. We use editorial judgement to get that balance right.

In any case, as a writer, I’d much prefer to engage with a real person with real opinions. Real people will be the readers of my published work, after all.

But don’t just take my word for it. Download this focus paper, ‘Imagine … an editor’, by the CIEP’s honorary president, David Crystal, to read his inimitable take on the importance of editorial professionals. His argument is far more eloquent than mine. Perhaps I need an editor!

About Julia Sandford-Cooke

Advanced Professional Member and CIEP Information Team member Julia Sandford-Cooke of WordFire Communications has clocked up nearly 25 years in publishing. When not editing textbooks, she posts short, grumpy book reviews on her blog, Ju’s Reviews, and would like to get on with writing her novel if only work didn’t keep getting in the way.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Pixabay, typewriter by Suzy Hazelwood, both on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

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

A week in the life of a broad-spectrum editor and trainer

1 Reply

Gale Winskill is an editor with a varied workload: she edits fiction and non-fiction for publishers and indie authors, as well as providing training and tutoring for authors and editors. In this post she explains why she embraces this variety, and describes a (more or less) typical working week.

Keeping outside the box

I’ve been a freelance editor twice in my career: first, in Hong Kong back in the 1990s, when I wrote and edited school and university textbooks; and second, since 2008 in the UK, when my interests rather diversified.

In between, I worked in-house for ten years, primarily as a children’s editor, but also editing general adult non-fiction. Now, although my specialism is undoubtedly fiction (adult, YA and children’s) – which is what some of you possibly know me for – you might be surprised to know that I still dabble regularly in non-fiction and also do various bits of training.

I understand why some editors might find working exclusively on non-fiction to be more reassuring than the vagaries of fiction. Conversely, others prefer the flexibility of fiction to the rigours of reference systems or weighty topics. But for me, an assortment of fiction and non-fiction titles is infinitely preferable. I function better with a variety of things to work on, to ensure I don’t become complacent or bored.

Moreover, although known as a fiction editor, my refusal to be put in a subject-specific box also means that skills I learned in-house some time ago are still relevant today. I can apply my knowledge of references, bibliographies, permissions, captioning, illustrations, and so on, to non-fiction titles, or to certain types of memoir. And although my main area of work these days is general adult fiction, I still love working on children’s or YA novels, as well as picture books, which rely heavily on my previous experience as a children’s editor.

Then there’s the training. Alongside tutoring on the CIEP’s Introduction to Fiction Editing (IFE) course and writing/presenting the occasional course for other clients, twice a year I teach on the HarperCollins Author Academy. This course is specifically for authors from under-represented backgrounds, with the aim of helping them to negotiate the publishing industry.

Consequently, there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ week for me, as it really depends on my workload, client list or the time of year. That said, some things are set in stone. When the weather allows, I play tennis four mornings a week before work, in order to get some exercise and fresh air and vent any frustrations on a tennis ball rather than someone’s text. Then I’m at my desk and ready to go.

An atypical, typical editing week

So, let me introduce you to a fairly recent, but not-untypical week. It started with the copyedit of a substantial historical novel, written by an author whose previous work had just won a prestigious national writing award. But I didn’t know this when I accepted the work and confess to never having heard of the author before then! It was the first time I had worked for the publisher in question and the brief was short and to the point: copyedit the text; check the historical details and language idiosyncrasies; liaise directly with the author; send it back when it’s clean.

In my experience, it’s unusual to have direct contact with an author, particularly when the publisher has never worked with me before and the author is undeniably successful. So, to be handed the author’s personal email and told to return the text when the novel was clean was decidedly daunting.

At this point in the commission, at the start of the week, the main editing had been done, and the author and I were debating my queries and comments. These included the use (or not) of certain expressions at a specific moment in time, aided helpfully by the Historical Thesaurus, as well as the use of the ampersand (or not) in some historically extant company names – thank you, Mr Google!

The edited text went back and forth from Monday to Wednesday. The author capitulated on some queries; held their ground on others. Emails were exchanged at strange hours of the day and night, full of hilarious, sweary exchanges about everything and nothing, some of it even related to the work at hand. And then the novel was returned to the commissioning editor. Job done.

During the same days, when waiting for responses to outstanding queries and comments on the above, I started work on a non-fiction book for a different publishing house. The original editor was on maternity leave, so my brief spanned both project management and editing. I was to wrest the work into a solid publishing proposition and guide the inexperienced authors along the way.

The text had been written in several disconnected incarnations that had eventually been cobbled together to form a vaguely complete text. But it still lacked an introduction and a conclusion to explain the authors’ aims and deductions. To complicate things further, a few of the original draft chapters had been looked at by another editor, so the text was littered with their comments, which also needed to be taken into account.

Before editing started, various behind-the-scenes discussions had taken place between me and the publisher to clarify what the imprint expected and wanted, the authors’ limited understanding of the publishing process and how it worked, and the specific issues that needed to be addressed in the text itself. These included:

Language and context considerations incurred by one of the authors being British and the other American.
Sensitivity issues related to the subject matter.
Cited text (of which there was a lot) requiring permissions not only from people who had contributed to the authors’ own podcast, but also from various publishers. The authors hadn’t yet addressed this and cited text comprised a considerable chunk of the narrative.
The lack of a recognisable referencing system for the incomplete, or non-existent, text citations.
And more worryingly, there was no visible, coherent narrative structure to present the book’s concerns to readers in a clear and accessible manner.

I have worked for this publisher for many years and generally, the texts they send me are in reasonable shape. But not this time!

The editing was very slow, as the authors’ meaning was often obfuscated and needed to be teased out. Over the next few days, a series of emails to my in-house contact, based on unexpected findings within the text, then led to a major rethink and completely different approach to the edit. My self-imposed deadline to return the text to the authors looked increasingly unachievable.

On Tuesday evening I escaped briefly to the monthly meeting of the Edinburgh Writers’ Forum (EWF), where I met up with another CIEP editor to enjoy an entertaining talk by Canongate’s Francis Bickmore about his publishing experiences. The EWF are a friendly lot, who kindly tolerate interloping editors, and abandoning work for a few hours of social interaction allowed my brain to power down and recharge.

Work continued throughout the rest of the week on the non-fiction text, interrupted only to field a few enquiries from private individuals, rather than publishing houses. On receiving sample texts, I duly drafted four quotes, two of which were accepted. One of my IFE tutees got in touch to ask for an extension, which I granted after consulting with the CIEP office.

Tutoring

And then it was Thursday and my final tutoring obligation for the fourth cohort of the HarperCollins Author Academy. The course is all online and covers fiction, non-fiction and children’s writing. I teach the fiction stream.

Weeks 1–4 encompass webinars on writing craft, which I present from an editorial perspective, based on the common issues I am always addressing in clients’ novels. There is also a session on the publishing industry in general. I love the class interaction with my students, but my favourite part is definitely the author panels in Weeks 5 and 6. Here, I get to meet and chat informally to some of the UK’s most successful fiction authors, as well as some newer, up-and-coming authors, who encapsulate a wide range of fiction genres. I facilitate a question-and-answer session in which no topic is off-limits, and let the students choose the direction of the conversation. Today – Week 6 – included one panel with two thriller writers and another with two fantasy authors, so there were lots of different considerations up for discussion.

I am always reassured that, despite some of these authors having sold 20–30 million copies of their books in multiple languages, they still have the same writing concerns and insecurities as the students. Without exception, they are all very generous with their time and advice to those starting out. It also helps that, without prompting on my part, they often reiterate the things I have spent the previous four weeks telling the students, which definitely bolsters my credibility!

As some of the Academy’s previous students have since gone on to win various literary prizes or to obtain publishing deals, my affiliation with the course is one of the most rewarding things I do professionally.

The end is nigh

And so to Friday. The non-fiction book is progressing, but the chances of getting it done before I take a week off look slim, especially as my weekend is full of family commitments. The publisher knows this and we will see where we are next Tuesday before I head to the airport on Wednesday.

The above might seem like a fairly frantic week. Admittedly, depending on my deadlines, I don’t always work on more than one text at a time, and my teaching commitments are spaced out across the year. But at the same time, it still isn’t that unusual to find me swapping between fiction and non-fiction projects, finishing one while starting another, and teaching in between.

Some might find my seeming ‘lack of focus’ perplexing and the above week exhausting, but the variety keeps my mind sharp as I switch between the requirements of different genres. It’s not for everyone, but the mixture of work also enables me to retain skills learned long ago, which might otherwise fall by the wayside if I focused purely on fiction.

Finally, such a broad-spectrum workload means that I don’t get fed up or bored with what I do, so overall, work is a pleasure, not a chore. And, for the most part, I can hit that early morning tennis ball without imagining it’s one of my authors or their text.

Update

Incredibly, after a major epiphany, a resultant increase in editing speed and a couple of very late nights, the non-fiction book was delivered on time before I went on holiday. It is currently with the authors, but will return to me sometime in the next few weeks. The next round of non-fiction editing will then continue into the start of the New Year … when I will also work on a fiction critique, teach again, attend a publishing event in London and copyedit another novel for a major publisher.

About Gale Winskill

Gale Winskill has been an editor since 1993, and has a wide range of experience across fiction and non-fiction. She is a judge for the Page Turner Award, and counts various prize-winning authors among her clients. She also provides training to both authors and editors on various elements of fiction writing and editing, and tutors for the CIEP and the HarperCollins Author Academy. Her clients hail from all over the world and encompass traditional publishing houses, private individuals and publishing training organisations. Whatever its genre, Gale enjoys spotting a manuscript’s potential and considers helping an author to develop and find their voice one of the best parts of her job. She is an Advanced Professional member of the CIEP.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: Tennis balls by cottonbro studio, laptop and coffee by Content Pixie, both from Pixabay.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

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

CIEP forums: Director update

Leave a Reply

The forums are one of the CIEP’s most valued networking resources, and they were as busy as ever in 2022. Community director John Ingamells gives his perspective on the CIEP forums this year, and gives us a glimpse of what’s to come in 2023. John covers:

our forums as a virtual meeting place
changes to our moderation team
setting professional boundaries
nurturing a supportive atmosphere
our plans for 2023.

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.

This is the time of year when many of us look back and assess what has happened in the 12 months just gone: the good, the bad, our successes and slip-ups. For the CIEP forums, it has been a busy year, with the usual abundance of professional advice covering every imaginable aspect of proofreading and editing, alongside our almost daily dose of exquisite speeling misstakes and general malapropisms in the evergreen Typo of the Day.

A virtual meeting place

The forums have gone from strength to strength as one of the CIEP’s most valued offerings to members. They offer a place for members to meet virtually, ask questions, share ideas, and offer helpful tips and useful pointers on anything from the placement of a comma to how to avoid backache from sitting at a screen all day. In many ways, the forums serve as a virtual water cooler for so many of us who work in isolation without the human contact taken for granted in a traditional office space. Many members cite this as an important aspect of their appeal.

They thus act as an important addition or continuation to those opportunities that members have to meet each other in person. Alongside the annual conference, many local groups have traditionally been able to meet in person as well. Of course, that all came to a halt during the pandemic and we saw that, alongside Zoom meetings, the forums provided an important way to stay in touch. Now that COVID restrictions have eased, some groups have arranged in-person meetings again.

Changes to our moderation team

As most members will be aware, the forums are overseen by a team of moderators and, with a couple of long-standing members of the team looking to stand down after many years of service, the Council decided early in 2022 to instigate a formal recruitment process to find new members for the team.

This reflected the Council’s broader wish to professionalise the organisation as well as a recognition of the fact that forum moderation fell squarely within our legal obligations to ensure that our activities and events are free from any form of direct or indirect discrimination. Part of this change was to begin remunerating the moderators. Four new members were duly recruited to the moderation team and joined over the summer.

Setting professional boundaries

This last year has proved to be a busy one for the moderators. The vast majority of traffic on the forums is informative and helpful and, more importantly, is carried out in a friendly and collegiate atmosphere. But we are only human, and it is perhaps to be expected that on rare occasions, when opinions differ, discussions can become more direct.

Now, there is nothing wrong with some robust debate with members expressing opposing views on a topic. But here it is important that we remember what the forums are, namely a closed professional space. Or, to turn that around, it is important to remember what the forums are not – they are not a public social media setting with an anything-goes attitude to what people can post and how they behave. We all need to bear in mind that we are in a professional setting, dealing with colleagues and counterparts.

This is particularly important when discussions are begun around sensitive issues such as race, cultural appropriation, gender and many others. We have no wish to stop discussion of such issues – there are many legitimate questions of an editorial nature that crop up about, for example, how to advise clients on appropriate language or usage when handling a sensitive topic. Language changes, sometimes very quickly, and clients will often welcome up-to-date advice from a professional editor.

Nurturing a supportive atmosphere

As long as the forum threads handle sensitive subjects with care and with a sympathetic regard for all members, discussions can continue. But we know from experience that members have sometimes felt harmed by the way one or two threads have taken things beyond purely editorial contexts.

There are plenty of places out on the internet where issues can be debated full throttle. But in our closed professional space, where we have a responsibility to our diverse membership, we ask members to stay within certain boundaries. If you would like to see more on this topic, it is worth rereading the notice that the chair, Hugh Jackson, posted in February outlining the CIEP’s position.

In this context, it is also worth reminding ourselves that the CIEP has a core aim to listen to and learn from perspectives that may have struggled in the past to be heard in organisations like ours. What we are really trying to do is nurture an atmosphere in which everyone has the confidence to participate actively in the forums.

Into 2023

How we handle the more challenging threads on the forums has itself been the subject of some debate. We have already announced that we are in the process of drawing up new guidelines for the moderation process which we will be sharing with the wider membership in the weeks ahead and welcoming your comments.

Of course, the big challenge for the year ahead will be the move to the new online platform. Like everything on our website, the new forums will look very different, but we will be working hard to ensure that they will continue to be the useful, informative and friendly place that so many members have come to know and love.

Register to join the CIEP forums.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Norbert Levajsics on Unsplash.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

Talking tech: Getting the best out of remote meeting tools

Leave a Reply

In this Talking tech column, Andy Coulson discusses what you can do to improve the quality of your video calls.

During the pandemic meeting up has meant using remote meeting tools like Zoom, Skype, Teams and FaceTime. We’ve all become used to using them to some extent, whether we like or loathe them. Here I’m going to look at some of the things we can all do to improve the quality of what others see and hear on a video call.

There are three things we have control over in a video call – our WiFi signal, what our camera sees and what our microphone hears. I’ll look in detail at each of these below; they are all simple, low (or no) cost and often don’t involve the technology at all.

WiFi

Using remote meeting tools for video calls or meetings relies on a good internet connection because video needs lots of bandwidth, and it needs be reliable. To start with I am assuming that the internet connection to your house or workplace is reliable. If it is not, talk to your supplier as they should be able to test it and possibly diagnose problems remotely. I’ve just had my supplier resolve a problem caused by a faulty extension socket in the house and they’ve been brilliant. I’ve also learned a bit more about my connection, which means I can hopefully get issues resolved more quickly in future when I speak to them.

If the connection is all OK then you need to ensure you have the best possible connection to the internet. Many of you will connect via a router (the box your supplier provides). One of the simplest ways of ensuring you have a good signal is to use a cabled connection. Most routers have some network connections on the rear and they often come with a cable. However, this does mean you need to be close to the router unless you want to buy long cables.

Next, if you are connecting via WiFi or using a mobile phone you need to make sure you have as strong a signal as possible. To do this you will need to experiment and move to different parts of the house. Different materials block these signals to different degrees, so where your phone or laptop is makes a huge difference. I live in a bit of a mobile phone dead zone, so there are only a few spots in the house where I get a good mobile signal, and two places half a metre apart can have enormously different signals. Your phone indicates the strength of WiFi and phone signals and your laptop will show the WiFi strength, so use these to find a good place to work with strong signals.

Getting the best from the camera

Cameras on mobile phones and laptops are generally pretty good. The software behind them gets ever more sophisticated, but you can make the job easier by thinking about what will be in the camera’s view and how it will be lit.

One of the easiest things to do is to have as clean a background as you can. I often hang a sheet behind me or use a projector screen, as this gives a plain background. A plain background helps the camera to focus on you, because you are easier to pick out. This in turn helps with lighting, because if the camera can pick out your face easily it will try and make that look as good as it can by adjusting the brightness.

If you use a camera app (eg Camera in Windows) you can play around with backgrounds and see what works best. For the space I use I think a pale background works best, but you may find that something dark works better.

The other thing you can control is lighting, and this can make a huge difference. If you are near a window, the time of day and time of year also make a difference. For example, my office is in the attic and I sit with a Velux window above and behind my head. In the summer, when the sun is on that side of the house, I have to black that out; it is so bright that the camera struggles to make out my face. In the winter I sometimes use the sunshade blind and it doesn’t cause a problem, as the light is at a lower level. So, the first thing to look at is whether you have blinds or curtains that can control the natural light. Again, experiment before the call.

What you are after is even lighting of your face that is not so bright that it makes you squint. This means that ideally you want light from both sides of your face. For example, a couple of desk lamps would work, one on either side.

Try to avoid lighting just from above you, as it creates shadows that are not flattering! If you have no other option, it might be worth experimenting with either white paper or foil on your desk to try to reflect some light into those shadows.

I have a photographic reflector that I use (essentially a metre-wide foil circle with a rim that keeps it taut). I tuck this behind my monitor so two-thirds of it sticks out above and leans towards me. On a not-too-bright day I use a combination of my desk lamp and the light from the Velux window to bounce back off that and light my face.

Sound

Your microphone, like your camera, has sophisticated software behind it that helps to isolate your voice from other sounds. Generally, this is the default setting in most software, but you can help it along by making some good choices.

The first thing to think about is: how noisy is the room you are in? If it is noisy, can you move to a quieter room? (Apologies if you’ve just carefully crafted your lighting set-up!) There may be other things you can do like shutting doors or windows, too. The more noise you can exclude, the less work the software has to do to eliminate the noise and the clearer you will sound.

Once you are happy, open your remote work software and find the microphone settings. There is a microphone level indicator, which is a bar or series of dots that go up and down in response to what the microphone picks up. If you speak in your normal voice while facing the microphone this should bob up and down between about 50% and 90%. If the levels fall much outside this then the program may have a microphone volume or sensitivity control you can adjust. If not (for example in Skype) the system controls are used. In Windows this is in Settings > System > Sound. It is worth checking this before any call.

When you work from home and use video and audio calls, remember that you are not in a studio where everything is well controlled and consistent. The conditions at home (noise and lighting) will change from day to day and hour to hour, so you need to look at look at how things look and sound before a call. As I mentioned above, most of the things I’ve mentioned can be done for little or no cost. Have an experiment – and please share any tips of your own in the comments below or on the CIEP Forums.

About Andy Coulson

Andy Coulson is a reformed engineer and primary teacher, and a Professional Member of the CIEP. He is a copyeditor and proofreader specialising In STEM subjects and odd formats like LaTeX.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Kampus Production on Pexels, person on video call by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

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