A week in the life of a journal manager and magazine editor

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Nik Prowse project manages medical journals and edits a magazine on ecology. In this post he describes how he got into this work, what it involves, and what he most enjoys about it.

My first job in publishing was for a learned society, and its main publications were journals. In my interview, the editorial director described journal publishing as ‘a sausage machine’, a phrase which is true in one respect, but it doesn’t do justice to the pleasure of putting an issue together. I was trained as a copyeditor and proofreader, working on two journals, but as I worked only on individual articles the sausage machine aspects of the production process didn’t concern me.

Eventually, I was allowed to work on some of the few books that the society published too, which I enjoyed. When I went freelance, I did a bit of journal copyediting but focused on academic textbooks. After a few years, I also started project managing the same type of material: ­­large textbooks aimed at students and researchers in fields such as ecology, life science and medicine. I enjoyed the project management work (and it paid better), and one of its most enjoyable aspects was seeing a project through from manuscript submission to final printing. That, and building solid working relationships with authors and editors along the way, were good reasons to find the work rewarding. I never thought that I would manage a journal until I was offered the chance to do so, and the opportunity for a new challenge gave me the motivation to try it out.

Wind forward seven years …

My work as a journal manager

I now manage a suite of four medical journals for one publisher. I started out just working on one, an orthopaedics journal. At first I found the work akin to driving too fast along a winding road in the dark: scary and hair-raising. The need to juggle issues going to press, manuscripts being submitted for upcoming issues and planning for issues further down the line, as well as frequent emails about other matters from authors, editors and the typesetter led to a frenetic pace of work that was, occasionally, almost overwhelming. But after a while I began to get the hang of it, developing systems to help me stay on track and generally getting into the swing of things. I felt much calmer as the months progressed.

That first journal publishes six issues a year, and now I also work on three others, all of which publish twelve issues a year. And it all runs calmly and smoothly … most of the time! All of the journals are commission-only, meaning that we approach potential authors based on what topics we need to cover.

Working as a journal manager is mainly an administration job but I find it rewarding, not for that aspect but because it allows me to build long-term relationships with editors who are experts in their field. I also get to interact with the huge number of authors we commission who are also at the peak of what they do. Their willingness to share their expertise for virtually no return, passing on their medical knowledge and teaching the next generation of doctors for the benefit of patients, is motivating and inspiring in itself. They do this despite the pressures of clinical work in the NHS and the increasing pressure that consultants, junior doctors and other healthcare staff are under, and it gives me huge respect for all medical professionals.

a medical journal is open on a desk with a stethoscope to one side

Organisation is the key

The main tool of the job for me is a series of Excel spreadsheets that allows me to see at a glance the situation for any particular month’s issue. Keeping an eye on these spreadsheets on a regular basis is the key to the job, helping me stay on track.

At any one point, I have to think about issues being planned but not yet commissioned, articles commissioned that haven’t yet been submitted, articles in review, articles for the issue that is about to go to press and ones that have been typeset and which may need checking. Many authors who are due to submit articles need chasing, or their deadline renegotiating, because for virtually all of them writing an article for me is not their main concern 97% of the time. In my first few months on the first journal I managed to annoy a few authors by being overly officious, but I quickly learned that respect, diplomacy and courtesy are essential for receiving material on time.

Long deadlines: Good for all concerned

I set very long deadlines, which allows me to grant an extension almost whenever one is requested and has no effect on the publication schedule. This is key to the stress-free running of each journal. Sometimes an article is so late there is a danger it may not be published. However, by that point I’ve hopefully built up enough of a rapport with an author that they are understanding and can work to the final date that we have agreed.

So, in summary, the main tasks of working as a journal manager are:

  • creating, checking and working to schedules
  • emailing authors to thank them for accepting an invitation to write, and providing information on article format and the deadline
  • following up on late articles and negotiating their delivery
  • checking submissions and ensuring that nothing is missing
  • sending papers for review by the editorial board
  • compiling issues and preparing files for typesetting
  • checking proofs
  • and … in the long run, thinking about the commissioning of issues further down the line.

I enjoy this job for a number of reasons. The main one is the sense of satisfaction of getting an issue out on time that contains articles that will help young medical professionals improve people’s lives. They get valuable information from journals like the ones that I work on. It’s a fantastic feeling. And, as I’ve already mentioned, building long-term working relationships with experts is also very rewarding.

My work as a magazine editor

I’ve always enjoyed reading magazines, from Smash Hits as a teenager to Kerrang! when my musical interests changed to New Scientist when I was a student, and more recently cycling and photography magazines. However, with a background in science and traditional book publishing, I never thought that I would have the opportunity to be the editor of what you could call a magazine.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I saw a vacancy advertised by an organisation that represents ecologists in the UK and overseas for an editor for their membership magazine. I quickly realised that the requirements of the job were a combination of the various skills I had picked up in my 20 years in publishing. These included copyediting, proofreading, project management and, more latterly, understanding periodical workflow and the need to consider more than one issue at a time. Plus, ecology is one of my favourite fields of life science.

I get to choose the cover!

I’m responsible for the front half of the magazine, which consists of articles on a theme that is publicised beforehand. I check submitted articles and send them for review. For each quarterly issue, I chair a meeting involving the magazine’s editorial board, who are all experts in their field. Again, the job involves working with experts who are doing valuable work, this time in nature conservation and in tackling the climate and biodiversity crises that we face.

Many of the tasks of running a magazine, albeit an academic one featuring peer-reviewed articles, are similar to running a medical journal. Scheduling, keeping to deadlines, commissioning and manuscript preparation are all part of the job. One challenging new task is sending feedback to authors, advising them on how to revise their articles based on the editorial board’s comments. The main requirement is diplomacy, giving lots of encouragement as to how to make the article publishable.

But what I love about this new role is that I also play a small part in the way the magazine looks. Journals are very rigid affairs: there’s a front cover with a table of contents on it and there are articles inside, all typeset to a predetermined design. That’s it. However, on a magazine there is a design element to every issue, including arranging the front cover and the straplines that it will feature. Some of our authors provide some fantastic photographs to illustrate their articles, and I really enjoy looking at them and choosing one that will be suitable for the cover.

About Nik Prowse

Nik Prowse has been a copyeditor and proofreader since 1997, following a PhD in evolutionary biology. He went freelance in 2004 and since then has worked as a copyeditor, development editor and project manager of academic, professional and educational materials. Up until recently, he was a tutor for the Publishing Training Centre and the CIEP’s book reviews coordinator. In his spare time, he cycles long distances in search of cake.

 

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: magazines by kconcha on Pixabay, medical journal by Abdulai Sayni on Unsplash, puffins by Wynand van Poortvliet on Unsplash

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

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

A finer point: British and US styles

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Editing between British and US styles can be less straightforward than expected. Cathy Tingle explores a few of the trickier aspects of switching between the two.

‘Never assume: it makes an ass out of u and me’ is a phrase from salaried working life that rattles around my head as a freelance editor. In the early noughties it was my boss’s waggish response when one of the team said ‘I assume that …’. But it’s gained new significance with editing experience. Nothing is set in stone. It might even be different to how I’d always imagined.

US style: Firm ground or shifting sands?

US style is one example. It’s common for British editors to be asked to edit in US style, or into it. With the first, you’re on firmer ground. The overriding style is likely sound, most of the decisions already made for you. When you need to decide on something, you do it based on what else you’re aligning with, author preference and general convention. Easy.

But if you’re editing into US style it’s less easy, for two reasons that David Crystal outlines in ‘Regional variation’, chapter 20 of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. First, with global communications and shared culture, the linguistic boundaries between US and British English are becoming blurred with loanwords and spelling variants. And, second, there was never one ‘US style’. As with British style, there have always been variations, including regional ones.

Why style matters

Readers are less awake than editors to the style of whatever they’re reading, although most will know which side of the Atlantic it comes from. What they can detect, however, is a lack of stylistic coherence. Inconsistency jars, and it can slowly but surely destroy the reader’s trust in the text, even if the reader isn’t sure why. There will just be a general sense of shoddiness, which could then find its sorry way into an unfavourable Amazon review.

Correspondingly, most editorial professionals will know the main differences between UK and US style: spelling, punctuation, the formatting of dates and times. But there are more nuanced differences. And you can’t assume there will always be a difference. You might think that dialog and catalog are the US version of dialogue and catalogue because you saw those spellings once in some US content, but in the US’s Merriam-Webster dictionary, dialogue is listed first as more common than dialog. And then it gets more complicated: Merriam-Webster lists catalog first. This means that The Chicago Manual of Style, as it ‘usually prefers the first-listed entries at Merriam-Webster.com’ (CMOS 7.1), uses dialogue and catalog too. So we can’t even rely on the easy assumption that if the end of one word behaves in one way, the end of a similar word will do the same thing.

US style: flags

Toward/s an answer

How about towards and toward? The answer seems straightforward: towards is UK style; toward is US, right? When someone asked about the difference on the CIEP online forums recently, that’s what I said, because it’s what I’d always … ah … assumed. I was soon corrected, with a link to a previous forum thread that cited a Merriam-Webster article. This article concluded: ‘If you’re an American, you can use either toward or towards, depending on what sounds more natural to you. There are those who will claim that towards in American English is wrong, but it’s really a matter of preference.’ So, not so straightforward.

There are certain spellings that are famously different in UK and US styles: colour/color, centre/center, travelling/traveling, mould/mold. But some US spellings we might miss when editing US text into British English, and some British spellings we might miss when translating into US style.

Nouns kerb (British) and curb (US) can cause problems. If you’re talking about restraining something, or reining it in, you should always use curb in both British and US styles. So we might not realise the noun curb is in US style because we see it as a verb in British English. And because in the UK we’re used to seeing the noun practice, people get confused about the spelling of the verb in British English, often mistakenly using a c.

Keep your eyes open

The key is awareness of all the tricky differences between UK and US styles. These also cover variations of vocabulary and different systems of measurement.

Would you notice truck rather than lorry in a piece? Or morgue rather than mortuary? The BBC, after mentioning these examples, singles out rooster in its news style guide: ‘we should not use the word “rooster” instead of “cockerel” for a story about a “cockerel” based in France’, but as rooster is used in British contexts – it’s the name of a UK banking service for children, for example – it’s easy to miss. Similarly, if you’re used to hearing about monster trucks from a young relative, it’s hard to remember that the UK version is lorry.

US style: woman with magnifying glass

Measurements are important to get right – a mistake could ruin a recipe or, worse, overdose a patient – but in the UK and the USA the same or a similar word can represent a different quantity or weight. A UK pint is 20 fl oz. A US pint is 20% less liquid, at 16 fl oz. You might think: ‘Yes, and a billion in the UK is a US trillion.’ You’d have been right a few decades ago, but now US and British billions and trillions are aligned. Make sure you keep up to date, and know the exceptions, too: in some European countries, billions still mean the same thing as US (and now British) trillions.

Do your homework

All this matters. When converting British style to US style or US to British, or when editing in US style if you’re British, you need to understand all the possible variants. Start with a basic list from your favourite usage guide, then add to it. New Hart’s Rules contains a detailed account of the differences. Part 2 of the Economist Style Guide is about American and British English. The CIEP has a fact sheet on the differences. Keep Merriam-Webster open in your internet tabs. But dig deeper, too. Lynne Murphy’s The Prodigal Tongue will remind you that differences are rarely as straightforward as they seem.

Finally, when we assume, is the ‘ass’ it makes out of you and me ‘a fool’, ‘a donkey’ or – you know – a ‘rear end’, that common US slang definition now increasingly used in British English? That question alone should be enough to send you hunting for a second opinion from reference books, dictionaries and colleagues whenever you’re working between different Englishes.

Resources

BBC Style Guide. Americanisms. bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/all/#a

Chicago Manual of Style (2017). 17th edition. University of Chicago Press.

CIEP (2021). Common style differences between British and US English. Fact sheet. ciep.uk/resources/factsheets/#BUE

Crystal, David (2019). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 3rd edition. CUP.

Economist Style Guide (2018). 12th edition. Profile Books.

Merriam-Webster. Is it ‘toward’ or ‘towards’? merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/toward-towards-usage

Murphy, Lynne (2018). The Prodigal Tongue. Oneworld.

New Hart’s Rules (2014). OUP.

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

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 Clkr-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay, shelves by freestock on Unsplash, woman with magnifying glass by Clément Falize on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Flying solo: Editor education – an essential investment

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In this Flying solo column, Sue Littleford makes the case for why training and continuous professional development are vital for editors and proofreaders – considering their importance to CIEP members in particular.

Members of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) understand the emphasis put on training and the acquisition of the appropriate level of skills, as well as maintaining and expanding them through continuous professional development (CPD).

The CIEP distinguishes between core skills and editorial skills, core skills being about how to edit or proofread, and editorial skills being more about the context in which the editing or proofreading takes place and expanding your skillset.

But why this emphasis on training? It’s there in the curriculum for professional development and in the upgrading system (members should take a look at How to upgrade your CIEP membership, especially chapters 2, 3 and 11 for all members, and chapter 4, 5 or 6 depending on the grade you’re working towards). Training is all over the forums! Advanced Professional Members (APMs) are required to show their commitment to CPD, to stay current with best practice.

Simply put, we don’t know what we don’t know.

We don’t know if – while we’ve been nose to the grindstone – new tools, new standards, or new and better approaches to the work have been developed and are now circulating. Training allows us the time to look up and look around, and see what’s happening out there.

Training also gives our clients the confidence that we do actually know what we’re doing, which is invaluable to them and to us. Members in the Professional grades can take out an entry in the Directory of Editorial Services, and potential clients searching the Directory will have confidence that members who have achieved Professional membership or higher have the backing of solid training.

But surely, I hear some of you cry, I already know what I’m doing! English isn’t evolving so quickly I can’t keep up all by myself. I don’t need additional training – I’m learning on the job all the time. I don’t need formal training – I pick things up as I go!

I say again: we don’t know what we don’t know.

Going on training courses that challenge you to do better expands your abilities and your experience and gives imposter syndrome a biff on the nose. And, as workshop training starts to become available again in some places, there can be the chance to meet other editors and talk together. Just talking to other editors about their contexts can be a real eye-opener.

Sometimes an absolute gem of a tip gets mentioned in the margins of a course, off-topic but really useful to you. Learning isn’t restricted to the course outline.

Some people prefer to learn on their own. Well, that’s fine, so far as it goes; but, especially if you’re still building up your experience as an editor or a proofreader, how do you know you’re learning what you need to know? Are you learning in sufficient breadth, with perspective? Or are you just burrowing further into your own snug editorial world, unaware of what you can learn from outside that niche?

If so, you’re really restricting the kind of material you can work on competently and, in these ever-uncertain days, that may be somewhat counterproductive for your business and your financial health.

Equally, some people have learned on the job by being tutored or mentored by their boss – or just by ‘sitting with Nelly’ as we used to call it in the civil service. That’s fine too, but to upgrade you’ll also need to sit and pass the CIEP’s editorial test (page 34 of the upgrading guide and on the website). Again, the CIEP’s emphasis in the test is on across-the-board competence. Niche away in the jobs you choose to take on, but don’t become isolated and narrow in your approach to your professional practice.

Getting a good solid grounding in the fundamentals of editing under your belt (and keeping it current) gives you a great springboard for developing yourself and your business in the way you want.

One of the characteristics that unites good editors is our curiosity, along with our quest for new knowledge (and a headful of otherwise useless bits and bobs of general knowledge). The ability to know when something we’re editing sounds off is of great value to our clients.

Maintain that inquisitive approach.

A sign reading 'love to learn' points towards a figure walking along a road

Record-keeping

Regular readers will know what a fan I am of record-keeping. It’s no different with training, which is why the Going Solo toolkit (CIEP members only) has a spreadsheet on which to record the training you’ve already undertaken, and the training you’d like to take.

Listing out the training you’ve already taken will help you see where you have weaknesses, or where your training is out of date and ripe to be refreshed.

Keeping a note of training courses you fancy the look of – the spreadsheet has a handy column to keep a link to each one – will whet your appetite and enable you to see whether anything you’ve taken note of neatly plugs a hole or tops up your training in that area.

Consulting the curriculum for professional development will also help you check whether you’re getting a rounded education as an editor or a proofreader. Looking at that curriculum will open your eyes to what it is you didn’t know you didn’t know. Add topics to your wish list so you can be on the lookout for courses to fill the gaps.

And if you’re still working through the CIEP’s grades, the spreadsheet was developed with the input of the Admissions Panel. Collecting the evidence is easy and you don’t have to copy out your training all over again on the upgrade form.

Planning and budgeting

Training costs time and it costs money. If you’re still working through the CIEP grades, then you’ll want to set aside a training budget each year – in cash and in time. If you’re already an APM, then you’ll set aside a CPD budget each year.

But how much money? And how much time? This is where the curriculum, the requirements of the grade you’re aiming for, the direction you’re taking your business in and your wish list of training courses come together.

Using all the information you have recorded on courses taken, gaps in training and your wish list, you can prioritise which course(s) to take next. You can then ensure you can afford them and set aside the time available to do them justice.

I know some inveterate course-takers who have huge plans and then, when they come to tot up the total cost and the time commitment, have to move some courses they’d love to do into the next year – or the next two years. Well, it’s nice to have something to look forward to!

Tax implications

For UK taxpayers, training is an allowable business expense for the self-employed in some cases only. If you pay tax elsewhere, check your own jurisdiction on this.

In brief, in the UK, training is not an allowable business expense if it’s undertaken to enable you to start trading.

Nor is it an allowable business expense if it’s undertaken to enable you to move into a new area of business. Harsh but true.

Training is an allowable expense if it keeps you up to date in your skills and knowledge. Even HMRC likes CPD!

Take note that, as with all other allowable expenses, training costs are only allowable if they are incurred wholly for business purposes.

This is the advice on the GOV.UK website:

Training courses

You can claim allowable business expenses for training that helps you improve the skills and knowledge you use in your business (for example, refresher courses).

The training courses must be related to your business.

You cannot claim for training courses that help you:

      • start a new business
      • expand into new areas of business, including anything related to your current business [my emphasis].

It’s made very clear that not all training is allowable.

The technical bit is in HMRC’s Business Income Manual.

Takeaways

  • Training is a sound investment in yourself and your business, making you fit for purpose as an editor or a proofreader. It gives your clients confidence that you do actually know what you’re doing and will do it well. It also keeps you poised to move your business in a new direction if that’s something you want – or need – to do.
  • Autodidacticism can work well, but can also come across as less authoritative and clients may feel less confident about your offer. Training supplied by reputable providers enhances your profile and ensures you don’t get in a rut.
  • Learning on the job is also fine, but you will need to pass the CIEP’s online editorial test in order to upgrade.
  • Training is also clearly set out in How to upgrade your CIEP membership as an essential pillar of every upgrade.
  • Some training, but not all, is an allowable business expense to be deducted from your business’s profit to reduce your income tax and National Insurance contributions liability.

About Sue Littleford

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

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: back to school by Olia Danilevich on Pexels; love to learn by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

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

Forum matters: Educational publishing

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

The CIEP forums are a wealth of information, but sometimes you need to know where to look. Joining a specialist forum can help you find other members who are in the same boat or who have encountered (and solved!) whichever problem you might be facing. In this article, we cover:

  • How much fact-checking should we do on textbooks?
  • Beyond the mechanics
  • Digging deeper into the specialist forums
  • Join a specialist forum

How much fact-checking should we do on textbooks?

On the SfEPLine forum, members discussed how much fact-checking should be done on textbooks during a proofread. Some said they are regularly asked to do it for education publishers, usually as a separate activity at second proof stage. Members might not feel comfortable fact-checking in a field in which they don’t have a specialism. It’s worth gauging the extent of the facts that need to be checked in order to give a fair quote that works within the client’s budget, and charging for the extra time you will need beyond a standard copyedit or proofread. This ties into an earlier thread about fact-checking that goes into a little more detail on what it requires.

Beyond the mechanics

Editors in any genre sometimes need to think beyond the style guide. We might need to consider the personal approach we’re taking to the job or to the client. A link to a helpful CIEP blog post about textbook publishing from an author’s perspective led to an interesting discussion of members’ experiences in editing textbooks and how they communicated with their clients, while a simple request for some suggested synonyms for some secondary school books turned into a thought-provoking and sensitive conversation about the nuances of language about religion.

Woman carrying a pile of books

Digging deeper into the specialist forums

Educational publishing is vast, and we have many members who work in the industry as proofreaders, copyeditors, developmental editors and project managers. We’ve even created several focused specialist forums where members can dig into these topics more deeply. There’s the general Education specialist forum as well as the English Language Teaching (ELT) forum and the MedSTEM forum (which focuses on medical, scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical textbooks). You can subscribe to as many of these as you like. For example, if you specialise in editing mathematics textbooks, you might want to subscribe to MedSTEM and Education.

If you’re not yet a member of the ELT or Education specialist forums and want to read the threads in the rest of this section, jump straight to ‘Join a specialist forum’ below. Once you’ve joined those groups, come back!

Editors working in ELT publishing will definitely benefit from this collection of resources in the ELT specialist forum. Others working in any area of educational publishing would probably enjoy the discussions about formatting answer keys to help dyslexic students and how many words per page are best for children’s educational books in the Education specialist forum.

More recently, the educational publishing landscape was drastically changed by the shift to hybrid learning in many countries, making this discussion about whether educational publishers consider home educators (also in the Education specialist forum) particularly useful.

Join a specialist forum

There’s no barrier to entry into the hidden specialist groups. Instead, they’re hidden from view to avoid overwhelming members on arrival. If you’re interested in a deeper exploration of a niche or subject related to editing, follow the step-by-step instructions on this page or get in touch with one of the forum moderators by emailing forums@ciep.uk. As well as location-based groups and the Education and ELT groups, we have other topic-based groups including Music, Fiction, Translation (Languages), Legal and more. And sometimes that’s where the real action is!

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 Susan Q Ying on Unsplash, woman carrying a pile of books by cottonbro studio on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

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

Curriculum focus: Educational publishing

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In this regular feature for The Edit, former training director Jane Moody highlights areas of the CIEP’s Curriculum for professional development related to educational publishing.

Editors who work in educational publishing use all the same tools as every other kind of editor, so it is difficult to pick out anything specific. Often, however, the areas of scheduling and process are important to editors working in this field. Clarity is also particularly important in writing for educational purposes, so let’s look at these few aspects of the curriculum.

Knowledge criteriaEditorial competency, professional skills and attitudes
2.1.2 Schedules and budgeting• Understands the importance of scheduling and budgeting within any publishing process
• Understands the influence of the schedule/budget on the scope of editing/proofreading
2.1.3 Editorial processes• Understands the meaning and significance of common editorial terminology
• Understands the roles and responsibilities of members of an editorial team
• Understands the stages of the editorial process
2.1.4 Production processes• Understands the roles and responsibilities of a production team
• Understands the meaning and use of common production terminology
• Understands the stages of the production process (eg prepress, print/electronic production)
2.3.3 Clarity in writing• Understands the need to avoid ambiguity
• Understands appropriate use of language and tone
• Understands conciseness (elimination of redundancy/repetition)
• If space is limited or layout is fixed, is aware of the need to fit any change into the available space without causing a new problem
• Can reword appropriately to simplify, clarify or shorten text
• Can identify whether material is well expressed and flows logically, with the ideas and wording easy to follow

Resources to support your learning and CPD

The CIEP course Editorial Project Management would be really useful to enhance your skills. You could also try the PTC course Introduction to Digital Project Management. For clarity in writing, try the CIEP courses Getting to Grips with Grammar and Punctuation and Plain English for Editors. The CIEP guide Editing Textbooks would also be worth a read.

This book chapter would also be worth reading: Miha Kovač, Mojca K. Šebart. ‘Educational publishing: how it works: primary and secondary education publishing’ in: The Oxford Handbook of Publishing, edited by Angus Phillips and Michael Bhaskar. OUP, 2019, pp274–288.

If you work with interactive exercises, the CIEP course Editing Digital Content could prove useful.

Read Anneke Schmidt’s blog post: ‘What makes a good elearning course? elearning best practices explained’ (Skill & Care, 13 March 2023). This post could also lead you down various other useful rabbit holes.

The Society of Young Publishers has published the video ‘Introduction to Education Publishing’, which you can find on YouTube. It’s a panel discussion and gives a good overview of the education sector of the publishing industry.

This is only a snapshot – almost every other topic in domains 1 and 2 of the Curriculum for professional development are relevant to editing for educational publishing!

About Jane Moody

Jane has worked with books for all her working life (which is rather more years than she cares to admit), having started life as a librarian. She started a freelance editing business while at home with her two children, which she maintained for 15 years before going back into full-time employment as head of publishing for a medical Royal College.

Now retired, she has resurrected her editorial business, but has less time for work these days as she spends much time with her four grandchildren and in her garden.

 

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 Pixabay on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

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

Talking tech: Maths editing

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In this month’s Talking tech column, Andy Coulson looks at tools to input, edit and format maths.

This month The Edit is looking at educational publishing, a field I work in, specialising in maths, science and technology. One of the biggest headaches I come up against is dealing with maths. Why is it so difficult? Well, maths has a lot of rules around presentation – what should be italic, how things are positioned, strange symbols, symbols nested inside symbols, precise alignment of symbols between lines, and so on. In short, standard Word is not able, or indeed designed, to cope with this.

Because these rules matter to people who deal in maths, and a lot of these people are in educational publishing, there are tools available. The three main tools are Word Math Builder (the built-in equation tools in Word); MathType (a Word add-in) and LaTeX (a typesetting language popular with academic paper writers). I will look briefly at all three before doing a more in-depth comparison of Word Math Builder and MathType to highlight the features of these two tools for working with maths in Word.

Your maths toolbox

Word Math Builder is the in-built editor in Word, accessible through the ‘Equation’ menu in the ‘Insert’ ribbon (or using Alt+=). It allows you to enter maths in several ways – as predefined equations; by building them from the menus; or by drawing them or entering them using text-based UnicodeMath or LaTeX code. It integrates well with Word but uses its own format – Office Math Markup Language (OMML). This can lead to issues when trying to export the maths content to other programmes, such as InDesign.

MathType is a Word add-in to handle maths and chemical equations. It is a subscription product, costing about £40 to £50 per year depending on the type of subscription, but with a 30-day free trial. The different subscriptions allow the tool to be used across a range of different programs, including PowerPoint, Google Workspace and some learning management systems. I used the Office 365 version, which seems to have fewer options than some of those shown in the tutorials. The explanation of the different versions is definitely an area the software developer, Wiris, could be much clearer about.

MathType offers a lot of the same features that Math Builder does, but presents them in a different way. Most of my clients use Math Builder, but I think I have a slight preference for the way MathType allows you to build things – it just feels slightly easier to lay things out.

Two potential advantages of MathType are that, first, it creates equations in MathML, which is an agreed standard for representing maths – although it is not yet well implemented. In theory you should be able to create an equation in MathML, include it on a webpage and a web browser should then display it correctly. The second is that it will also export the equations as EPS (Postscript) files, which current versions of InDesign appear to play nicely with.

Maths equation: MathType

LaTeX is a different proposition from the other two as it is essentially a typesetting language and you work in a LaTeX editor rather than in Word. It is far more like working with HTML for web pages than a Word document. It can accommodate a vast range of mathematical and scientific styles and is very popular in the field of academic papers. One of the most common tools is an online editor called Overleaf, which has a free version and a subscription version. If you only use LaTeX occasionally then the free version may well be adequate, with the subscription version giving access to collaboration tools. I’m not going to dig deep into LaTeX here, but you can find out more through the introduction on the Overleaf site.

Comparing the tools

Let’s take a look at Math Builder and MathType. Both of these will work within Word and work in a similar way – you select components of an equation, like a pair of brackets, and then fill in the terms inside them. I’ll take you through the two interfaces below and look at the obvious way of using them – clicking on symbols – before looking at some of the other options.

Math Builder presents options as a ribbon, accessed from ‘Equation’ in the ‘Insert’ ribbon:

Math Builder ribbon

It groups symbols, like Greek letters or operators (+, = etc), in blocks in the middle and has a number of groups covering a range of uses. On the right of the ribbon are some of the common structures you find in maths, such as fractions, as a series of drop-down menus.

Using this approach, it is fairly easy to create mathematical material within a document. Math Builder makes it easy to create inline material, where the maths runs as part of the text, and display material where it is presented as a separate paragraph. You can also type a simple sum into Word without spaces, select it and press Alt+=, and the text is converted to a correctly spaced maths expression.

One feature Math Builder offers that MathType does not is prebuilt expressions (although some versions of MathType allow you to save created equations for reuse). There are a number of common expressions, like the area of a circle or Pythagoras’s theorem, that can be selected from the Equation dropdown at the left end of the ribbon.

MathType works slightly differently from Math Builder. When you launch it, a separate window pops up. Like Math Builder it offers a series of building blocks, accessed through tabs, to build mathematical expressions as well as commonly used symbols. I think MathType seems to offer a larger range of symbols than Math Builder.

MathType

One really neat function in MathType is the red contextual tab. Here you get different options depending on what you are doing. For example, you can add carries and strikethroughs to digits in a subtraction calculation, which I’ve not found a way of doing in Math Builder.

MathType also offers simpler ways to change the formatting of text, so it is easier to remove italics so a measurement remains correctly spaced but is formatted as non-italic. It is also easy to change text colour, something that can be really useful in textbooks to highlight particular digits in a calculation.

As well as the menu-based way of building an equation, both tools offer other ways of entering material. Both have a drawing input, so if you have a touchscreen you can draw your equation. I’ve been really impressed by how good the recognition is on both of these, even when you draw with a mouse.

Math Builder allows you to type in maths using LaTeX code or Unicode Maths autocorrect codes. If you already use LaTeX I can imagine this could be quite a quick way of adding material. The Unicode approach is probably also quite fast, but clearly has a learning curve to be able to learn the codes.

Which should I use?

The short answer to this would be whichever your client asks you to. However, if you have the choice, it is more complex. Both tools have a great range of features that probably cover most needs. I think MathType has more options to build equations, but Math Builder’s text input tools to use LaTeX or Unicode may allow you to work around some of these. That is an area I need to experiment with. As I mentioned above, my clients generally prefer Maths Builder and one in particular has some wizardry that helps with the importing into InDesign. The finished proofs rarely exhibit some of the layout issues people have described when bringing this into InDesign. While I like MathType I generally use Math Builder as it meets my clients’ needs and so I am more familiar with it now.

Thanks to Martin Payne and Rich Cutler for their input on InDesign.

About Andy Coulson

Andy CoulsonAndy 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

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 Thomas T, maths equations on blackboard by Artturi Jalli, both on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Five ways to incorporate movement into your working day

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Most of us know that moving and exercising more during the day is good for our health, but struggle to get out of the chair when we’re ensconced in work. In this post, Rosie Tate suggests five ways we can move more and sit less.

There are no two ways about it: the work of an editor involves a lot of sitting down. But as much as we may love our work, a sedentary lifestyle isn’t good for our physical or mental health. Human beings evolved to move – to walk, run and rest in positions like squatting that don’t involve sitting on a chair in the exact same position for hours on end.

Numerous studies have shown that we should sit less and move more. While sitting for long periods has been linked to being overweight, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer, this can be offset by doing more exercise. A recent study shows that one in 10 early deaths could be avoided globally if everyone did just 75 minutes of exercise per week. Not only is exercise essential for our health but it also makes us feel good. Who doesn’t feel better after a walk, a run or a workout? Movement is one of the pillars of wellbeing and happiness. In this post, I suggest five ways to move more during your working day.

1. Have a movement break every hour

It’s easy to get so absorbed in our work that we spend hours in the same sitting position – often hunched over a screen. If your work involves sitting down all day, take a movement break every hour. Walk around the block, or if timings don’t allow for this, take a few steps in your workplace. Do a few stretches, squats, push-ups, sit-ups or star jumps, dance to a favourite track or move in any other way that makes you feel good. Even just one minute of movement away from your screen every hour can make a world of difference.

2. Shift positions while working

Whether we’re working, eating, watching TV, reading or travelling, we are usually sitting down. In Western countries – unlike in some other countries that favour squatting or sitting on the floor – sitting on a chair is the default resting position. It’s worth trying to switch rest positions, as sitting in a chair for long periods of time places strain on our back and pelvis and, over time, can lead to bad posture or repetitive strain injury. Try to switch positions throughout the day. Here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Use a standing desk to alternate between sitting and standing. Standing desks don’t have to be expensive: you can improvise one (search online for ideas) or buy a standing desk converter that sits on top of your regular desk.
  • Try squatting! This improves ankle mobility and gives your back a break from sitting. Try it for a few minutes a day and then extend it to longer periods.
  • Put your laptop on a coffee table and sit on the floor.
  • While sitting in a chair, try doing some chair yoga exercises.

3. Walk and talk

Meetings can be a great opportunity to incorporate movement into your day because it’s possible to ‘walk and talk’ rather than ‘sit and talk’. Granted, some meetings may not lend themselves to walking. If we’re talking to a client and they ask us to look at a convoluted sentence on page 37, we’d rather not be strolling through a local park.

But we can look out for meetings where we don’t need to be glued to our screens and take the opportunity to step outside. If there’s an agenda for the meeting, you could have this on your phone and refer to it when needed. This is a great opportunity to get some sunshine – or if it isn’t shining, some natural light at least – which leads to better sleep, boosts vitamin D levels and regulates hormones. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Confessions: ‘Walking has something in it which animates and heightens my ideas: I can scarcely think when I stay in one place; my body must be set a-going if my mind is to work.’ Who knows? You might find that your most productive talks happen while you’re walking.

Man walking outside on a call

4. Move more

Often, we see movement as something that must be done within a specific time frame and called ‘exercise’. We set time aside for our daily or weekly sessions and we don’t move very much the rest of the time. In reality, we don’t need a designated exercise session to move more. Movement can be incorporated into our daily activities if we look for opportunities to do so. And when we start looking, the opportunities abound. Here are some ideas.

  • Take the stairs instead of the lift or escalators.
  • Where possible, walk or cycle instead of taking public transport.
  • While watching TV, do some gentle exercises or stretches. There are plenty that you can do while still looking at the screen – a quick online search offers plenty of inspiration.
  • Try using text-to-speech software to move around or stretch while listening to text instead of sitting down to read it, such as blog posts, long emails or even perhaps the first read-through of a developmental edit.
  • Stand while on public transport instead of sitting down.

You can also use your lunch break to move more. Try eating mindfully while walking or doing an online exercise class (the Better at Home app offers hundreds of free online classes for all levels).

5. Get into and stick to good habits

The most crucial point of all when it comes to working movement into your day is to get into – and stick to – good habits. As anyone who has ever set new year’s resolutions knows, it’s all too easy to start with the best of intentions but fail to put them into practice. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear gives lots of tips on how to make good habits stick. A couple that stuck with me after reading his book:

  • Use the ‘two-minute rule’: you can break down habits into small tasks that fit into two minutes or less. When trying to move more during the day, you could start by doing this in one of the ways listed above for just two minutes each day. Do this for one week and work your way up to longer periods from there.
  • Make the habit obvious by using cues. If you want to spend some time at a standing desk each day, make sure it is set up so that you’re more likely to use it. Set an alarm to take a movement break each hour. Leave your yoga mat out in plain sight if you’re planning a lunchtime session on your mat.

You don’t need to make drastic changes: incremental steps will do just fine. Start small and work movement into your day little by little over the course of a few weeks. Even a few more minutes of physical activity and varied movement a day can make a huge difference in the long run. By building this movement into your day – moving more and sitting less – you should get to the end of the year feeling a bit more energetic and less achy without having put aside long periods of time each day specifically for exercise.

I’d love to hear your thoughts or other suggestions on how to move more in the comments below.

About Rosie TateRosie Tate

Rosie Tate is co-founder of Tate & Clayburn, a London-based company that offers editorial and language services to clients worldwide. A first-class Oxford University languages graduate with an MA in Documentary Filmmaking, she’s an experienced editor, writer and producer, having worked for Oxford University Press, the BBC and Save the Children.

 

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 Karolina Grabowska on Pexels, man walking outside on a call by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

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

Starting out as a freelance editor: Reflections on the first few years

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Now at the four-year mark of her freelance career, proofreader and copyeditor Eleanor Smith reflects on the ups, the downs and the lessons learnt – and offers an insight into starting an editorial business.

Having reached the four-year milestone with my editorial business, it feels right to mark the occasion by doing a touch of self-reflection on my freelance journey so far. Hopefully other editors will gain something from reading about my editorial escapades – whether that’s a dose of empathy or perhaps some guidance if you’re only just starting out yourself.

In this post, I will cover:

  • leaving full-time employment
  • taking my first steps as a freelance editor
  • an unexpected roadblock
  • choosing whether to specialise
  • celebrating the wins
  • lessons I’ve learnt.

My background and leaving full-time employment

From about age 13, I knew I wanted to work in the publishing industry. Books had always been an important part of my life, with regular trips to the library as a child to pick out that week’s adventures.

With that in mind, I got my degree in English literature and took some courses with the CIEP (then SfEP). But after a month of editorial work experience in a well-known publishing house in London, I realised the capital city life wasn’t for me.

So when I saw a job for a proofreader in a marketing agency pop up in my home town, I was thrilled. I could still use my editorial skills after all – without leaving home! Before long I was busy editing content and should have been loving every minute. But a toxic atmosphere can ruin even the best role …

It was only when the job began to impact both my physical and mental health that I knew it was time to tread a different path. Of course I was nervous, but I felt taking the ultimate risk and going it alone would be worth it. I knew if I didn’t give freelancing a try, I would always be wondering ‘What if …?’

Baby steps

Now it was time to take my first tentative steps into the freelance editing world. Straight away I rejoined as a member of the CIEP and took another proofreading course to sharpen my skills and increase my confidence.

When there’s no income on the horizon, you start to panic a little. So I sat down and made my first plan: exploring different avenues of finding work and deciding what kind of projects I wanted and was able to take on as a relative newbie.

I researched just about every publishing company in the UK (and some overseas too), set up alerts for freelance editing jobs and looked into several online directories. Slowly, my business started to take shape. I had made contacts, figured out what I wanted to do and set my own pace.

A temporary halt in proceedings

A year into working as a freelancer, I encountered an unexpected roadblock: the pandemic. It turned out it was not a great time to have a young business just beginning to spread its wings. Like many, I was faced with deadlines being pushed back indefinitely and found myself with a lot of unwelcome free time.

What this situation did was present me with a valuable lesson. When you’re self-employed, some months will be more successful than others. I used this time to address some of the tasks that had been shoved to the bottom of the pile – the ones that would eventually make it quicker to come out of this dry spell.

I set about updating my CV and directory entries, contacting different publishers, exploring new ways to enhance the services I offer and finding tools to make editing more efficient. I had to keep a positive mindset and believe that the work would return – and thankfully, it did.

Woman taking notes on a laptop

To specialise or not to specialise?

I knew that a lot of editors choose to specialise in a field where they have previous experience, but as my degree was broad and I wanted to step away from the marketing world, I could go in any direction.

From educational children’s material to novels and puzzles, I’ve worked on a wide range of literature, and I can’t say whether I’ll choose to specialise further just yet. For now, I relish jumping between genres, gladly switching from books about history to fantasy epics to gritty crime.

The point I am trying to make is that it’s okay to choose only one route and stick to it, but it’s also perfectly okay to do a bit of wandering and see what captures your interest along the way. I’m still in the latter camp.

Celebrating the wins

When you work for yourself, there is no boss to give you external validation. No one is patting you on the back for a job well done (unless you do it yourself – no judgement here). Because of this, it can be easy to skim past the wins and, in doing so, fail to acknowledge them.

Over the last four years, I’ve struggled to celebrate these wins (even when I achieved Professional Member status with the CIEP!). Often I became so focused on where the next project was coming from, I didn’t take the time to pause and appreciate what I had achieved so far.

Being your own biggest cheerleader is a great asset as a freelancer, and while I still experience the occasional wobble, I’m finding this gets easier with time.

Lessons learnt (the hard way!)

Starting an editorial business is not an easy endeavour, and I will admit that my naivety has landed me in a few, shall we say, unfavourable situations. If you’re early in your freelance career, perhaps I can help you avoid these snags and keep your metaphorical knitwear intact.

Here are some memorable lessons I had to learn the hard way:

  • Early on, I offered to work on a book for free as a trial, with the hope of receiving repeat work from this particular publisher. I excitedly completed the job, got great feedback, then never heard from them again. Lesson learnt: only offer to do a short free sample!
  • After a client was late paying my invoice, I still took on more work with them and had to keep pestering them to pay. Lesson learnt: don’t give clients too many chances when it comes to payment. If an agreement is made at the start of a project, they should stick to it.
  • When a client asks for a timescale, give your timings a little padding. Better that than having to put in extra-long shifts in a panic to get an edit done on time. Lesson learnt: offer a realistic deadline rather than the one you think the client wants to hear.

Next steps

I’m excited to see where the next four years take me. I plan to continue honing my craft further with more courses, figuring out which projects excite me the most and trying out ways to market myself – something I’ll admit I find difficult, as it’s easy to compare yourself to other editors.

Does the impostor syndrome ever go away? I will let you know if it happens!

About Eleanor SmithEleanor Smith

Eleanor Smith is a freelance proofreader and copyeditor based in Somerset with a passion for films, musicals and cats, the latter being her favourite breed of co-worker. A Professional Member of the CIEP, she applies her editorial skillset to an eclectic mix of projects, from children’s educational books to crime, fantasy and historical fiction.

 

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 Pixabay on Pexels, woman taking notes by Ivan Samkov on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

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

ChatGPT versus a human editor

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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.

A pair of glasses and a smartphone with ChatGPT open are lying on a desk

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.

Close up of a ChatGPT screen

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.
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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

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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

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 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.