Tag Archives: CIEP forums

CIEP forums: Director update

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

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

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Photo credits: header image by Norbert Levajsics on Unsplash.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

Forum matters: Fiction and other specialisms

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

Supporting members’ specialisms

One of the best things about the CIEP community is the sheer breadth of knowledge held and shared freely by its members. From FRedit to flamingos, there’s bound to be a tasty morsel that will make your life easier, or at least a little more interesting, especially if you dig a little deeper into the specialist groups, which were created to avoid overwhelming the core forums. Find out more about joining one or more of these forums.

Since this issue of The Edit is all about fiction, it’s an opportunity to draw your attention to the Fiction forum, which has over 500 members. Of course, fiction editors will gain a lot from the main forums in the first place, and recent useful threads have covered checking facts, how deep down the rabbit hole you need to go (and whether you should charge extra for spelunking), flamingo migration and the etymology of riverbank architecture. Might these reappear in this year’s CIEP conference quiz? Best take notes.

An exploration on SfEPLine of which tools are available to editors with vision loss or impairment (reassuring to know that loss of vision might not necessarily mean an end to an editing career) connects quite nicely with a thread in the Newbie forum (an underrated goldmine of good advice, if you ask us) about screen readers and Latin abbreviations. Meanwhile, a Marketplace offer spurred a sensitive discussion on SfEPLine about the ethics, legalities and practicalities of working with an author who is not yet an adult, in order to safeguard all stakeholders.

The Macros forum also has useful information for fiction editors, and if you’re looking to add more macros to your toolbox but don’t know where to start, try one of the ones recommended in this thread. A handy macro for fiction editors might be Paul Beverley’s ChapterChopper, which shows the number of words per chapter. This could help editors to pinpoint developmental issues like pace slumps or info-dumping.

If you work with science fiction, you might be interested in Reedsy Sci-Fi week (August–September 2022), or catch up with recordings afterwards. This information appeared on the Events forum, full of links to happenings of interest to editors that you might regret missing.

If your special interest is fiction, this is just the tip of it. Come along as we open the curtain and show you what the Fiction group has been up to.

Digging deeper

This section is link-free because not all of our forum users are members of the Fiction forum. If you’d like to access it, find out how in ‘Joining a specialist forum’, below.

The Fiction Special Interest Group (Fic SIG) invites any member to give a talk on a relevant topic of their choice. Kath Kirk gave a webinar on the special considerations copyeditors need for editing science fiction and fantasy novels. She discussed how to keep track of wibbly-wobbly timelines, and this spurred further discussion in the Fiction forum about which software can help editors to visualise it.

Clare Law’s talk on using data-driven editing to become more efficient, get paid more, reduce anxiety and beat imposter syndrome led to robust discussions in the Fiction forum about which silent changes fiction editors usually make, and which queries they’ve stored in their TextExpander arsenals.

Members of the Fiction forum also shared resources for working on children’s fiction, and how to format a fiction manuscript for submission to a literary agent, as well as recommendations of courses for editors who are looking to build their fiction-editing skills.

If you missed these fabulous discussions, don’t worry! Notes from the talks are shared on the Fiction forum afterwards.

Joining a specialist forum

There’s no barrier to CIEP members’ entry into the specialist groups. Everybody should join their local group forum. Even international members can be local through the Cloud Clubs. Apart from Fiction, other topic-based groups are Music, English Language Teaching, Education, MedSTEM, Languages (translation), Legal and more – and sometimes they’re where the real action is!

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.

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Photo credits: books by ready made and woman in a hat by Olivia cox, both on Pexels.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

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

Forum matters: Editorial judgement

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

Whether to start a post and how to reply to posts are the first decisions CIEP members need to make when taking part in the forums, but the all-encompassing art of editorial judgement reveals itself in almost every thread.

In mid-January, a forum search on ‘editorial judgement’ brought up 15 pages and 441 threads – including on language, taking on clients and choosing tools – in just the previous six months. This highlights how editors need to use judgement in all aspects of their editing life.

Peer judgement

A key aim of the CIEP is that its forums should be a safe space for discussion, and if anyone feels unfairly judged or affected by a post the moderators are there to help to address this. But such interventions are rarely needed.

The forums are more often a source of judicious advice for members who have been overwhelmed by circumstance (both short and long term) and who, unable to make a clear decision, are worried about making errors of judgement (see Thoughts on not coping). Responses range from sympathetic support (because although the experience is new to you, somebody else has already been there), to incisively helpful (because there is always a tool to deal with the problem and with all the years of experience among CIEP members, somebody will know what it is).

Editing judgement

Punctuation insists on being quirky and, in a profession that strives for consistency, this can be a major irritation. In Dialogue, Kia Thomas reminds us how to deal with the quirky in fiction:

as for conforming, I suppose it all depends. Some editors prefer to bring everything in line with an external style guide, whereas others are quite happy to stick with the author’s choices if they’re used consistently (leaving aside, of course, the fact that they’re very often not). It’s a case of judgement – some style choices are so unconventional that they may be distracting, and that may not be what the author wants. For example, a lack of quote marks in literary fiction often means the author is deliberately playing with conventions for effect, and readers will tolerate or even enjoy that. In genre fiction, it may distract readers from the characters and the story.

Don’t even mention capitalisation. Actually, do mention it on the forums: you never know what the ensuing discussion will reveal. As you can see in West/west/Oriental/oriental?, not only do the replies offer practical solutions to finding a suitable answer, but we get a bit of practical philosophy as well (thanks, Luke Finley):

Often there aren’t truly definitive answers to these questions, so subjective judgement is involved. My approach is to err on the side of caution, but not to live in fear of making a mistake. Generally if people see you’ve said or written ‘the wrong thing’ inadvertently, and are open to reconsidering it rather than [being] defensive, they’re OK with that.

As Luke’s thoughts show, a key focus of the forums is language, particularly in the context of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). As Karyn Burnham said on the LGBTQ terminology thread:

we are in no position to offer judgement on any of these issues, only to respect the views of those groups affected and to strive to communicate these views effectively. Professionally, I find discussions like this in the forums extremely helpful and informative, and hopefully they will lead to an improvement in my approach to sensitive topics in the future.

Whatever your editing conundrum, you are going to have to choose the right answer by making a judgement call. The Fact checking thread is a great illustration of what you need to bear in mind.

Client judgement

Before you even begin editing you may need to exercise judgement about whether or not to take on a client. Anxieties about potential jobs can stem from inexperience (or the dreaded imposter syndrome), finance (whether the fee offered covers the time needed), worry about shutting off future work (if you say no this time, will they come back) or red flags (unfortunately there are people out there who want ‘owt for nowt’). All these worries often appear on the forums – see, among others, New client dilemma – advice needed.

Once you’ve taken on a job the judgement calls don’t stop. Page ranges in citations deals with a perennial problem when dealing with student papers: what is the ethical amount of editing you should do?

Judging tools

A wide diversity of client needs can be serviced, as you can read in editing for clients with special needs. This thread points to a variety of tools and approaches to help a partially sighted client. As Christina Petrides points out, the editor–client relationship is also crucial:

It will become easier once you’ve built up a good relationship with [the client] and they trust your judgement, so be as transparent and clear in what you are proposing as possible, and stick to it.

So, making a judgement call is a fact of life in editing and, as John Firth points out in Starting a sentence with ‘So’:

It’s tricky to decide whether something is so serious that you need to call it to [the client’s] attention, but your professional judgement is what [they’re] paying for.

In the end, apply that invaluable mantra when using your editorial judgement: context is key.

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Photo credit: snowdrops by manfredrichter on Pixabay.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

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

Forum matters: Using the CIEP forums with dignity and kindness

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How do accessibility and good communications work in our members’ forums? Community director John Ingamells, also a forum moderator, gives us some ideas.

The CIEP’s online forums are probably one of the main ways in which members communicate with each other. From seeking advice on a tricky editing problem or offering work to colleagues, to sharing amusing anecdotes about infelicitous typos, we like to think that the forums are a valuable professional resource for members as well as our very own ‘water cooler’ where, despite us all being cooped up in our own homes or offices, we can meet and interact with each other.

A small team of moderators keep an eye on the forums to ensure good order, iron out any difficulties and answer questions members may have. Like any CIEP space, the forums are covered by the CIEP Dignity Policy, and members should be familiar with that. Here are a few simple do’s and don’ts for using the forums, based on the collective experience of the moderators.

Keep it professional

The first and most important rule – which should perhaps go without saying – is to remember that our forums are not the unregulated Wild West of Facebook or Twitter, but a professional forum populated entirely by your colleagues and fellow professionals. So, be courteous, be polite. Opinions often differ and that’s only to be expected. But we should all maintain a professional attitude when taking part in discussions, avoiding personal remarks or criticisms. The CIEP takes seriously its obligation to ensure that all members can take part in its activities free from bullying or harassment and we expect members to play their part.

Enjoy the chat

But that doesn’t mean it all has to be dour and po-faced. There’s nothing wrong with going off-piste occasionally. Many a thread has started with a question on a strictly editing-related problem but has given rise to a conversation that goes off on all sorts of interesting and informative tangents. And where would we be without our regular laugh from the ‘Typo of the Day’ thread? Another thing to bear in mind is that, although we are a fairly specialist crowd, we can still boast a healthy measure of diversity. We have newcomers and others with years of experience. Some have been in and around publishing all their working lives, others have taken up the red pen after careers in very different fields. We have freelancers and others working in-house who will bring a different perspective to discussions. Most exciting of all is that our global reach has grown and around 20 per cent of our membership is now based outside the UK.

Opportunities in the Marketplace

The Marketplace gives you the opportunity to find someone to do a job that you have been offered but are unable to take on. This can be a great way to maintain a relationship with a good client, even if you can’t fit a particular job in. It should only be used for individual, one-off jobs. So, please don’t use it to advertise, for example, permanent positions with a publisher or the chance to get on a publisher’s freelance list. What we really want to avoid is companies getting free advertising on the Marketplace when they really should be paying for it or doing their own legwork in our Directory!

Our code of conduct for courses

Courses often come up as a topic for discussion on the forums. Many new members have found a wealth of advice about which courses to take and how to go about developing their skills. But, for reasons that I am sure will be obvious, we do not permit detailed discussion about the content of individual courses. Course exercises should be all your own work. So, if you’re stuck on a seemingly intractable point of grammar or formatting in a CIEP course, please try to figure that out for yourself – or ask your tutor!

Some of our members devise and offer their own training courses or materials. You may see references to these resources in members’ signature blocks on the forums, along with links to their websites. This sort of passive promotion is fine. But members should not use the forums for any active promotion of their courses or other paid services.

Screens and spaces

The age of Zoom has thrown up a few additional considerations for the CIEP. The Institute takes seriously its obligation to ensure that all its events are inclusive and offer as many members as possible the chance to participate. At the same time, we have to protect our brand and products.

So, a member might come to a forum with a question about how to do something with, say, PDF markup. Another member might be something of a PDF expert and offer to go on Zoom and demonstrate things by sharing screens. This type of informal cooperation is a hallmark of the CIEP but, while a quick screen-share during a local group meeting to illustrate something is fine, if you are organising discrete meetings for more structured help or informal training, you should use your own Zoom resource for that, rather than the CIEP’s, and make sure that participants are aware that the space is a personal one.

Be discreet

Finally, please be careful about identifying outside individuals or organisations and don’t quote external sources or private emails or messages without permission. In particular, please avoid anything that could cause harm to the reputation of an individual or organisation.

If you’re a CIEP member, have you discovered the forums yet? Find out how to register.

About the CIEP

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Photo credit: connections by Nastya Dulhiier on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

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

Forum matters: Editorial terminology: Grammar, inclusivity and meaning

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In this article one CIEP forum moderator looks at discussions of terminology in the CIEP forums:

What is terminology?
Grammar terminology
Look it up!
Hold on – what is copyediting?
Being inclusive
Niche knowledge
Just ask!

What is terminology?

Terminology. Definitions. Vocabulary. Jargon. The meaning of things. The official definition is ‘the body of terms used with a particular technical application in a subject of study, profession, etc.’ (Lexico). This term can definitely be applied to editing, which has a marvellous lexicon of editing terms, such as widows, orphans, ligatures, en dash, justify, leading and kerning, which new editors may puzzle over.

Grammar terminology

It’s very common to know instinctively that something ‘looks wrong’ when you’re editing, but you may not have the knowledge of grammar terminology to be able to confidently say what is wrong, and why*. Perhaps you weren’t taught formal grammar at school, or perhaps you learned about grammar a long time ago and your skills are rusty. The new CIEP Getting to Grips with Grammar and Punctuation course is designed to give students the skills, terminology and confidence to be a better editor.

This confusion is not helped by the fact that many grammatical terms are known by more than one name: is it a gapping comma or an elided comma? An adverbial or adjectival phrase? A dangling participle or a dangling modifier? And what’s it called when you start a sentence with ‘so’ – and why is it so common today?

And for the last word in terminology? The CIEP proofreading and copyediting courses include access to a Resource centre which contains – among many other useful documents – a glossary of all the publishing and editorial terms you will ever need, from ‘abbreviation’ to ‘Word template’. There’s also a glossary in the back of New Hart’s Rules – my go-to style guide. For fiction editors, MH Abrams’ and Geoffrey Harpham’s A Glossary of Literary Terms will come in useful.

*You’ll need to be registered for the fiction forum to see this post.

Look it up!

One of the skills that it’s essential for an editor or proofreader to master is knowing when to look something up, knowing where to look it up, then actually looking it up and applying the answer to the text they’re working on. The forums can be super useful for this too.

Not sure whether to use ‘who’ or ‘whom’? See ‘who/whom – going cross-eyed’.

Do verb tenses make you tense? Then see ‘Please help with some technical jargon’.

Hold on – what is copyediting?

One of the questions editors and proofreaders are asked most often is: what is copyediting? What is line editing? What’s the difference between them? Unfortunately, there is no one universally accepted definition of these terms. Some people think that they are very different beasts, while some people think they are the same thing. And what about proof-editing? What does that involve – and where do you draw the line?

The most important thing is that editors and proofreaders tell clients clearly what service their project needs, and list the tasks they will carry out on a job. That way, there’s no confusion. For more guidance on this, see What is proofreading? and What is copyediting?

Being inclusive

It’s not just editing terminology we need to consider. We also need to think about the words we use around disability, age, ethnicity, culture and sexuality. These are always changing, and editors and proofreaders must keep up with these changes.

Threads on these topics come up a lot on the forums – here’s a selection you may like to read. I guarantee that you will learn something!

A thread on ‘What is a female-headed household?’ led to a passionate discussion on terminology, as did threads on ‘Is “pro-poor” the best term to use?’, ‘Is the phrase “Black, indigenous and people of colour” acceptable?’, ‘People of colour’ and one on the best wording to use around mental health.

I especially enjoyed the thoughtful discussion on these threads on sexist terms and whether or not we should refer to master copies, which referenced a session on sensitivity issues in a recent Cloud Club meeting.

Finally, one thread contains some helpful suggestions for resources around inclusive language.

Whichever words you choose to use, remember this: ‘Your words have power. Speak words that are kind, loving, positive, uplifting, encouraging, and life-giving’ (unknown author).

Niche knowledge

Of course, discussion on the forums isn’t always serious. There are plenty of light-hearted threads too, such as these on betting, butterflies and bridges.

And if you want to tell someone you’re a copyeditor without telling them you’re a copyeditor, is there any better way than to enquire: Should liturgical Latin terms be set in italic?

Just ask!

As ever, the forums are wonderfully diverse resources of all kinds of knowledge. If you want to know the answer to something, and you’ve tried looking in your library of style guides, editing guides and reference books, then ask on the forums. Someone is bound to know.

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Photo credits: typesetting tools by Etienne Girardet; Welcome by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

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

Forum matters: The treasure in the CIEP forums and how to find it

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There is precious metal in them thar forum messages, and sometimes you have to dig for it. So, before we highlight some of the gems, we’ll tell you how to use the unearthing tools. We cover:

How to mine the forums
Threads of pure gold
Daily updates
Occasional pupdates
Invaluable advice for fiction editors

How to mine the forums

First, fill a mug with your beverage of choice and relax in front of your screen. Select a forum to peruse, say SfEPLine, and click. You’ll see about 30 rows of alternating grey and white that highlight the separate posts. Top right above the rows is the forum page you are on (SfEPLine has 275 pages; Off topic has 89). You can click forwards and backwards to your heart’s content.

If there is a blue box on the left that says ‘New’, then it is a thread you haven’t read or posts have been added since you last opened it. If you click on the blue box you’ll be taken to the latest message you haven’t read while in the forums (although if you’ve been following a thread and receiving the emails, you will have).

Each row tells you the subject and the name of the original poster, and the date, time and name of the last person to add to the thread. Useful if you know that a particular person is always worth a read.

In the middle are two columns for Views and Posts. The former tells you how many folk have been attracted enough by the subject line to have a gander. The latter tells you how many have been sufficiently moved by the content to contribute a post. Once either of those numbers goes above a single digit you can bet it will be interesting; if it’s gone to three or more digits, then it is probably forum gold.

If you don’t feel like a thorough trawl to find subjects that pique your curiosity, then here are a few threads we think are fun.

Threads of pure gold

On 24 August 2017, Margaret Hunter thought it was time for ‘an invitation to get you [Lurkers] started with a (hopefully) non-threatening post’ to ‘Tell us how you first heard of the SfEP’. By 29 September the thread had attracted 66 posts and, to date, has had 1,170 views. The posts illustrate the diversity of our membership and the myriad routes there are to becoming an editing professional. ‘Lurkers – yes you – look in here.’

Also in August 2017, Sophie Playle had an invaluable idea: ‘Most newbies have a lot of the same questions, so I thought I’d collate some of the fantastic advice more established SfEP members have offered over the years. Here’s what I’ve come up with! I’m sure there’s much more to say on each topic, but hopefully this provides a good place to start.’ She then extracted some key posts on such topics as: how to find work; some good courses; and what to charge. The advice may be nearly four years old, but it is still sound – and useful – as confirmed by a thank you posted in February 2021. ‘Newbie FAQs and Collated Wisdom from SfEP Members’ has been made easy to find by being ‘stuck’ at the top of the Newbies forum, which explains its 3,896 views.

Daily updates

Two threads effortlessly gather new posts to stay on the first page of Off topic. The first is ‘Typo of the day’, a fount of hilarious examples of why our profession is justified, with 1,637 posts, umpteen attached files and nearly 18,000 views over the seven years since Michelle Bullock kicked it off with, ‘I thought it best to give him a wide birth’.

The second is ‘Wildlife distraction of the day’, which is a relative youngster, but a lovely breath of fresh air. Frances Cooper kicked it off in June 2020 with mention of a sparrowhawk, which attracted 206 posts and many pics for the over 2,000 readers.

Occasional pupdates

Pet lovers may want some time with gorgeous photos and general pet covetousness, in which case have a drool over ‘New puppy (for Wendy!)’. There are plenty of pics (dogs, cats, hedgehog and gecko) although only 31 posts, so perhaps it deserves more than its 192 views.

Invaluable advice for fiction editors

The specialist Fiction forum is a mineshaft full of nuggets for editors interested in the field. Perhaps one of the original 2016 posters on ‘How long does it take to edit a novel?’ might be surprised by their development, or otherwise, in terms of time versus income. Especially if they took the advice to start a spreadsheet.

Over to you to have a dig. If you find an old thread you think is still relevant and deserves reviving, then adding a post will bring it to the surface. We’ll all be enriched by the reminder.

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Photo credits: Gold by Lucas Benjamin; pups by Bharathi Kannan, both on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

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

Forum matters: Spring-cleaning refreshers

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

Any mention of spring cleaning immediately brings to mind the opening to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows:

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home … till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms … It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said … “Hang spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house …, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

You know you have to think about CPD, updating websites and social media, and tightening up your business information, but it can make you feel a bit Mole-like, all dusty and achy. Thankfully, the great, green meadow of the CIEP forums is there to roll in and refresh yourself!

In ‘Structuring the Dayʼ members share helpful approaches to brushing up yourself and your business that look at time management, preventing the making of lists taking over from the doing of what’s on them, making sure you take account of you, helpful ways to prioritise – along with the usual smattering of technical tips.

Many an inner Mole is revealed across the forums, including in the supportive local groups, as members urge each other to go outside. One of the most enjoyable threads is in the Off topic forum. ‘Wildlife distraction of the dayʼ shares sightings and photos of birds, insects, reptiles and even of ‘cereal-eating, wifi-connected, human-like creatures’. Springwatch, eat your heart out.

Refreshing your business

Once you’ve decided to burrow away, then a quick search of the forums (using five-plus letters!) yields some helpful dustpans, brushes and dusters.

In ‘Free article limit for online newspapersʼ several editors shared workarounds to keep searching for online articles from the same publication when checking an author’s citations.

‘Has LinkedIn messaging gone premium?ʼ revealed how many members had received a ‘problem’ message on trying to message a new contact, but had then re-enabled messaging those connections on LinkedIn – without going Premium.

For the independently minded, ‘Callout boxesʼ talked about recolouring your proofreading comments in Adobe Acrobat – at the same time reminding members of forum protocol that discourages discussion of course exercises outside official areas.

For those who work on client websites, there are a few thoughts on accessing a client’s WordPress website admin pages as a warning to the uninitiated. Nice that the client sorted it out pretty quickly. Also on the website theme, there are some motivational pointers to help you polish up your SEO.

Refreshing yourself

Of course, spring cleaning is about putting the sparkle back on what you already have, not necessarily about replacing with the new, which is where the forum archives can be a great resource. So keep seeing the shine using tips from ‘Eye strain – new setup needed?ʼ It might be an old thread (2015) but the suggestions are still good:

from Janet MacMillan’s emphatic advice to get your eyes checked – ‘an editor pal of mine was experiencing eye strain and eyesight issues and by going to the ophthalmologist forthwith, she saved her sight, and probably her life’
through Lisa Cordaro’s thoughts on lens coatings, ambient lighting, frequent screen breaks, ‘And finally, don’t do long days at your VDU. Bad for the eyes and general health!’
and very much in the spring-cleaning vein, Ceri Warner’s ‘have you tried adjusting the lighting in the room where you are working? I’ve got my monitor with its back to a window, which I found was very tiring for my eyes, so at the moment I’ve got thin curtains across the window but I do need to rearrange the room when I get a chance.’

The topic was revisited in 2020 in ‘How do you protect your eyes?ʼ and ‘Question about visual migrainesʼ.

CIEP members are great at highlighting helpful links that take you outside the forums – for instance, to John Espirian’s contribution on Louise Harnby’s blog following some chat about using two screens.

If you need to refresh your work interface because of RSI, then ‘Hands-free editing?ʼ offers some thoughts on speech recognition software as a new approach.

The forum moderators hope that, like Mole, you’ll be ‘bewitched, entranced, fascinated’ by the flow of forum threads and that they will help to keep you happy and motivated at spring-cleaning time.

Photo credits: mole by Tabble on Pixabay; crocuses by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

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

Forum matters: Business management tools to boost your business

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An Excel shortcut, how to set up multiple monitors, how to reflect domestic costs in a tax return, how to stay well in lockdown. These are just some of the issues that members have brought to the CIEP forums, looking for help and practical advice. It is a reflection of the age we live in that the responses often recommend an app, a macro, a program or some other automated tool as the solution.

Perhaps inevitably, most posts seeking help or advice are about grammar, punctuation, usage or other language-related problems. But there is a wealth of expertise among the membership on the broader practical aspects of running a business. Most of us are freelancers. So, without admin, secretarial or IT support, multi-tasking has to become second nature.

Business tools for digital marketing

A great example of the forums acting as a resource for business tools comes in the area of website building. Most members count a website as a key element of their marketing. There have been a number of threads over the years with advice on the best website hosts, tools and servers for newcomers. One request for advice on website builders elicited views on six different options and an additional resource for templates – all in just 24 hours! The advantage of the forums is that you get suggestions from people in the same line of business who will be facing many of the same challenges. Other threads discuss resources for logo design and blogs, even links to courses on how to improve SEO.

Business management tools for money matters

However we approach our business, there is no escaping the need to keep careful and accurate accounts. CIEP members shared knowledge and advice about key business tools in a thread on accounts software where members – crucially, with similar business needs to the original poster – weighed in with advice on a number of different accounting packages. They have also touched on the pros and cons (in the UK) of setting up as a limited company or a sole trader, how to handle specific tax issues like PAYE or allowing for domestic costs in a tax return.

All the answers

No discussion about boosting business efficiency would be complete without a mention of macros – the one topic that has a forum all to itself. Its threads reveal that we have members at all points on the spectrum, from programming experts to absolute beginners. But the help and advice available – and freely offered by some members – has enabled many to conquer their initial fear of macros and discover the huge improvements and time savings that can be achieved with them. You can also find discussions on the forums about other editing software packages, such as PerfectIt.

And if you can’t find what you want, just ask! Earlier this year a member said they couldn’t find much information about Linux on the forums, so they posted a question and set off a thread with competing views on the usefulness of Linux as an operating system.

Training, an essential part of maintaining our professionalism and standards, is another area in which the forums are a major source of ideas and inspiration. Many CIEP newcomers have come to the forums for advice on how to negotiate the maze of courses available from the CIEP and other providers, to boost their chances of finding the right course for the career path they have chosen.

Tips for productivity

There are always new forum threads on a wide range of products, programs and tools with a common theme of boosting productivity. Topics covered include:

Keeping healthy

As we all wish 2020 a (probably not very) fond farewell, it is also worth noting that the forums were a healthy source of advice about maintaining our mental health and dealing with the stresses that have come our way. Members have shared ideas and tips on loneliness, difficulties with concentration and a range of self-care ideas, including walking, resting, meditation and cookery.

Many members cite the forums as one of the greatest benefits of CIEP membership (and some of us probably spend too much time on them – see the recent blog post on productivity!). They can be a veritable gold mine of help and advice, and their value comes from the fact that it is members, many with similar experiences and facing the same challenges, helping each other.

Photo credits: But by all means do it by S O C I A L . C U T; high impact designs by NordWood Themes, both on Unsplash

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

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

Forum matters: Setting up an editorial business

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With so many new members signing up to the forums, now is a good time to discuss the many things you have to consider when setting up an editorial business.

The practicalities

If you’re based in the UK, take a look at www.gov.uk/set-up-business for information on all the financial and practical aspects of setting up a business. You will have to register it, decide on a name, keep records of the money you make and your expenses, and complete self-assessment tax returns. Many editors are sole traders, and information on this is at www.gov.uk/set-up-sole-trader. Business expenses for sole traders and other freelancers were discussed on the forums in the spring.

If you get stuck, then contact the government helpline.

As also discussed on the forums recently, HMRC runs helpful webinars on a range of relevant topics. CIEP members testified to their usefulness and the value of seeing the human faces behind the tax system.

Your local council may hold seminars on how to run your own business and may offer business grants for new starters, so check out their website.

If you’re in another tax jurisdiction, ask about equivalents on the forums.

Editorial training

It’s not enough to be good at spelling and eagle-eyed at spotting typos. If you want to work as an editor or proofreader, there’s much more you need to know about, from style sheets and house styles to grammar, consistency, layout and presentation. Good-quality editorial training will: (a) reassure you that you know what you’re doing; (b) fill in gaps in your knowledge and help you review learned habits; (c) help to set you apart from the thousands of other copyeditors and proofreaders, and (d) assure clients that you are a professional who knows what you’re doing.

The CIEP runs core skills training courses and courses on other editorial skills, from medical editing to working on fiction.

So the first answer to the question ‘Why train?’ is the obvious ‘To gain and then improve core editorial skills’. If you have never been taught, systematically, how to edit or proofread, you should start [training] now. Nobody would wake up one morning with a desire to be an accountant and set to work without help. Professional editing and proofreading are no different.[1]

There have been recent forum discussions on proofreading web content and proofreading training for American editors.

What equipment will you need when setting up an editorial business?

Somewhere you can work without being disturbed by your household (including pets). A big enough desk and a comfortable, supportive office chair.
A computer, preferably with a screen that is large enough to view one or more whole pages.
A professional email address (charlotte-edit@host.com or charlotte@businessname.org rather than chaz-lol-xx@host.com).
Style guides – so you can answer the many questions that will come up, such as ‘should an ellipsis have a space before and after, or be closed up?’ New Hart’s Rules is a commonly used guide for British English editing and Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) for US English, but which style guide(s) you buy will depend on which language you are using, the type of client you work with, and the subjects you work on.
A dictionary – there are plenty of free online ones and a popular one is Lexico.

CIEP members get a discount on many dictionaries and reference books: see the members’ area. For general recommendations on reference works, see www.ciep.uk/resources/recommended-reference-books/general-editing-publishing-style.

CIEP members discussed their favourite work-related purchases on the forums in July.

Marketing yourself and finding clients

Now that you’re all set up and raring to go, where are you going to find your clients? This question comes up regularly on the forums, especially the Newbies forum, so do have a look. Recently there have been threads on next steps in starting a business and business networking.

Also, check out Louise Harnby’s great resources: www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/marketing-your-editing–proofreading-business.html

Working from home

If you’re used to working in an office with other people, the transition to working on your own can be tricky. It’s not for everyone; some people need the buzz of a busy office and don’t cope well with looking at the same four walls each day.

You need to be self-disciplined and stick to working hours – however you define them! – or you could find the days drifting past in a fog of Twitter, daytime TV and housework: ‘I’ll just pop a wash on … oooh, the floor needs sweeping. Where did that hour go?’ If this is you, you might find a recent discussion on time-tracking tools helpful.

Make a list of the things you need to accomplish each day, so you can tick them off and feel a sense of achievement.

CPD

This has been more difficult during lockdown, but there are still plenty of ways to keep your editorial knowledge up to date. Many local CIEP groups are meeting via Zoom and there are always the forums. See www.ciep.uk/standards/continuing-professional-development for more CPD ideas.

Anything else?

This is only an overview. If you have a question on anything not covered here – who to choose as a website host? What social media platforms are best for networking and finding new clients? – then ask on the forums! Many CIEP members are happy to share their experiences of setting up their own businesses. In August there was a lovely forum thread entitled ‘How did you get started?’ in which many members, experienced and not-so-experienced, shared stories of their first steps into editing and proofreading.

You’ll find a list of recommended resources to help you set up a business on the CIEP website: see www.ciep.uk/resources/recommended-reference-books/running-freelance-editorial-business.

Running your own editorial business can be a hugely rewarding, worthwhile and satisfying way to earn a living. Enjoy the journey!

[1] ‘Why train?’ Rosemary Roberts MBE. This article first appeared in the SfEP’s then newsletter, Copyright, in June 2000 and was updated in May 2004. See www.ciep.uk/training/why-train

Photo credits: Come in we’re open by Álvaro Serrano; Home office by Mikey Harris; Office space by Annie Spratt, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

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

Forum matters: Efficacious, efficient, efficiently

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We’re all on the lookout for ways to extend our skills and increase our income by working more quickly – and many members are happy to share their experiences on the forums.

Type ‘efficient’ into the forum search function and you get umpteen results, containing hundreds of posts. Try it! It’s a great example of how the CIEP forums offer editorial professionals an indispensable source of practical ideas, sound advice and general support on almost any topic.

Training pays dividends

The search found links to the Efficient Editing course. CIEP courses help you to develop good practices, to increase your knowledge and to improve your expertise. All this development helps you work more efficiently and more quickly, and your hourly earnings should go up. Did you know that if you can drum up the numbers then you can run a CIEP course just for your local group? One effect of the lockdown is that the CIEP is now running some of these courses, including Efficient Editing, via webinar.

Making the most of technology

Local groups – including the Cloud Clubs – often talk ‘efficient’ and share the benefits of specific macros or apps. Efficiency is also a big topic on SfEPLine, which is the best forum in which to discuss technological and practical approaches to some of the more mechanical aspects of proofreading in particular. Checking references is one such time-consuming task, and among the recommendations are Edifix and Recite, with much lamentation over the demise of ReferenceChecker. But contributors also share good suggestions for using more hands-on approaches to managing references, such as the ideal number of passes or the breakdown into single tasks (eg are all the full stops there/not there at the end of the line?). The consensus is that much depends on how your brain works and that therefore there is no ‘right answer’ – the most efficient approach is the one that works for you (the search term ‘references’ brings up over 1,300 posts).

Among the software recommended by forum members for improving editing efficiency are PerfectIt, the Editor’s Toolkit, ProWritingAid and text expanders. But they all come with the caveat that you do need to know what you are doing, or you could end up introducing many more errors – very inefficient, if not downright incompetent.

In praise of manuals

The world isn’t entirely technical, though, and manuals and dictionaries (hard copy and online) still have a role to play in upping your efficiency. Style manuals get a thumbs-up, particularly the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), although the first step is to get to grips with their highly organised layout so that you can find what you need without spending hours searching.

A false dawn?

Another hotbed of discussion is the impact on academic editing of project management companies. These sold themselves to publishers on the ‘efficiency equals cheapness’ premise by using pre-editing software that is supposed to give the copyeditor a head start by creating a manuscript that is consistent and formatted. They assume that the copyeditor will therefore need to spend less time editing, hence the job will be cheaper. The trouble is that algorithms aren’t (yet) language speakers, so copyeditors still need to check for sense and context. What has been sold as a time-efficient system can lead to increasing the work. Sometimes the manuscript can only be worked on using a project management company’s own software – and this sort of bespoke software may not work with a copyeditor’s treasured macros, which has the reverse effect on efficiency. There are a number of recent, and less recent, threads on working with project management companies.

Use your styles

A properly formatted manuscript is a diamond and indicates a skilful, professional producer. Too many writers don’t understand the impact of direct formatting on how the copy transfers from original manuscript to finished publication (direct formatting is, for example, when you turn a single word italic or bold using the symbols on the home page, or go through the laborious process of creating spacing with double paragraph returns or using tabs for indentations). Setting up and using properly defined styles benefits the whole production line – see ‘Losing italics from Word to PDF’. By stripping out direct formatting and applying correct styles, you are also increasing the typesetter’s efficiency.

Managing time, maintaining health

Social media is a cunning efficiency interrupter, and members are keen to share ways of avoiding information overload. This often comes down to time management, beginning with the simple task of spending the first few minutes of your day writing out a simple to-do list (and then sticking to it), to allocating specific time slots for looking at your social media, to signing up to time-tracking software or software that interrupts you every so often and tells you to move! One thread on ‘Difficulty concentrating’ drew out so many fantastic ideas on how to refresh your brain that it would be impossible to summarise them here.

Time to end with the oft-repeated mantra that it’s essential to maintain your health and wellbeing – and no amount of efficiency gain is worth compromising those (thanks, Sue Browning):

Last but by no means least, I find taking time to get some exercise, preferably in the fresh air, pays dividends in focus and productivity. Even when time is tight, a few minutes throwing a ball for the dog in the garden can refresh me for the next stint of work.

Photo credits: This must be the place – Tim Mossholder; dawn – M Mitchell; dog – Afra Ramió, all on Unsplash

Proofread by Mike Smith, Intermediate Member.
Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

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