Tag Archives: membership

The many benefits of being a member of the CIEP

Once again it’s that time of year when we’re asking CIEP members to renew their membership. If you’re a CIEP member who can’t quite decide whether to renew or not, perhaps the five editors below can persuade you it’s worth it …

Laurie Duboucheix-Saunders

I have been a member of the CIEP – back then it was the SfEP – since I started freelancing in 2008 and I have never considered not renewing. With no professional editorial experience, I found out about the Institute when looking for a training course. Being a member allowed me to gain the skills I needed to become a good proofreader and editor, but remaining a member has allowed me to stay at the top of my game. Even though I am an Advanced Professional Member, I still benefit from doing courses with the CIEP, to refresh what I know or to keep up with an industry that keeps changing.

That’s not even what’s best about the CIEP. Being a member is not just about having the CIEP’s ‘seal of approval’ (read ‘logo’), it’s about belonging to a community that supports you and challenges you. The forums are a great place to go when you’re stuck and need the hive mind’s input. There’s always someone who can help you find the answer you need or point you in the right direction. The CIEP’s knowledge pool is vast, and chances are someone will be able to answer your questions about martial arts or architecture or nuclear fusion, as well as help you locate an obscure rule in a style guide so large you wonder what sort of mind it takes to come up with so many different rules about commas and full stops.

The CIEP is part of my daily life. Thanks to it, I have met people, online or in real life, who have become colleagues and friends I interact with every day. Being a freelancer can be a lonely business and the CIEP’s support (legal helpline, suggested minimum rates) is invaluable, but its members are what makes it indispensable.

Pedro Martin (Sanderling Editorial)

Renewing my CIEP membership is a no-brainer. I ended up getting my biggest client so far – both in terms of repeat work and total billable hours – from the ‘marketplace’ forum, so my membership definitely paid for itself.

I really appreciate how useful it is for people who are new to freelancing. I joined as a Professional Member with in-house experience, so I felt confident on the editorial side of things, but I was so clueless about transitioning to freelancing! Navigating your first few months as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader is especially tricky, so it’s great having access to so many knowledgeable and experienced editors who are happy to help with your questions.

And that’s on top of all the other membership benefits (like free guides for members, discounts on editing software and subscriptions, and the forums in general). I look forward to another year of advice, training, CPD, discounts, collegiality, resources and support for copyeditors and proofreaders with the CIEP!

Janet MacMillan

Janet MacMillanThere are so many reasons why I’m renewing my CIEP membership: the vibrant forums where you can get an answer to what’s on your mind day or night, the highly respected training and continuing professional development, the enquiry- and work-producing directory, the helpful guides and fact sheets, the mentoring and the standards, among other things.

But the fundamental reason for me is the community. The CIEP community has helped me through thick and thin, especially in the last couple of years when we’ve all been struggling through plagues, war/political conflicts, earthquakes, blizzards, fires and even loo roll shortages.

The fact that I have so many lovely colleagues all over the world is a true joy, and that I can see and chat to at least 20+ of them every week is an incomparable pleasure. I see community members boosting each other up, both professionally and personally, taking pleasure and pride in each other’s successes, supporting one another in all that the world throws at us, and doing gentle kindnesses for each other.

The gorgeous card someone sent me earlier this year, the gratuitous offers of help with work and CIEP commitments when I faced trying caring responsibilities recently, the unexpected, but touching, comment on my first haircut in over two years, the entertaining GIFs someone likes to send, the ridiculous jokes and banter among members on social media, members travelling long, long distances to meet up, so many members working so hard for the common good, are all part of the CIEP community. To paraphrase a mid-2021 comment by a colleague in an international Cloud Club West Zoom meeting: the fact that I retain any semblance of sanity is, to a huge extent, thanks to the CIEP community. I wouldn’t be without it!

Caroline Petherick

I’ve subscribed to CIEP since the early nineties, and right from the start – even before I managed to access the infant internet – I found the sub worthwhile, because by being a paid-up member I got relevant training, hence confidence in what I was doing, combined with the expertise of some experienced editors one to one. That helped me start my business, even though for the first few years it was slow. Then, since around 2000, with the developing range of resources and support that the CIEP has provided, membership has been intrinsic to the success of my business and (particularly with the forums) to my enjoyment of life at the laptop. I can’t imagine being without the CIEP.

Alex Mackenzie

In a face-to-face conversation recently I found myself describing why our virtual CIEP network is so valuable to me. No, we’ve never met in person, but we are in weekly (some of us daily) contact. Our online video meetups – Cloud Club West (CCW) – is where (mostly) international members meet for professional support and online company.

Working from home is isolating anyway, and in this profession things can get pressurised and tense, with moments of complete loss and mind-boggling confusion. (The usual culprits: misbehaving tables, testy authors, a slow month, quirky layout, low motivation, time management, technology bugs, scope creep, grammar, ethics and copyright, to name a few). We need to reach out to like-minded people sometimes.

Two years ago, CCW spawned another smaller accountability group comprising seven members who spur each other on to market ourselves and get more clients. Both groups share personal and professional stories (even displaying our pets, children, artwork and knitting) – the CIEP membership makes this possible. (Read more in our blog post.)

What I value is the breadth of experience in editing and proofreading, from newbies to Advanced Professional Members. Being reflective about language is what many of us have always enjoyed (we speak close to 20 languages, from Afrikaans to Luxembourgish). But we come at it from all angles (history; environmental and social sciences; role-playing games; politics; law; economics; education; maths and statistics; chemistry, as well as English literature and linguistics). And we are spread across the globe – in diverse personal contexts – with fascinating stories to tell.

This means there’s always someone to offer advice, answer a query or point towards an alternative approach. This is an excellent professional resource and I always have a running list of queries for the next meeting. As we all value investing in high-quality CIEP training, we recommend courses to each other, and sometimes buddy up to work through them together too. And it’s nice to put faces to names when they pop up in the forums.

I know I speak for many in the CIEP when I say, the professional network is a major pull for continuing our membership.

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: woodland by Larisa_K on Pixabay.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

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

What is CPD, if not another acronym to spell out and add to the list?

Continuing professional development (CPD) is a recognised, systematic way of tracking your professional development on an ongoing basis. It also helps you to document and reflect on any learning or training that you either undertake formally or acquire informally.A pile of open books, with pens and notepaper between the pages

In some professional and chartered organisations, undertaking a set number of hours’ training and being able to show demonstrable evidence of CPD in case of audit is a requirement to keeping one’s membership and certification to practise. Physiotherapy, nursing and medicine are a few such examples – fields where people’s health, safety and, indeed, lives are at stake. Law is another. The industry bodies for these professions have their own specific CPD structures in place for their practitioners to use and journal their own CPD activities.

Why is CPD important?

In editing and proofreading, thankfully no one is *actually* going to die if a comma is missed or spliced; however, livelihoods and professional reputations are most definitely at stake, and not just the freelancer’s. An author’s sales may suffer from receiving bad reviews on Amazon about all the typos left in their book; a publisher’s relationship with an author may break down over the choice of editor (“Why did you choose this person to edit my book?”), ensuring that the second edition never happens …

This is why the CIEP considers CPD essential for editorial best practice and maintaining high standards, not just among its members but in the publishing profession as a whole. All members of the CIEP are also expected to abide by its Code of practice, Ensuring editorial excellence. Being aware of and following best practice is part of being a professional, doing the best job possible within the constraints of the budget and surviving in a changing industry. Undertaking regular CPD activities is the best way to ensure you’re doing that. These of course include undertaking training courses and attending conferences and workshops, but more informal activities count too: catching up on articles and blogs on editorial best practice; learning a new keyboard shortcut; adding a new macro to your repertoire. Filling in and maintaining your own CPD log is also a great idea, such as jobs.ac.uk’s Interactive CPD Toolkit, a free downloadable guide and interactive log for CPD journaling. CIEP members can also access a CPD log as part of the Going Solo toolkit.

How does CPD help us maintain best practice?

CPD is an essential part of being able to call what you do a career – the word itself implies progress, a person’s ‘course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)’ according to the OED – and in order to stay ahead in the game and be the best you can be, you’ll want to keep your skills up to date. It is also rewarding to be able to look back and see how far you’ve come; to have goals to aspire to; and to grow in yourself and your profession. There’s always something new to learn and that’s what CPD is all about: keeping an open mind, always learning and always growing. Where do you want to be in a year’s time, or three years? Or five years? CPD can help you realise your long-term goals too.

What does it mean in the context of the CIEP and upgrading?

The CIEP’s membership upgrade process is designed to encourage its members to think about CPD and to progress through Intermediate Membership (IM), Professional Membership (PM) and eventually Advanced Professional Membership (APM). Aspects such as training and experience are assessed in meticulous detail by an Admissions Panel; and for Professional and Advanced Professional upgrades, this includes references from satisfied clients as well. Evidence of CPD gained in the past 36 months before upgrading to Advanced Professional membership is also required.

Members who have reached these two highest membership tiers are also entitled to their own entry in the CIEP’s Directory of Editorial Services, which is well known among publishers and businesses as the place to look for the best freelance editorial talent.

Put it to the Panel

The CIEP’s upgrade process is shrouded in some mystery, mainly because the whole nature of it is confidential to ensure that every application is assessed fairly and without any bias. All upgrade applications are assessed anonymously; the Admissions Panel assessors never know the identities of the applicants. (This is why applicants shouldn’t post test scores on the forum or other social media, or at least not until an application has been assessed and the result is received.) Panel members are Advanced Professional members of the CIEP. Assessing membership upgrade applications involves weighing up the value of an applicant’s experience, training and CPD to discern whether the CIEP’s standards have been reached.

What makes a good upgrade application?

Here are some (anonymised) quotes from some of the CIEP’s Admissions Panel:

No detail is too small:

“I’m happier with an application that shows that the applicant has taken the time and trouble to read the wealth of information on upgrading available on the website, and has put themselves in our shoes: ‘What can I do in my application that will make it easy for the Panel to say yes?’ This is a skill I’d expect to see in a good copy-editor or proofreader. Can this applicant anticipate their client’s needs and produce, say, handover documentation to meet them? Has he or she actually read the brief? We make it very clear on the website that, for instance, we need to know hours of freelance experience. So produce that information, not in days, or weeks, but hours. We make it clear that we need to know the proportion of time an in-house editor has spent exercising the core skills (copy-editing and/or proofreading) and are delighted when an applicant gives us that information.”

Remember you’re a professional:

“Remember to proofread your application with as much care as you would give to any proofreading or editing job. It should reflect your professionalism and attention to detail. Typos, errors and inconsistencies are noted by the Panel and can count against you, particularly for the higher levels of membership.”

But on a lighter note:

“The Admissions Panel are here to help you upgrade rather than to bar the way, so they appreciate anything you can do to help them help you!”

Continuing professional development is essential throughout a copy-editor/proofreader’s life, and it doesn’t stop when one attains Advanced Professional membership or the point where the work finds you, rather than the other way around. It’s a constant.

Anya Hastwell, the SfEP's professional development directorAnya Hastwell is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP, and served as its professional development director. After working in-house for several publishers for nearly 10 years she went freelance in 2014, and works on an enticing array of non-fiction material from medicine to history, ably distracted assisted by three feline helpers. 

 

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

 

Originally posted August 2018; updated June 2021.

Why would anyone join a local SfEP group?

Why indeed? I am a freelance editor (and researcher) involved in the SfEP Edinburgh Group, and these are some of the reasons I came up with.

Do you want to meet new people and make new friends? Your local SfEP group could be just the thing. The Edinburgh group draws its members largely from Edinburgh and the surrounding area, but we’re not an exclusive bunch and have welcomed people from as far afield as Germany to our recent meetings. The group includes well-established, highly experienced editors and proofreaders, although the balance is probably towards those who are relatively new to this type of work. Several of us have come to editorial work from other careers – a surprising number of us have, like me, worked as civil servants and local government officials. We meet on a roughly monthly basis with breaks over summer and Christmas, and have a varied programme of meetings and events. And it’s true, you probably already have friends. But do any of them want to talk – or even care – about punctuation and the difference between ‘that’ and ‘which’?

lewis-packwood1

Do you want to get out more? Over the last year, our group has organised a range of social activities. These have included walks (with and without dogs and cake), lunch meetings, and a Christmas outing. There was even a jazz outing. You can dip in and out of activities and meetings, and you don’t need to go to anything, but being part of a local group means you have access to like-minded people who probably have a similar working life to your own and might just be keen (and available) to leave the house and talk to someone once in a while.

Do you want to improve your editorial skills? We have had peer-led sessions on topics such as tackling complex briefs, editing theses, and the costing of jobs. Experienced editors in the group have been incredibly generous in sharing their knowledge and experience with those who are just starting out. We’ve also been able to demonstrate enough demand to lure tutors north to run SfEP courses here in Edinburgh – being part of a local group means that we have been able to encourage fellow members to register their interest in courses and reach that critical mass of six students. And, of course, training can be quite a commitment in terms of time and money, so being able to ask other people about the courses they have attended can take some of the risk out of signing up.

Do you want to get work? Well, who doesn’t? But it’s not always easy, especially for those of us who are new to editorial work or freelancing (or both). We all work as individual freelancers, and all need to look after our own interests, but we can all recognise a win–win situation when we see one. Within our local group, we share information about work opportunities and advertise jobs to our local colleagues when we are lucky enough to have too much work to take on a new assignment or can see a commission is outside our area of expertise. We’ve even set up our own Edinburgh Editors website promoting our group and our services (thank you, Lewis!). This is all especially helpful to the newbies amongst us.

Do you want to make freelancing work for you? I used to work in a large organisation with a personnel team, a welfare team, and an IT department, all of which disappeared when I decided to go it alone, but a local group can provide some of that business ‘infrastructure’. Over the past couple of years, the Edinburgh group has organised sessions on tax and finance, client liaison, marketing, and using social media. One of our best-attended – and most entertaining – sessions was our occupational health session run by Glasgow-based editor Denise Cowle, who previously worked as a physiotherapist. At a more informal level we have shared tips on timesheets, software packages, hot-desking opportunities, and billing overseas clients. This isn’t about being a good editor or proofreader, but it is about allowing us to work more effectively and sustain and build our businesses.

Or maybe you just want to ask a daft question?  We all know the SfEP forums are great for seeking advice from fellow editors. But sometimes it’s nice – and maybe a bit less daunting – to be able to ask people you know. Being part of a local group means you have access to a pool of people who can be relied on to give you a helpful response, however daft your question is.

If any of this strikes a chord, I would encourage you to check out your local group (you could even set one up if there isn’t one). For me, having access to a local group is one of the main benefits of being a member of SfEP, and I know I am not alone in this. Fellow Edinburgh editor Marie said: ‘As a newcomer to the world of editing and proofreading, belonging to a local group has been a lifeline for me. Through it, I’ve made good friends, useful contacts and discovered a wealth of support and inspiration.’ I couldn’t have said it better!

alison-plattsAlison Platts is an Edinburgh-based freelance editor and researcher. She is the author (or co-author) of a wide range of research reports, and she edits/proofreads academic articles, student theses, conference reports, research papers and reports, websites, and corporate publications of all types.

 

Image courtesy of Lewis Packwood

Posted by Tracey Roberts, SfEP blog coordinator.

Proofread by SfEP Professional Member Tom Hawking.

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

Save

Save