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Susie Dent’s wonderful words: the strange (and slightly tipsy) history of ‘training’

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Susie Dent on the strange (and slightly tipsy) history of ‘training’:

The word ‘train’ has led a complicated life, one that has taken in tractors, cloaks, grapevines and royal processions. It all began, like so much else in English, with the Romans, whose Latin trahere meant to ‘pull’ or ‘draw’. The past participle of the same verb was tractus, which hides behind both the ‘pulling’ vehicles that are tractors and the tracts of land they cover, as well as contracts (which draw together arrangements), and extracts (in which something is ‘drawn out’). In sartorial matters, that same, highly versatile Latin word also gave us ‘train’: the trailing part of a skirt, gown or cloak that was dragged across the ground as the wearer moved. From this sense of something being pulled along came the idea of a series or procession of things – a royal retinue perhaps, or a locomotive and the cars coupled to it, or even a figurative train of thought.

It takes some leap of the imagination to go from this sense of ‘dragging’ to the modern training we experience today (even if, on occasions, time can seem to slow down a little). There is a link, however – in the 14th century, to ‘train’ a vine was to draw it out and manipulate it into a desired form – we talk of ‘training’ our roses to this day. This idea of ‘shaping’ something eventually gave rise to our modern business use of training, which aims to mould our minds and equip us for a particular task.

Good training, of course, may require a mentor – a word we inherited from the ancient Greeks, for whom Mentor was an adviser to the young Telemachus in Homer’s epic Odyssey. An effective mentor will always monitor progress, but monitoring wasn’t always so benevolent – it comes from the Latin monere, to ‘warn’, and its siblings include ‘admonish’ and ‘monster’.

All of which might lead you to seek cover in a ‘symposium’, a formal discussion or conference. Or at least, to seek out its earliest incarnation, for in ancient Greece symposia were convivial discussions held after a banquet, and involved copious amounts of wine. Which explains why the word ‘symposium’ is from the Greek sumposion, ‘drinking party’. Now, if we’re looking for ideas, that kind of training might be an even bigger pull.

Susie Dent, honorary vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Editing and ProofreadingWonderful Words is a regular feature by Susie Dent, honorary vice-president of the CIEP. Susie is a writer and broadcaster on language. She is perhaps best known as the resident word expert on C4’s Countdown.

Why would anyone join a local SfEP group?

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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’?

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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

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Practice makes (closer to) perfect

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By Liz Jones

Imagine that you’ve recently completed some solid training in proofreading and/or copy-editing, and you’re looking forward to your new existence as a fully fledged editorial professional. But wait! How can you be sure you’re correctly applying all that you’ve learned?

One of the best places to learn is on the job, but this can be particularly stressful when you’re starting out. You want to be sure you’re doing the best work you can for a paying client – not only to offer them a good service for the money, but also to secure repeat business.

Practice
Here are some tips for getting valuable proofreading or copy-editing practice when you’re starting out, or if you’re expanding into new areas – without risking your reputation on a live job.

Mentoring

Once you’ve undertaken enough basic training, one further training route that the SfEP offers its members is mentoring (as do some other editorial organisations, such as EAC). You can be mentored in general proofreading or copy-editing, and there is now also the option of specialist mentoring in areas such as fiction, biomedical journals, law and music. Your mentor will send you exercises to work on (usually extracts from material they have edited previously) and will then provide you with detailed feedback and guidance on your strengths, as well as where you need to improve, over the course of several months. On successful completion of mentoring you will be awarded points that can be used towards upgrading your SfEP membership.

Books

You might choose to carry out practice in the form of further self-study after completing more formal courses. One book that comes highly recommended and has been used by many proofreaders when starting out is Advanced Professional Member Margaret Aherne’s Proofreading Practice: Exercises with model answers and commentary.

Forums

Those of us who work freelance can lack opportunities to simply lean over and ask a more experienced colleague for help if we get stuck, or if we don’t know where to turn to support an editorial decision. One ever-reliable source of information on best practice is the SfEP forums. You can ask your own question as it arises, or search the extensive archives to see if the topic has been discussed before. (Often, it has!) Alternatively, read the forums regularly and see what others are asking. Sometimes the battle when trying to improve as an editor is not finding the answer to a particular question – it’s finding out what questions it’s necessary to ask.

The SfEP forums aren’t the only places to go for advice. Other online forums, such as the Editors’ Association of Earth Facebook group, are also invaluable and easily accessed sources of advice and support, and can provide a slightly different perspective.

Critical appreciation of others’ work

This is one method that does require a live job and a dash of good fortune, but sometimes as a proofreader you will be lucky enough to see the work of an editorial professional employed earlier in the process, such as the copy-editor or the development/commissioning editor, as part of your proofreading or copy-editing job. Even a small insight into how someone else – perhaps someone considerably more experienced – works can be illuminating. Don’t simply collate what’s there, or skip over it – try to understand why editorial decisions have been taken, and what the implications are for you and the wider publishing process.

Local group

If you are able to attend a local SfEP group, this could provide an ideal opportunity to pick colleagues’ brains about best approaches to work. Perhaps you could suggest sharing examples of how group members have tackled real-life jobs, or short extracts from them … NDAs and client confidentiality permitting, of course.

Read, read, read

It sounds obvious, but it can be easy to overlook the need to read voraciously, outside of actual work. If you specialise in particular types of editing work, and most of us probably do, it’s obviously important to read widely in these areas – but really, almost any kind of reading will help to train your eye and help you to know what good writing looks like (and what it doesn’t). And let’s face it, it’s not as if more reading is a chore for most editors!

Finally …

This might sound obvious, but you can’t ever have too much practice. It’s possible to get up to speed with the basics of editing fairly quickly, but it can take years to get really good. You never stop learning, even over the course of decades – technology and software move on, and editorial fashions and tastes change. Keeping up to date with innovations and reflecting on your practice never stop being important.

photo 2016 croppedBy Liz Jones has been an editor since 1998, and full-time freelance since 2008; she is an Advanced Professional Member of the SfEP. She specialises in trade non-fiction, fiction and educational publishing, but also works with a range of business clients and individuals. When not editing she writes fiction, and also blogs about editing and freelancing at Eat Sleep Edit Repeat.

 

Posted by Tracey Roberts, SfEP blog coordinator.

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

Image: Photopin. Creative Commons (license).