I had a conversation recently with an author about realism and genre. Their book was a police procedural, so there was a murder and detectives and even a search warrant, but it also took place on another planet. The author wanted to know why they should care about...
Editing
By Karin Cather
Literally Figurative
A common task for editors is to make sure that the manuscript in front of them conforms to the rules of English spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. For instance, when I encounter the confusion of you and I and you and me, I fix it. (You and I are going to the...
Mandatory Editing Certification: Specifics
I recently proposed that there be a universal certification requirement for editors. As I said in May, this certification should consist of, at minimum, a test. Right now, anyone who needs an editor could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to someone who thinks...
In Defense of Copyrights
Recently, a colleague of mine stumbled upon a Facebook page on which the owners had uploaded an entire book. The whole thing. The book was a parody of another book, which mattered to the owners of the Facebook page, but is irrelevant for purposes of uploading an...
A Proposal for the Uniform Certification of Copyeditors
We editors should consider a universal certification requirement. Specifically, editors should have to take and pass a certification test before we are allowed to call ourselves editors. This furthers the credibility of the profession and provides consumer protection for the client.
Is This Alphabet Soup?
Recently I read something that, at one point, used four different abbreviations[1] repeatedly on a single page. I was taken aback until I read further and saw that there were seven. In fact, the more I read, the more abbreviations I found. Every time the author used a...
Don’t Touch the Kimono
One throat to choke. No. Yikes! Let's go for the ask. No. Open the kimono. By all that's holy, no. That's just creepy, especially in light of #MeToo. Human capital . . . No. No. No. Learnings. Instantiate. Please don't use business jargon. It's often uninformative,...
Disembodied Hands and the Passive Voice
How many of us have read a science paper and wondered what disembodied hand was at work? Literally. Scientists perform surgical procedures on animals and then kill them. Then they analyze the results and report them. They divide people into groups and administer...