New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep

Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome to 2018!

You haven’t heard from me in a while, I know. If like me you’ve been buried under the holiday season ever since the run-up to Thanksgiving, you can empathize with me as I welcome the crisp cold weather and beautiful blue skies that pronounce our new beginning — and let’s be honest, do you know anyone who had a good 2017?

I’ve never been one for making resolutions. Although they work for a lot of people and I encourage that, for me personally they’ve always set me up for failure. Perhaps I’ve just set too high of expectations for myself. Consequently, the past few years I’ve endeavored to take smaller steps in the right direction, and to that end have subscribed what I feel is a much more feasible motto — start as you mean to go on, and end. No grand gestures that I then beat myself up for not achieving, no massive exhausting overhauls, no cold-turkeys that last for maybe a fortnight tops.

Regardless of whether you’re an all-or-nothing or little-by-little type, small changes that you start now can make a world of difference. One easy resolution is to polish your daily communications. Think of it as ironing your shirt, or investing in new business cards.

Firstly, though, what should be your target? Look at things that enter the public eye, like:

  • Your business cards, speaking of.
  • Your emails, including signatures and out-of-office messages.
  • If you run a blog or online store, check their pages / posts / item descriptions, and things like your invoices.
  • Social media posts, and pages if you have them.
  • Your resume.
  • Forum posts, product reviews, etc., if this is something you regularly do.

Got some ideas? Good. Now here’s the little fixes and good habits you can work on:

  1. Spelling errors. No one’s perfect, but try your best. So many programs and sites nowadays have at least a crude built-in spellchecker — use it! If you’re not sure, copy-and-pasting your text into Word or even Google will quickly find them for you. Always do a read-through before you send/post/submit.
  2. Misuse of the apostrophe. Part of my 2018 post plan is a detailed series on punctuation, but for now, here’s a rule of thumb: apostrophes show ownership, and are used when there’s a letter missing (in other words, to make two words into one, AKA a contraction). Example 1: If you want to make DVD plural, you’ll want to write DVDs rather than DVD’s — at first glance that last one tells me that the DVDs are owning something. Example 2: if you want a shorter version of they are or David is, you’ll want to write they’re or David’s.
  3. Following from the above, the difference between contractions, possessive pronouns, and in some cases directionals — your/you’re, there/their/they’re, etc. Practice with the apostrophe will help with these. Make sure you mean that place (there — a directional) versus they are (they’re — a contraction) versus belonging to them (their — a possessive pronoun).
  4. Misuse of capitalization. Capitals are mainly for the first word of a sentence, names and titles, and acronyms (e.g. — CD or OMV). Only rarely are they used for emphasis — and only as ‘all-caps’ rather than simply Capitalizing Every Word or random Words — and quickly lose their impact if used too much. Haphazard incorrect use tends to look sloppy.
  5. Excessive exclamation marks. One is enough where it is needed — an entire string does not make your point any stronger. In fact, it looks amateurish. And while we’re at it, consider whether you need one at all and if your point isn’t powerful enough using just a period. Every time I’m tempted to use one I tend to ask myself whether I want it for volume or to express emotion (in both cases, shouldn’t my words themselves make it clear?), or to emphasize that last word (in which case, try italics or bold).
  6. Lack of punctuation altogether. The linguistic evolution of lack of punctuation on the Internet as a means in of itself to suggest tone or as a form of humor is a conversation for another day. There’s also a time and a place for that and work emails isn’t one of them. Leaving off that period or question mark suggests hurriedness, laziness, or that you simply don’t respect the recipient enough to give them good communication, none of which are good.

To nurture these little habits, the first thing you have to do is get accustomed to slowing down and looking for them. Recognizing them is half the battle. The more often you correct them, the more practice your brain will get in writing them correctly the first time. Better yet, if you extend this practice to writing that does not necessarily enter the public eye — your personal journal, greeting cards, storage labels — the stronger the good habits will grow.

Naturally, old habits are hard to break, and of course correctly using the apostrophe won’t get you that dream job — but it’ll certainly stop an eyebrow being raised. Polishing these little tell-tale signs of clumsy writing not only means that your reader’s eye is distraction-free, but that the impression you’re making is far more professional and confident. And who doesn’t want that?

What are your writing New Year’s resolutions? What are some of your communication pet-peeves, or bad habits you can’t quite seem to shake?

Warm wishes,

~ Taegan

Painting and the Editing Process

Happy Easter Weekend, everyone!

I have to apologize for missing our date these past couple of Fridays. Truth be told, we’re in the home stretches of renovating our house following a flood last year and we’ve been feeling antsy to get it all over and done with, so forgive me if these posts are a little light. Most of my role lately has been painting, and this past week’s project has been painting the insides of our kitchen cabinets in particular. It’s been tedious, but worth it; that sentiment and the way our cabinets now seem illuminated from within got me thinking about the editorial process.

Those of you that have worked with me before may be familiar with my advice that rarely does a single round of editing get a text polished to perfection. I’ll frequently recommend at least two rounds:

  1. The first catches all the small and distracting errors such as spelling, grammar, and consistency (a proofread, basically); once those are resolved…
  2. The second round is able to delve deeper and catch flaws of ideas, character, pacing, and so on.

It’s similar to painting these cabinets of mine – on the untreated, raw draft of the wood, a single once-over with the brush does very little. By the second go-round, things are looking a lot better, but on a few I’ve needed a third or even fourth coat before they’re the best they can be. I use a fatter, broader brush – a wider-toothed comb, if you will – to do the bulk of the work, and then go back with the thinner detail brush – the fine-tooted comb – to get those hard-to-spot places and the edges. I’ll do this as much as I need to until it’s polished.

I’m sharing this because it’s useful for you to know that your editor has a variety of mental tools or modes in which they work to get your project on track. While there are those of us that may employ several of these all in one sitting, it’s best to prepare for the possibility that more than one session may be necessary in order for you to get a thorough service, particularly on longer projects.

It is of course possible that a single round of a broader brush does the trick, just as it’s possible to receive a manuscript that – on the surface at least – doesn’t need touching at all. While I firmly believe “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, I also believe as a writer that an editor’s job is not just to catch that single typo in seventy pages, but to illuminate the project from within by making suggestions that can improve its overall caliber. In other words, there wasn’t exactly anything wrong with my unpainted cabinet interiors, but don’t they look so much more professional, so much brighter, now that they’re painted? Instead of focusing on the sub-par things, I can focus on the contents. Likewise would I feel negligent in keeping silent on conceptual, creative, or theoretical flaws or gaps that, when addressed, could bring a project from ‘Good’ to ‘Insightful and Engaging’.

It’s not complicated. Tedious, sometimes, but worth it. And we editors and cabinet-painters alike wouldn’t do it if we didn’t enjoy it.

Warm wishes,

~ Taegan

Apples to Oranges – a Glossary

Happy Friday, everyone!

Like with any profession, you soon discover that there’s more to it than meets the eye. Editing is no different. As you grow more familiar with using an editor you will likely notice that not all editing is the same – nor is it charged at the same rate. To help you come to grips with the types of editing that are out there and which will best suit your needs, read on!

The following are listed in approximate order of the editor’s level of involvement with re-writing the text in any way, from the shallow end to the deep end. It’s not all the types that are out there, but the most common. Note that sometimes these definitions will vary depending on who you talk to and the level of expertise required by the text, and sometimes the terms may be used interchangeably. Additionally, each type of editing has optimum points at which it should occur in the process. Always remember to ask your editor what you’re getting.

Manuscript evaluation – while not an editorial service, strictly-speaking, it’s worth mentioning because you may encounter it and it may be all you need. A manuscript evaluator will provide a read-through of your text and then provide you with an in-depth critique (what’s working and what isn’t, and how it can be improved); they do not, however, go into depth or make marks on your text. Those spelling errors will stay where they are.

Proofreading – the most basic of editorial services, and probably the one you’ve heard in everyday use. Many folks think that this goes into more depth than it actually does. Proofreading will check your spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other little things like format and any style issues (did you use a different font size accidentally, for example). Sometimes a proofreader will also do small edits for clarity or concision, but nothing beyond that.

Copyediting – the most commonly-used phrase to describe editing of any nature, and as such please be cautious. Some folks use it to describe what is actually proofreading or what is actually developmental editing, but the reality is that it’s somewhere in between. You’ll get a good proofread, but a copyeditor will also look at overall manuscript flow, consistency, and other broader issues. They may also do some fact-checking, though you should probably look for an editor who specializes in this aspect.

Line-editing – it’s common see this term used interchangeably with developmental editing. However, it can also denote a creative copyeditor, in the sense that while a copyeditor will look for technical errors, a line-editor will look for creative flaws or weaknesses such as pacing, strength of imagery, or voice-appropriateness. As you may have guessed, they go line-by-line (which isn’t to say that other types of editors do not). You’ll often see line-editing in conjunction with fiction.

Developmental Editing – as the name suggests, very in-depth editing. Developmental editors may work with a text that’s already finished, but it’s more common to find that they are there from the start of the text and help the writer see it through to fruition. They specialize in significant textual overhauls – structure shifts, reorganization of ideas, and other in-depth editing that takes place alongside codyediting/proofreading (though a second editor may be involved afterward to do this). However, if the developmental editor has to do any significant amount of writing they then tread into the territory of ghostwriting. You’ll often see developmental editing in conjunction with non-fiction, particularly academia.

Notice that the majority of these involve the editor working with texts that have already been created. Generally-speaking, if you’re looking for someone to help you create the text initially or completely rewrite it for you for one reason or another, the terms you’re going to encounter will likely have the word ‘writing’ or ‘writer’ in there somewhere. That’s a discussion for another day.

Once you know what you want, it’s easier to find it and ask for it. I hope this helps! Remember, you can always ask me if you’re uncertain.

Warm wishes,

~ Taegan