Blog
Usage dictionaries
By Laura Poole Editors love a good reference, and there’s one under-the-radar type of reference book that’s particularly well-suited to editors: the usage dictionary. Let’s define some terms. A usage dictionary is not a standard dictionary. Your trusty Webster’s New World or Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate is a standard dictionary which primarily contains lexical information: it tells…
Read MoreAuthor queries for the nonfiction editor: How to raise ’em and how to phrase ’em
By Sue Littleford Why should you take any notice of me, a UK copyeditor of scholarly humanities and social sciences? Well, exactly a year before I started drafting this post, I received this comment from a professor-author: “Everything has gone so smoothly and the tables which you sent our authors make the process quick and…
Read MoreFact-checking medical texts
By Kassel Pierre-Jean There’s a lot of talk about fact-checking in the media. As medical editors, we perform fact-checking too, but it looks slightly different. When fact-checking medical manuscripts, an editor’s job is to ensure that claims are accurate and citations are present and correct. An editor begins by reading the manuscript and ensuring each…
Read MoreOf people and persons
By Andy Hollandbeck The word person, which, when you focus on its plurals, presents a few unusual considerations. These days, the standard plural of person is people. Native English speakers might not even realize, in the larger scheme of things, how odd this is. Person and people don’t even have a common etymology! Person stems from…
Read MoreAccurate and inclusive holiday language: Winter holidays
By Brit Stamey While for many winter can conjure up images of decorated pine trees, houses covered in lights, and even snowy locations, this idea is largely based on a Northern-Hemisphere-centric, Western, and Christian ideal of the winter season. Talking about “winter holidays” groups many varied and unique celebrations. This article aims to describe a…
Read MoreJargon or plain language?
By Eloise DeHaan Every copyediting field has its own special words. My field is medical copyediting, and I edit reports about healthcare that are written in an academic style featuring many clinical terms. I watch out for special typos as I edit reports about new medical treatments. A drug regimen can be transformed into a…
Read MoreMaintaining editing boundaries
By Erin Brenner Here’s a work situation that can be a bit unnerving: You copyedit feature articles for an online publication. Generally the managing editor (ME) does a developmental edit on the article and then sends you the article for copyediting. Your latest copyedit comes back to you with list of 17 problems and the…
Read MoreBeing mindful of mental health terms
By Jill Campbell Language around mental health has come a long way. In the past, medical professionals and the general public commonly described people with mental health conditions in stigmatizing terms we no longer use. As editors, we can honor and further that progress by using conscious language to avoid defining people by their conditions.…
Read MoreHow to build a waiting list
By Adrienne Montgomerie Publishing departments are on a production schedule; if one editor isn’t available when they need them, they call the next editor on the list. Yet, some editors have waiting lists full of projects. How do they get the deadlines to move? Well, for one, these editors have “clients”—boss, writer, or coworker—who prefer…
Read MoreWant to be a medical developmental editor?
By Vee White Last fall, I was part of a Zoom meeting with a group of other medical developmental editors discussing how our roles seemed to be metamorphosing. Some of us were experiencing loss of work and felt opportunities seemed to be disappearing. Others saw our roles expanding with new and exciting opportunities. But we…
Read More