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Libro update for May

15 Jun

I’m a bit late publishing this May update, but feedback says that people like these, so here goes!

May was a good month, with a nice mix of regular customers and new ones.  I’ve been doing lots of new blog posts, too, starting off my “troublesome pairs” series where I help differentiate between words that people often confuse, and doing a series of posts explaining exactly what the different parts of my job entail, which I’m giving the category “what do I do?“.

As regards paid work, I’ve got up to all sorts of things …

Copy-edited blog posts for an artist, a physiotherapist and a training specialist.

Written up short pieces and longer articles for a website featuring local businesses.

Proofread one ongoing academic client’s essays, gone over a successful PhD candidate’s changes, and worked on some shorter essays for undergraduates and dissertations for postgraduates.

Copy-edited a biography for a local small press.

Proofread a business document for a regular client.

Completed various projects for my regular physiotherapist, translator and magazine designer clients.

I’ve booked in a few students for their dissertations – that work will start to hot up in the next month or so.

I’ve also helped out at another Social Media Surgery, which is always fun and worthwhile, and been on a course to learn how to publish on Kindle and sell the resulting book via Amazon.

Coming up – things are getting lovely and busy in June – I’ve got some new customers, including another translator, more transcriptions coming in; I’ve started putting together a series of interviews with other freelancers, which I’ll be publishing weekly from next Saturday, and I’ve already had a couple of very busy days and hit all my targets!

 
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Posted by on June 15, 2011 in Business, Jobs, What Do I Do?

 

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Virtual Assistant or Website Designer? I can help!

07 Jun

If you’re a busy Virtual Assistant (VA) you know that there are some jobs you need to give that personal touch … but others that are more routine and can be outsourced.  If you’re designing websites, often the design and functionality is your forté and you could outsource the copy writing, either because it frees up some of your time, or because it’s not your speciality.

I provide all sorts of services, from copy writing through to copyediting, proofreading, transcription and copy typing.  Here are some ideas for projects I could help you with.

For VAs:

  • I can take routine copy typing or audio typing off your hands
  • I can pick up overflow work when you’re really busy
  • Maybe you prefer not to work weekends but have a valued customer who needs a rush job completing – I work weekends and can let you know availability very quickly
  • I can help you offer services like copy writing or copyediting/proofreading which are outside your usual skillset, allowing you to offer an all-round service to your clients

For website designers:

  • I can write new copy for your clients, based on existing websites and marketing materials or from going through a questionnaire with them
  • I can polish ideas your clients already have into coherent and useful web content
  • I can proofread the final website (including checking links)
  • I can insert keywords into the web content in a natural way to help with the SEO

I don’t need to contact your clients direct; I’m happy to work through you.  And my standard agreement means there’s no worry about me “poaching” your customers – I’m more than happy to work with you long term to satisfy your clients’ needs.  You won’t be employing me, simply outsourcing some of your work; I’ll invoice you an agreed amount per hour and you can invoice your clients whatever you want to!

Talk to me today about outsourcing some of that routine work and getting on with the things that you do best, and that differentiate you from other VAs and web designers.

Have a look at what a copyeditor and proofreader does; see references from my satisfied clients.

Contact me via email or via my contact form.

 
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Posted by on June 7, 2011 in Business, Copyediting, Jobs, Organisation, proofreading, Transcription, Writing

 

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What does a proofreader do?

01 Jun

When most people think of “proofreading”, they are actually thinking of copyediting, which I’ve discussed in a previous post.

Proof-reading is, officially, checking proofs of a publication just before they are published.  So when I’m proofreading, I’m effectively looking for different things to when I’m copyediting.  For a start, the document is often different – for example, when I’m working on a magazine or book, the text I copyedit is usually presented to me in a word processing programme like Word, whereas the proofs come in pdf format.  That’s because that’s how, essentially, they will go to the printer, so they represent the final, finished form of the book or magazine.

All of the grammatical, punctuation and spelling stuff should have already been covered by the copyeditor, and the facts checked by the copyeditor, editor, author or fact-checker (whether or not I’m one of these people in the project too).  What I’m now looking for is inconsistencies and errors in how the text and the surrounding “business” appears on the page.  So I’ll check for …
for books and magazines:
– page numbers being sequential and starting at the right point
– pictures having captions and the captions describing the correct picture
– widows and orphans – individual words or lines which get left alone on either the previous page to the main text (e.g. if a paragraph starts at the bottom of the page or, worse, there’s a short phrase introducing a quotation or the beginning of a text box) or the page afterwards (the last few words of a paragraph or text box, for example)
– changes in font size that weren’t intentional
– the contents page or list matches what’s there in the publication
for books in particular:
– the running headers being correct, i.e. one has the publication name and the other has the chapter title (for the correct chapter)
– chapters all starting on a right-hand page as you hold the book open
– all extra material (bibliographies, index … ) included and in the right order

As it’s in pdf format at this point, I’ll use my software to annotate the pdf and then send it back to the client.  Sometimes I’ll get a second look at it once these corrections have been made.

And that’s what a proofreader does.

 
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Posted by on June 1, 2011 in Business, Copyediting, proofreading, Skillset, What Do I Do?, Writing

 

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What does a copyeditor do?

25 May

I’ve noticed that people have been finding this website and blog by searching for “what does an editor do”?  So I thought a quick example or two might be in order!

What a copyeditor actually does is make sure the text the author has written doesn’t have spelling, grammar, punctuation and factual errors.  When I’m copyediting a piece, I work in several different ways (according to how my client wants me to work with them):

– a Word document and “track changes” – I turn Track Changes on in Word and it shows up exactly what I do, whether it’s deleting something, moving it, or adding a word here and there.  I also use the “comments” facility to highlight a word or phrase and then ask a question or offer some alternatives.   When the client receives the document from me, they choose “show final markup” in Track Changes (or similar, depending on what word processor they’re using) and then go through accepting or rejecting my changes with the click of a button.  I always work like this with students, so they have to decide whether to accept each change, retaining ownership and authorship over the piece of work.  But some other clients like me to do this too.

– a Word document with the changes already made. This is sometimes called a “clean copy”.  I make the changes I think are needed, and the client trusts that I’m right and doesn’t need me to tell them what I’ve done.  I work like this with some clients from the start; some move over to this format after we’ve worked together for a while.  If a client isn’t a student, I offer them one of each of these two, then they can see what I’ve done but don’t have to go through accepting each change.

– an annotated PDF.  I work this way with clients whose work is already in PDF format, or when I’m copyediting web pages.  I print a copy of each web page to PDF or open the PDF document, and use a dedicated application that allows me to highlight parts of the text and add call-out boxes with comments in.  Clients who use this method include anyone who has a set of web pages, and, for example, magazine publishers, who send me the pages as they will look in the final magazine (check back soon for information on when this constitutes “proofreading”).

So, for an example, I’ve made up a piece of text that’s riddled with errors, and then I present my corrected copy underneath.  So I don’t inadvertently plagiarise someone, I’ve used my own text from another blog post.

———

From the author:

Now I’ve got more flexibility in my time-table, I suggested to my friend Laura who also works from home (and cafes, and her office…that we add in some “co-working” time to our regular lunches. The definition of coworking has extended from its original ‘working with colleauges’ idea to include working in paralell with other people, who are probably not your direct colleagues, in a space which is probably not both of your offices. That sounds a bit muddled – it’s basicly those set of people with laptop’s sitting around a big tables in your local cafe.

So, we decided to try doing this ata local cafe, and now we decided to start writing a irregular series of reviews of local venues with free wifi in which it’s possible (or possible) to work. We’re going to work our way around Queens Heath and then possibly venture farther a field.

My corrected version:

Now I’ve got more flexibility in my timetable, I suggested to my friend Laura, who also works from home (and cafes, and her office … ) that we add in some “co-working” time to our regular lunches. The definition of co-working has extended from its original “working with colleagues” idea to include working in parallel with other people, who are probably not your direct colleagues, in a space which is probably not either of your offices. That sounds a bit muddled – it’s basically those sets of people with laptops sitting around a big table in your local cafe.

So, we decided to try doing this at a local cafe, and then we decided to start writing an irregular series of reviews of local venues with free wifi in which it’s possible (or impossible) to work. We’re going to work our way around Kings Heath and then possibly venture further afield.

———-

There are some variants: a substantive copyedit, for example, will include all of the above work, plus I’ll be looking for inconsistencies in the text as a whole: for example, a character in a biography’s name changing, or the layout of a house being inconsistent in a novel – a bit like being a continuity person for a film.

In the next few weeks, I’ll talk about what a proofreader, copy writer and transcriber does (maybe even a copy typist, too!)

 
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Posted by on May 25, 2011 in Business, Copyediting, Jobs, Punctuation, Skillset, What Do I Do?

 

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And these are only the mistakes I noticed …

07 May

Over on my book review blog, I talk about a book which was so riddled with errors (including missing commas, typos, missing semi colons, a lack of fact-checking and plain odd sentences) that it completely put me off the text and I felt compelled to mark them all up and then write them all down …

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2011 in Errors, Language use, Punctuation, Why bother

 

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What have I been up to in April?

04 May

Time to update you all on what I’ve been up to in the last month or so!

April has been a time for my lovely regular customers. My physiotherapy clinic from Cirencester, my translator from Finland, my Taiwanese Master’s student, the journalist whose interviews I transcribe and my American PR agency have all sent me various projects this month, including sorting out a set of blog posts and setting up categories and tags for them, copyediting end-of-year reports for various businesses, writing press releases, transcribing an interview with a doyen of folk music, etc.

I’ve also done some individual projects for some students, and some urgent copytyping work for a friend who’s a Virtual Assistant who had too much on her plate one weekend. I do like to be helpful (actually, Bernadette’s organising a get-together for Virtual Assistants on May 18 in Birmingham – let me know if you’d like an invitation).

I’ve also been busy with my Iris Murdoch and Book Groups project – my first two regular groups (as opposed to the pilot group) have just read the book, with several more to come in May and groups signing up all the time (do get in touch if you’re interested in taking part).

Looking forward, I’ve gone more part-time at the Library job from the beginning of May, so I’ll have four days a week that I can devote to Libro projects if I need to. I’m looking forward to having a better work-work-life balance from now on! And I’ll also have room to take on some more clients, regular and one-off.

I’ve got some PhDs on the go, I should be doing some more writing and copyediting for one of my web developer clients, and the student dissertations are likely to start building up. If you know someone whose dissertation is due in May – October and they need it checked over, please do ask them to get in touch with me to book in as soon as possible. And of course, work for my regulars will hopefully continue to pop into the inbox!

 
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Posted by on May 4, 2011 in Business, Jobs, Organisation, What Do I Do?

 

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On the humble apostrophe

20 Apr

I wasn’t sure I was going to write anything on the apostrophe, as it seems such a basic thing that people like me who work with words tend to go on about (we don’t really roam the streets, Sharpie in hand, looking for hapless greengrocers … )

But then I noticed more and more confusions, and a friend or two mentioned that they still weren’t sure, so: the humble apostrophe.

Turning to the dictionary, an apostrophe is “an exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person or personified thing.” Oh – not the one we want. OK, it’s “a punctuation mark (‘) used to indicate either possession or the omission of letters or numbers.” That’s better.

Let’s move on to Hart’s Rules, which, oddly enough, contains the rules of English. The following information is summarised from Hart’s. Please do pay attention to all but the ones I mark as terribly hard – they are the ones where you need to know there’s something funny about them and you’ll need to look them up. That’s what we all do, just to check …

The apostrophe is used in two ways – to show possession (ownership) and to mark where letters or numbers have been missed out.

Possession
Easy …
– Use an apostrophe and an s with a normal single noun or indefinite pronoun to show possession – the girl’s job, the box’s contents, anyone’s guess.
A bit harder …
– Use the apostrophe and s combination for plural nouns that don’t end in s – people’s opinions, children’s toys.
– Do NOT use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns: hers, its, ours, yours, theirs – theirs is the kingdom of heaven, a friend of yours, give the dog its dinner (it’s easier to remember the “its” rule if you think of it belonging to this section).
A bit harder still …
– Use the apostrophe alone (no s after it) after plural nouns that DO end in s – our neighbours’ gardens, other countries’ borders.
– In compound and “of” phrases, the apostrophe (and the plural, in fact) go after the last noun – my sister-in-law’s son, the King of Spain’s estates.
– Use an apostrophe and s with personal names ending with an s, x, or z sound – Charles’s, Dickens’s, Marx’s and Jesus’s.
Ever so hard (to be honest I sometimes have to look these up and I don’t often see them used correctly) …
– Use an apostrophe and no s when talking about time passing – in a few days’ time, a few weeks’ holiday. But if it’s in the name of a war, no apostrophe – The Hundred Years War.
– A double possessive (making use of both “of” and an apostrophe) may be used with nouns related to living beings or personal names – a speech of Churchill OR a speech of Churchill’s. But it’s not used with nouns referring to organisations, etc. – a friend of the National Gallery.
– A double set of nouns – apostrophe and s go after them if they are acting together – Broomfield and Dexter’s “The Rules of Grammar” – but not if they’re separate – Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s tragedies.
– Apostrophe and no s for a singular noun that ends in an s or z sound combined with “sake” – for goodness’ sake, for old times’ sake (times here is a plural so has the apostrophe after the s). This is the one I have to look up. Maybe you should save this blog post for those purposes.
Believe me, there are more obscure rules, for example those dealing with Greek names. If you need to know, ask me!

Plurals
Just – don’t. If you really, really need to differentiate, you are just about allowed a small, occasional one, only in examples like – dot the i’s and cross the t’s, find all the number 5’s. But that’s it. And there’s not one with numbers any more, although this has changed in the last decade or so: the 1980s not the 1980’s.

Contractions/omissions
Easy …
Use an apostrophe when a letter or number has been missed out: won’t, we’ll, bo’sun, ’70s, it’s warm out today.
A bit harder …
Don’t use an apostrophe before a word that’s been shortened but is now in general use – flu, cello and phone, not ‘flu, ‘cello and ‘phone.
If the apostrophe replaces the beginning or end of a word, it has a space before/after it to make the word stay separate – rock ‘n’ roll. If the apostrophe replaces a letter in the middle of the word, no space – ma’am, o’er.
Madly hard to remember …
An apostrophe is used before the suffix when an abbreviation functions as a verb – KO’d, OD’ing.

References
Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th rev. ed.) Oxford: OUP, 2008.
New Hart’s Rules Oxford: OUP, 2005.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2011 in Errors, Language use, Punctuation, Reference materials, Writing

 

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March and April

06 Apr

So, it’s time for a new “What I’ve been up to” post, since my readers seem to like those, and that covers the “March” bit of my title, but I also want to look forwards into the new financial year and say thank you to my clients for the past financial year. That’s the April bit.

First of all, what I did in March …
– Continued working on my Taiwanese client’s essays – the English is really improving in these; I’m proud of both of us for that
– Continued working for my US agency client on their client’s web pages and publications
– Finished writing the content for the two websites I’ve been working on for a while
– Continued working for my translator client, including a wide range of interesting topics
– Transcribed an interview for my ongoing journalist client and read a couple of articles she’s created out of interviews I’ve transcribed (which I find *fascinating*)
– Worked on my physiotherapist client’s blog posts, including tidying up the posts themselves, adding categories to those that didn’t have them and creating a set of tags for the posts and applying those to them too, copyedited her website and turned two e-books into one
– Did a transcription of a radio show about music for a previous PhD client who’s now working on a new project
– Copyedited several third year and Master’s dissertations on economics, one on art, and one on sports science
– Copyedited a chapter of a thesis on international law

Now, here’s the April bit. It’s the start of a new tax year, and also my new financial year. I’ve run my accounts for the year and am pleased with and proud of what I’ve achieved this year. And, while obviously I’m grateful to Matthew for his support (including technical support); and my friends for their understanding as I guiltily check the Blackberry while I’m out and about with them, or dash home to finish a project; and my copyediting and small business peers for their help and advice, I want to say a big thank you to my clients.

Dear Libro clients: Thank you for taking me on in the first place, either because you’ve seen my adverts or I’ve tweeted to you or however else you found me. Thank you for trusting the person who recommended me and approaching me. Thank you for responding to my questions quickly, for making decisions if I’ve needed you to make them, and for keeping me informed of your plans and when you’re going to send me things. Thank you for understanding that I do need to work around my day job (and eat and sleep occasionally!). Thank you for your kind comments, your references for my website or on LinkedIn or Facebook. Thank you for either coming back to me for more work, recommending me to your friends and colleagues, or both! I really enjoy the work I do, I love learning about all the different things you all write about, I love creating new text for you or helping you hone what you’ve created yourselves.

Here’s to a happy, busy and successful 2011-2012 for all of us!

 
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Posted by on April 6, 2011 in Business, Celebration, Jobs, Organisation, What Do I Do?, Writing

 

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Why bother? The value of proofreading

23 Mar

A while ago, I asked people what they’d like to see me writing about. One that came up there, and has come up since, and before, and whenever I mention I’m a proofreader/copyeditor, is … “why bother?” Why can’t people just express themselves however they want, with whatever spelling, grammar and punctuation they fancy?

I have to state my own view here; that’s all I can do. And furnish some examples, many drawn from a discussion I had with peers in the copyediting business, on a forum to which I belong. I fall in between the prescriptive and descriptive camps when it comes to spellings, grammar, etc. and their (inevitable) changes. I glory in new words and word-formations (I’ve been slightly obsessed with the -gate suffix for more years than I care to recall) and I find it fascinating to see how language changes with time. I don’t think it should be fixed, nailed down and not allowed to change. But I still care deeply about clarity and precision of expression. And, in my opinion, if you don’t know the rules and how to apply them, if you don’t *care* about the rules and how to apply them, then the clarity of what you’re expressing can easily be lost, and your meaning may not come across as you intend it to.

Please note, I am not criticising those who don’t know the rules, or have difficulty applying them. How could I, when my own clients include people whose English is not their first (or second, or third) language, dyslexic people, people who’ve not been taught at school or college how the rules work. I like a laugh at a dodgy shop sign as much as the next person, but I wouldn’t point out those things publicly in this blog, or ever want to make people feel I’m mocking them. But if you are not sure what to put or how to write it, there are reference materials all over the place, and people like me and my colleagues, who can help out.

So, some examples (thanks again to the Copyediting-List folks for providing some of them)

— A purple people-eater is purple and eats people, but a purple-people eater eats only the purple ones.

— Here’s a fascinating link showing the importance of word order:

— Here’s an example of how important language is in the legal field. And it’s not just in the legal field – while many students are not marked down for grammar and punctuation these days, a friend who lectures in speech and language therapy does, as a mistake in someone’s notes can cause many problems down the line.

— On a similar note, haven’t we all got colleagues or other people we communicate with who may not have great written language skills? Doesn’t it devalue their opinions a little in your mind, when everyone’s laughing at the latest email or sign?

— This is a long one, but it shows the importance of punctuation!

Dear Jim:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?
Anne

Dear Jim:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Anne

— Capitalisation matters too, in this great example from Andy Mabbett:

One area of capitalisation that divides even experts in the field is around species names. There are many types of black-headed gulls, and lots of little gulls, but only one species called Black-headed Gull (and it has a brown head!) and one species of Little Gull. Consider:

“Is that black-headed gull a black-headed gull?”

“No, that’s a little gull. The little gull on the railing is a black-headed gull.”

vs.

“Is that black-headed gull a Black-headed Gull?”

“No, that’s a Little Gull. The little gull on the railing is a Black-headed Gull.”

— A classic: Let’s eat Grandma!/Let’s eat, grandma!

— Lynne Truss did well out of this one: Eats, shoots, and leaves/Eats shoots and leaves.

— This one comes in various forms and with various names… I would like to thank my parents, the Pope and Mother Teresa.

Publishers and other purveyors of words have style guides, academic departments ask their students to reference books read in a certain way, and proofreaders and copyeditors (and copy writers) use reference materials such as the ones I’ve discussed before, to make sure that what they produce is clear and consistent. We do this, I think, on behalf of the reader, so they’re not distracted by mistakes, howlers and inconsistencies. My aim in my work is to help the writer express themselves clearly and accurately, so their readers can read their texts simply and easily, using their brainpower and concentration to absorb the concepts of the text at hand, or just enjoy a work of fiction without having to puzzle over the word the author meant to use.

So – why bother? Do you think I should? Do you think we should? And have I answered the question?

 
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Posted by on March 23, 2011 in Errors, Language use, Punctuation, Reference materials, Why bother, Writing

 

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So what does a proofreader / copyeditor / transcriber / copy writer actually do? (2)

09 Mar

Last month I posted a quick update on what I’d been up to, which seemed to be of interest both to those who know me and wonder what I do on those days when I’m not working at the day job and the evenings I have to rush back to my desk, and those who were keen to know what people in my profession actually do. So I thought I’d make it a semi-regular post, and I’ve done quite a lot of varied work this month…

In the past 4 weeks I have…

Copyedited two essays for a client undertaking a physiotherapy qualification, documents a client was submitting for professional development, 2 essays for my regular Taiwanese client.
Copyedited a newsletter and re-written one e-booklet on osteoporosis/copyedited one on the lower back for my regular physiotherapist client.
Written all of the copy for 2 websites, one for a motivational speaker, the other for a printing and graphic design company.
Re-copyedited a previous client’s PhD on the EU.
Copyedited a PhD thesis on psychology.
Substantively copyedited a science fiction novel.
Copyedited several articles, a longer piece and a company annual report for a new client who is a translator in Finland.
Copyedited and proofread one quarterly and one monthly publication for my regular American Club customer.
Copyedited and proofread a crime novel translated from the Italian.
Transcribed two interviews for my regular music journalist client.
Copyedited a dissertation on art for a Japanese client.

A nice mix of regular customers and new one-offs, and I did a bit of everything (proofreading, copyediting, copy writing and transcribing) which was fun.

Coming up:
Copyediting and proofreading a large American Club website.
Copyediting the next novel in a series.
A couple of PhDs where I’m waiting for the clients to finish working on the text.
More work tidying up translations from Finnish to English.
More work on American club monthly, quarterly and annual publications.
More physiotherapy newsletters and e-booklets.
More Italian crime novels.

For info on how I work with students and ensure they maintain authorship of their work, please see this post. And of course we all know the difference between copyediting and proofreading now, don’t we!

 
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Posted by on March 9, 2011 in Business, Jobs, Organisation, What Do I Do?

 

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