Association News
Lots of news after the long summer. First of all, the twig: Editors Kingston is alive and well, with 15 members (including one student affiliate), over 30 people on its email list for events & info, and over 60 on its Facebook page.
Now, some national updates:
Webinars Are Here!
Those at the Wednesday meeting had a sneak preview of the new Editors Canada line-up of webinars, which run the gamut from career advice to grammar to writing skills and beyond. The webinars have now been announced to the world, and registration is open!
Conference
Elizabeth d’Anjou reported on her experience at the 2016 Editors Canada conference, held in Vancouver in June. Some highlights:
- defending the apostrophe in a fierce (and hilarious) debate against James Harbeck
- the keynote address from Mary Norris (who brought the actual New Yorker comma shaker) and enjoying a beer with her at an after-hours party
- participating in a panel on teaching writing and editing organized by twig-event-regular Christine Peets
- the banquet, including presentation of the delightful Oops! Awards
- a session by the creator of PerfectIt! editing software, with recommendations for some apps and software for editors that are simple and inexpensive
The 2017 conference will be in Ottawa-Gatineau, June 9-10-11. Let’s fill it with Kingstonians!
Online Meeting October 1—Members, Please Vote!
An online meeting of Editors Canada members will be held on October 1, 2:00 p.m., with two votes scheduled:
- approval of the revised Professional Editorial Standards
- a motion put forward by a member at the Editors Canada AGM in June that national executive council members be allowed to serve no more than six years in a row.
Members, please vote! This second motion has important repercussions for the association.
To attend the meeting, you must register by September 23. To vote by proxy, you must send your proxy by September 28 to a member who will attend.
Elizabeth will be happy to vote your proxy. She’ll even send you the form. Email her: elizabeth@danjou.ca. (Elizabeth sits on the executive council; she recommends against this motion—the council needs flexibility to ensure a balance of skills and representation—but will be happy to cast your vote however you request.)
Roundtable Discussion: What’s New?
Six attendees enjoyed lively conversation that flowed easily from informal introductions to a discussion of the Editors Canada news above to the designated topic of the evening, which was to share something new in their respective editing worlds.
- Nancy Wills has had a busy indexing year, in which she added creating embedded indexes for ebooks to her skill set—jumping into the deep end with an 1100-page tome about Freud for Cambridge University Press. “It was really an excellent book,” she said, “so I felt pressure to do right by it!”
- Ellie Barton, who developed and teaches an online editing course for Queen’s, has been hired to teach stylistic editing and structural editing for Simon Fraser’s online editing certificate program. She will teach structural editing this fall.
- Carla Douglas is writing pieces for Publishing Perspectives, an international online journal that covers publishing issues around the world. She’s also doing some of her own writing in addition to her editing work.
- Elizabeth d’Anjou is aiming to increase her online presence. She’s up to a whopping 193 followers on Twitter (@ElizdAnjou), has a monthly “Ask Aunt Elizabeth” advice column for Editors Toronto, and continues to pretend she’s starting her own blog any day now, really.
- Lee d’Anjou, an Editors Canada Honorary Life Member, is retired, so had no new aspect of her editing to report, but offered “Sometimes I manage to do something on the computer that actually works, thus astonishing Elizabeth.”
- For Maggie Bailey, coming to the Twig meeting was new. A member of Editors Toronto many years ago, she had moved home towns and changed careers, and has been supply teaching in Camden East while doing occasional proofing or copy editing for Pearson. “I realized that when I’m editing, I feel like I’m doing what I should be doing,” she said, so she’s testing the waters, considering getting back into more editorial work.
Couldn’t make it to the meeting? Leave a comment and tell us what’s new with you!
This report written by Elizabeth d’Anjou, edited by Ellie Barton, and posted by Kathleen Fletcher. Teamwork rules!
Coming October 12: Working with a Designer
Susan Hannah is a true book lover, and has been from an early age. Armed with qualifications in graphic design and creative art, she gathered her skills locally (including at Harrowsmith Magazine in the book division) and in Toronto, where she was a senior designer for an elite educational book design studio. The award-winning book series Susan worked on as part of the design team with Nelson was used in public schools across Canada. She later worked for a typesetting firm that understood that traditional typesetting was becoming extinct and experimented with including a graphic designer as a service.
editorskingston.org 