ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vsyO5yUxzs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY

i feel like 'peek' vs 'peak' issues have suddenly gotten out of hand

homophonophobia?

the origin of American confusion on this issue xp

homophonosis

The author of this piece uses "pour over" instead of "pore over." (He also spells Ashley Kahn's name wrong.) That one doesn't come up often, which is probably why bothers me so much.

I might say pancake turner if and only if I need to distinguish the comparatively rigid flipping utensil from the more flexible scraping one. That said, most ppl have little difficulty telling from context which kind of spatula is meant. Any situation where confusion could arise would be easily handled (so to speak) with other clarifying words.

"Hey, I need to sauté these onions, can you please hand me that spatula" vs. "I'm having trouble getting the last bits of peanut butter out of this jar - got a spatula?" OR just say "can you hand me that red spatula there?"

Similarly people can manage just fine with "can" meaning a metal container for beer, a method of food preservation, ability to do something, and the act of firing someone.

O and I snoozed on Merdeyeux's question upthread but the answer is yes, kinda. Would be happy to inundate with more detail but won't bother

...won't bother unless there is still interest

i have a different kind of question for the copyeditors and grammar fiends of ilx - is it possible to make a living (or something approaching one) from freelance proofreading/copyediting without certificates and/or a ready pool of contacts? (my one selling point being a doctorate in the humanities, which i guess proves i'm basically capable of reading and writing.)

i've taken a stab at deriving income from this in the past couple years, not very successfully, in a similar boat to you. i don't have any writing/editing credentials, but i did briefly work an editing job for a scholarly journal while in grad school. between that and actually being an ace editor i figure it should be doable. but i don't have the connections and have had other stuff to do, so i haven't tried all that hard to make any. i prepped somebody's master's thesis for final submission, which was a nice big job, and i've been helping an old college friend, a scientist who can't write, make articles submittable and shape up his tenure portfolio and defenses during the whole process. but the only place i've been pursuing totally freelance clients, through one of those bid-for-professional-services-in-your-local-area websites, has not been very fruitful.

my sense is that a lot of the jobs are for clients with little idea of what they want, what they can get, or what the real costs are, all of which makes it hard to pitch and bid convincingly. there are lots of people looking for small projects like business plans or maybe 'blog posts', for which, i reckon, some vague sheen of suitability would be required of you (i never pitch those). there are a lot of people with novels (excuse me, 'fiction novels'), and they want things done with them but seem iffy about what. there are a lot of set categories of editing that apply especially to fiction at various stages of doneness, and although people sometimes ask for those specific things, my sense is that few of them appreciate what they entail. some ask for developmental editing, for which you'd likely need to pass yourself off as convincingly acquainted with the basics of fiction-writing (what makes a good story, characterization, etc.), and maybe wouldn't be able to pull off without credentials or a work history with satisfied novelists. many indicate that they're looking for some kind of cleanup, say line editing for grammar or formatting, but these people often appear to me to be deluded about the quality of their writing, thinking that it will just be a little touchup that they need when really they've got 100,000 words of embarrassment for you. this makes pitching especially difficult, because you want to make estimates they can understand, based on what their jobs would really require of you, and cost you/them. a lot of people seem to be shopping absurdly long manuscripts for edits without realizing that they're far longer than most published novels, so their sense of what it would take to run through these behemoths is totally out of whack.

setting rates is itself a mystery, i'd be glad to hear what actual pros do there (i think i asked about it upthread, or on another thread, and didn't hear much back). if you go by professional market rates, prior to being established, i think you're liable to scare most potential clients off, more so the more they're not word-professionals themselves. i haven't had much luck probing the needs of people who haven't hired me, but my impression is that even low rates, moderately proportioned to the amount of work they project having for you, tend to spook them. which suggests that they were thinking this would be like, they pay you a hundred bucks and you somehow fix er right up, quickly. i've gathered that a viable strategy would probably be to underbid for a while at the outset to make sure you can get clients, then just eat the time/cost needed to do them good work, as you build up a reputation and attract a more knowledgeable/credulous clientele that are willing to pay what the work costs. but it hasn't been worth my time to shoot for that, given other work that i've had.

this is just local, in a sizeable metro area with a lot of higher ed per capita (my ideal market). i'm guessing that if you're (still?) in the london area, it would be a lot easier.

https://i.imgur.com/0ZcjQvf.png

FWIW I hire editors pretty often, and I don't care about certificates or contacts.

The path that Mookieproof describes is a viable one; certainly many people have gone that way and done well. There is an awful lot of writing out there, and much of it is terrible. If you offer to edit things for low rates as a way of getting yourself out there, you can certainly end up with a client base that makes sense for you.

Some people start out by doing work for free - like volunteering to help a nonprofit with its website, in exchange for warm good feelings and a reference. Or helping students/academics with papers. Church newsletters, brochures for local businesses, et cetera. Personally, I didn't have the patience for that approach (and I very much needed to pay the rent).

I am going to describe a somewhat different approach - one that focuses on professionalizing quickly and using established structures for getting work and getting paid.

You could get started by registering with editorial agencies (the big one in DC is EEI, I don't know about other places), general staffing agencies like Kelly, and online matching services like Upwork. That may all sound Way Too Corporate, but trust me it really is nice having someone else find the work, deal with invoicing, and deal with the taxes. Also they often use editing tests to determine your suitability, so credentialing matters less (as it should, IMO).

Another thing I did was to alternate periods of freelancing with periods of having a "real" job. Past employers can then become sources of freelance work, while also giving you access to professional contact networks.

Miscellaneous other considerations:

- Be aware of different style manuals (Chicago, AP, etc.) and be adaptable to client-specific and project-specific styles. It's not a good strategy to go out there with the idea that there is only one correct way to punctuate everything. Clients tend to prefer internal consistency to prescriptive correctness.

- The online marketplaces (kinda like Uber for freelancers) are new and still wildly uneven. There are thieves and scammers and just plain terrible jobs (e.g., SEO and clickbait writing), but there is also legitimate work on them. And they will become the way of the future, so you may as well learn their idiosyncracies.

- Rate setting, gah. The usual advice is to figure out what a staff person would get paid per hour, then double it. Or just divide their salary by a thousand. So if you think an employer would pay $40,000 for an in-house editor, you won't go far wrong charging $40 per hour. As mookieproof notes, some clients get sticker shock, or offer insultingly low rates because they can find people who will do it for $20 or $10. Professional freelancers are (understandably) vexed that so many people will accept these rates, as it depresses pay across the industry. OTOH, a very good reliable freelancer (particularly one with subject expertise) can charge more - and should!

Merdeyeux, are you in Britain? I can probably give a bit of regionally tailored advice if you are.

I do a little bit of this here and there, whenever I need an influx of cash; I do some social media marketing stuff, too. My regular rate is $40 an hour, but I jump that up to $50 an hour for clients I don't think will blink, and once I got $100 an hour for a several months-long project from a major record label. (I'm on the East Coast of the US and work primarily with people in and around New York City.)

if you're going to go ye mad puffin's route, which sounds good to me, then you should study up on basic copyediting practices. i've barely done that, yet i've taken competency tests covering the leetle squiggles and symbols (more of them than i ever needed when proofing msses w/ major publishers, especially since almost every stage of work except final page proofing was digital).

there's a lot of call for ap style in academic/educational editing, more than i would wish for since it's ugly and unnatural. luckily thanks to the modern internet you can steal copies of the major style guides and not have to shell out the $$$ or have library access. the chicago guide has sections on editing and publishing practices, aside from all its usage and bibliographic guidelines, which you might find it useful to read. plus there are just actual books on same, of course.

afraid to say i've probably been undercutting professionals, i think even $20/hr is too rich for the uber-market. especially the first-time novelists. i actually feel like my current client is getting a $40-$50/hr service from me, but since he's an old friend and we started out at a lower rate i feel funny jacking it up to the right level.

j brings up good points. Karen Judd's book Copyediting: a Practical Guide used to be the standard but would now seem pretty quaint.

The squiggles are not really relevant anymore except as a cultural signal among oldtimers (and I say this as a print-based oldtimer from pre-computer days).

But I do very much recommend getting a sense of soft skills like how to put together a diplomatic query - stuff like "On page 13 you refer to 'Iran-Iraq War' and on page 27 you refer to the 'Iraq-Iran War'. OK If I change all references to "Iran-Iraq War'?" or "In Chapter 3, Lorelei is described as having red hair, in Chapter 5 you have 'her black hair' - was this intentional or is it OK to change?"

And it is totally cool to charge less for friends, good repeat customers, and impoverished causes you value. I've been known to charge like $20 to an environmental nonprofit (and then make up the difference by charging Microsoft $120).

The concern about pay suppression is more about stingy clients than it is about impoverished ones (or courtesy rates extended to friends). Also, for good or for ill, there are a lot of people who do writing/editing as a hobby or avocation. Or they may consider themselves "aspiring," or they may view it as "extra" income (possibly because they have other income or a spouse has a more traditional job). I understand the POVs of those people but I also understand the POVs of people who are trying to pay a mortgage and feed a family with their freelancing.

dur, sorry, meant apa style above—been reading so many links to the OMG AP CHANGEZ STYLE story today

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/04/03/the_ap_stylebook_will_no_longer_capitalize_internet_bad_move.html

I think the AP is finally making the right move. No one breaks down on the Interstate anymore, now do they?

Has the word 'led' disappeared? I see 'lead' used instead ALL THE TIME (referring to the past tense, not the element)

I still see it in sports.

http://i.imgur.com/1bTMWP6.png

i wouldn't say it's "disappeared" for me but i've noticed it too, obviously almost exclusively in online media, and it is horrifying. that and editors who for some reason can't tell the difference between "loath" and "loathe"

i hadn't spotted these replies to my question, thanks everybody this is useful. woof, if you have any uk-centric advice (i'm based in london) that would be v much appreciated

i feel like 'peek' vs 'peak' issues have suddenly gotten out of hand

so horrible

were you referring to this? https://twitter.com/StealthMountain

People confuse "loath" and "loathe" because the words are related in meaning, spelling, and etymology. Checking COCA, it looks like editors let by "loath" for "loathe" less than 5% of the time, and they allow more idiosyncratic usages (like this from the New Statesman, "to go to the study every morning after breakfast, no matter how hungover, loath, and he just sort of ground it out," seems to substitute "loath" for "loaf," but this sentence would still be confusing with the words swapped) much less than that, maybe 1 or 2% of the time. That's a good track record for a totally understandable confusion/mix-up/typo, from the people who, more than anyone, are the gatekeepers of change for written standard American English.

i get why regular people might get the two confused. people who write or edit for a living should know the difference!

and btw "loath" in that sentence you quoted is pretty standard -- it's just a synonym for "reluctant". though i agree it is used pretty artfully

Yeah, I know what it's a synonym for, and I'm getting it in context in the original. It helps to know that it was speech and that it was Martin Amis.

People who write and edit for a living are (1) also people; (2) occasionally shitty spellers; and (3) put under intense pressure to produce content. Given all three contingencies/facts-of-life, 5% seems like a good track record among professionally edited English.

'You'll be amazed by our extensive refurbishments'
'You'll be amazed at our extensive refurbishments'
?

by if amazement will be continue beyond first exposure to their extensive refurbishments at if there will only be an initial reaction of amazement followed by a feeling of normality

yes, I would say amazed at suggests amazement at the sheer fact of something's existence/occurrence, but there are myriad ways to be amazed by something

yes i.e. "wtf - they've refurbished!!!!??"

vs

"look at these fucking refurbishments!!!!"

Yeah no question imo--"at" sounds weird.

They both make linguistic sense (I think) but "amazed at our extensive" is a bit tongue-twistery

all otm.

Think of it like "You will be insulted by our products!" vs "You will be insulted at our products!"

so in my job there's a lot of bulleted lists. research has shown people like them. as a result, there are a lot of interrogatives used, i wondered what people think about this kind of usage.

so an example would be:

people using interrogatives:

* which look weird to me at the start of bullets

people seem to use them to describe:

* what someone reading the page has to do
* which ways of doing it they can choose

i always want to change the last example to "the things someone reading the page has to do", "the ways of doing it they can choose"

am i on any grammatical ground here? it seems beyond instinct, i just think unnecessary interrogatives look really weird. especially "what", and especially when they begin a bullet.

I agree this reads somewhat inelegantly but idk if there's a grammatical basis to overrule it. Perhaps you could argue that a pronoun without an antecedent is unclear and only valid for direct questions, not these sort of indirect ones, so they should either be reworded as direct questions, making their clumsiness more obvious, or as you suggest

our house style for this changed recently to remove the :
which meant a lot of 'you need to do the following
* thing one, which is a complete sentence but no full stop allowed
* thing two.

In your example i think 'what' and 'which' are probably more 'plain english'?? but your suggestions are correcter.

btw I meant to say that I think 'the following' before a bulleted list should have a colon, but what do I know

nb our house style only recently removed the - from web-site

Bulleted lists are the scourge of the grammar fiend. Months of my life gone to misery over them.

ah interesting - one of my colleagues hates "the following" - i guess it's close to talking about spatial parts of the page which obviously excludes some users, but i still think it has its uses. we use bulleted lists all the time - i find it strange the colon would be removed.

our style is to never use full stops at the end of bullets. we have a bulleted list for like more variable lists of things and generally to create more white space and break up big paragraphs, but we also use numbered lists for tasks which can be broken down into a list of things you should do in a given order.

our style doesn't allow us to make the bullets questions either.

I can abide bulleted lists where each element is a sentence fragment, and therefore lacks end punctuation. For example, I have fucked the following people:

- Your mom
- Your sister
- Your other sister

I am also cool with bulleted lists in which each element is a complete sentence, punctuated accordingly. For example, my sexual career includes the following conquests:

- I had sex with your mom in a gondola.
- Your sister went down on me in a movie theater.
- Your other sister allowed me various improprieties in an opera house.

HATE HATE HATE any bulleted list that tries to format itself as a deconstructed sentence, e.g., these are some of my conquests:

- Your mom,
- Your sister, and
- Your other sister.

Yeah the third option is madness. The first two are fine.

We try to avoid repeating the first word in each bullet, but it's a subject of debate I think.

this might be the right place to admit that my ilx posts are always half-done snatched moments of awful typos and errors, yet all day i spend my time feverishly discussing a word or a sentence while pointing at big screens. i think it's some kind of subconscious disease that i keep posting horrible wrong things on this board.

xxp keep disrespecting my family and the only list of bullets you'll be interested in is:

- http://i.imgur.com/9uLzEho.png

Heh. Agreed with LocalGarda on both counts; I apologize for the your/your/your, which I admit makes it a poor example.

My main point is that end punctuation depends on whether the bulleted material is or is not a sentence.

The tricky bit is treating mixed lists, where some items are sentences (or include multiple sentences) and some are not. Typically I recommend rewriting to make bullets parallel, but when this is not possible we "promote" fragments to sentences if ANY bulleted items are sentences.

our style bans end punctuation regardless.

i suspect maybe for screen readers but not sure... like would a full stop be weird when the next bullet begins as a fragment.

I don't mind banning end punctuation entirely EXCEPT when a long bullet includes more than one sentence. I wouldn't be comfortable with a list item that had a complete sentence, then another bit, but that other but didn't have something at the end.

This may never come up in your world but it comes up in mine from time to time.