ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

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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.

j., Saturday, 2 April 2016 02:39 (eight years ago) link

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

mookieproof, Saturday, 2 April 2016 02:51 (eight years ago) link

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!

doo-wop unto others (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 2 April 2016 12:13 (eight years ago) link

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

woof, Saturday, 2 April 2016 12:53 (eight years ago) link

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.)

the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Saturday, 2 April 2016 13:25 (eight years ago) link

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., Saturday, 2 April 2016 15:43 (eight years ago) link

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.

doo-wop unto others (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 2 April 2016 17:26 (eight years ago) link

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

j., Saturday, 2 April 2016 20:41 (eight years ago) link

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

pplains, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 16:02 (eight years ago) link

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

kinder, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 20:23 (eight years ago) link

I still see it in sports.

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

pplains, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 20:32 (eight years ago) link

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"

k3vin k., Wednesday, 6 April 2016 20:40 (eight years ago) link

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

we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 21:25 (eight years ago) link

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

kinder, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 21:41 (eight years ago) link

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.

bamcquern, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 21:43 (eight years ago) link

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

k3vin k., Wednesday, 6 April 2016 21:48 (eight years ago) link

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.

bamcquern, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 22:06 (eight years ago) link

one month passes...

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

TARANTINO! (dog latin), Monday, 16 May 2016 09:13 (seven years ago) link

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

conrad, Monday, 16 May 2016 09:48 (seven years ago) link

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

ogmor, Monday, 16 May 2016 10:11 (seven years ago) link

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

vs

"look at these fucking refurbishments!!!!"

illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 16 May 2016 10:23 (seven years ago) link

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

If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Monday, 16 May 2016 12:05 (seven years ago) link

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

Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 16 May 2016 12:24 (seven years ago) link

all otm.

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

pplains, Monday, 16 May 2016 14:34 (seven years ago) link

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.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 09:05 (seven years ago) link

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

ogmor, Friday, 20 May 2016 10:50 (seven years ago) link

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.

kinder, Friday, 20 May 2016 11:49 (seven years ago) link

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

kinder, Friday, 20 May 2016 11:49 (seven years ago) link

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

kinder, Friday, 20 May 2016 11:50 (seven years ago) link

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

Eyeball Kicks, Friday, 20 May 2016 12:13 (seven years ago) link

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.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:05 (seven years ago) link

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.

heavens to murgatroyd, even (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:15 (seven years ago) link

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.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:18 (seven years ago) link

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.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:21 (seven years ago) link

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

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

yellow despackling power (Will M.), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:22 (seven years ago) link

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.

heavens to murgatroyd, even (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:25 (seven years ago) link

our style bans end punctuation regardless.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:32 (seven years ago) link

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

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:33 (seven years ago) link

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.

heavens to murgatroyd, even (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:50 (seven years ago) link

we would always use dashes or whatever and generally try to write it in a way that avoided it being separate sentences. ideally the bullet wouldn't be really long but that's inevitable sometimes.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 15:52 (seven years ago) link

I am not a writer, as everyone who has attempted to read my ILX posts will be glad to hear, but I quite like

- thing one, and
- thing two;
- additionally, final thing three.

lists like everyone else here hates, but I am happy to believe I am wrong and should be very ashamed of what I've done. I guess they are overkill in most situations but they can be helpful on how-to or especially semi-legalese pages

e.g. I was looking at some list of instructions for applying for something and there was a bulleted list to mean "you must do all of these things: one <AND> two <AND> three", and then there was a bulleted list to mean "you may need to do something else if: x <OR> y <OR> z", and then there was a third bulleted list where I couldn't work out if it was an and-list or an or-list

however, despite my confusion perhaps it was not at all confusing to normal people, as I often find ambiguities-to-me in written instructions which nobody else has ever found ambiguous

a passing spacecadet, Friday, 20 May 2016 16:56 (seven years ago) link

No, I think your instincts are right. Making one of/all of explicit is important.

I don't mind starting with relatives (which is what they are, I think, rather than interrogatives) - they make for complete clauses that jump off the initial colon easily enough.

woof, Friday, 20 May 2016 17:26 (seven years ago) link

i find which okay-ish but what always looks v strange to me. i know it's sort of a personal thing though.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 17:29 (seven years ago) link

And yeah, I work same place as Lg (different team) and I am guiltily aware of sometimes contorting to avoid two sentences in one, non-end-stopped bullet.

Xp
Yeah... thinking about it I'm sure I recently saw one of those "what you'll get"-type heads that introduced ambiguity.

woof, Friday, 20 May 2016 17:33 (seven years ago) link

haha weirdly i don't find it as annoying in headings. not necessarily. i guess i just find lots and lots of the time in the bullet scenario, instead of saying "which" or "what" you can use the specific noun you're talking about.

japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, 20 May 2016 17:36 (seven years ago) link

Totally understand that you need a lot of format muscle if you want to effectively communicate something conditional like document requirements for e.g., a passport application.

You need one of the following:
- Thing,
- Thing, or
- Thing

~ AND ~

One of the following:
- Thing,
- Thing, or
- Thing

~ OR ~

A signed affidavit stating the following:
- Thing,
- Thing, or
- Thing

In those cases, whatever you feel you need to do is probably justifiable. But in my world most of the time people are just caught up with listing stuff and they can't stop themselves. Plus someone told them a bulleted list was a good way to "break up the text."

Oddly, for centuries, people have been somehow able to read entire BOOKS that were full of nothing but paragraphs. Can you imagine?

heavens to murgatroyd, even (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 20 May 2016 17:44 (seven years ago) link

imo, bulleted lists are somewhat analogous to earlier introductions of punctuation marks or upper and lower case letters into text. They are a visual aid to absorbing the content of text more smoothly and easily. They can, like commas, be abused, but as with commas there are gradations of accepted use which shade gradually into abuse. There's no one right rule you can apply in every case.

Ye Mad Puffin responds poorly to the 'deconstructed sentence' style of bulleted list, and therefore would seek to dissuade its use, but I would say that so long as resorting to a bulleted list allows the content to be absorbed more rapidly and completely than attempting some other presentation, then its use is justified, regardless of how grammatically heterogeneous the individual items are. I'd agree with Ye Mad Puffin to the degree that one ought to try to homogenize the elements of the list insofar as it is possible to do so without impairing its fluidity. What matters most is getting your points across.

a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Friday, 20 May 2016 17:46 (seven years ago) link

homogenize without impairing fluidity otm

heavens to murgatroyd, even (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 20 May 2016 18:57 (seven years ago) link


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