When I joined the Professional Editors’ Guild in 2022, I thought I had editing and proofreading down to a fine art. I have good English abilities and a natural eye for detail. I love the technical side of editing – the...
Every creative hits a block at least once in their career. It might be extreme to say that every passion has an expiry date, but it certainly has a maturing stage. It’s not you; it’s me I experienced my block roughly...
‘I just looove accounting!’ said no editor ever. Yet, if we consider that we as freelancers are all running businesses, then bringing home the bacon and accounting for it [insert eye-roll here] should be a top...
Wouldn’t we all love to have a fairy godperson swoop over our work, sprinkle some magic dust and transform it into something readable, accurate, consistent and cogent, every time? Do we gnaw on our fingernails,...
It’s easy, when you are copy-editing, to get lulled into a sense that the words you are reading are as they should be. But the good editor’s motto is to take nothing for granted. An article on the News24 website made...
Editing is not just someone correcting mistakes in something you’ve written. It’s a dialogue in which the writer has a vital part to play … When I submit a quote for an editing job, it contains this sentence: ‘The fee...
I believe in building professional connections. All the time. My network of professionals is made up of colleagues and clients almost entirely related to my field of work in one way or another. It’s where I learn, I...
The first time I had to deliver difficult feedback to a fiction author was on a fantasy manuscript, brimming with imagination but bogged down by clunky prose and plot holes. I spent hours deliberating over how to...
The social media landscape in 2025 Social media (SM) has exploded around the world in the past 25 years, with the big platforms launching after 2000, eg: Reddit and YouTube in 2005; Twitter and Facebook in 2006;...
Three years ago, I wrote a series of articles on marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing (SMM) and content vs paid SMM, as they relate to editors in South Africa. These four articles provided an...
A future with machines Should we be concerned about a future alongside AI? Does the future hold productivity gains or mass employment? We are only just starting to see how this new technology will affect our particular...
Writing a thesis is a big deal. It’s the result of months (sometimes years) of research, thinking and hard work; and pulling all that work together into a polished, professional thesis can be tough. That’s where three...
In my previous blog post, I told you why and how I use Draft view for the documents I am not editing. In this blog I tell you how I set up my screen for the document I am editing. Hiding headers and footers I start by...
While I was doing my usual setup for editing, I wondered whether other people knew about the usefulness of Draft view for documents you are not editing. If you follow the instructions in this post, it displays in a...
PEG’s website has a nifty visual and FAQs for clients, which explain the difference between a proofread and an edit. I realised recently that, as editors, we may need to check our understanding too. In this blog, I...
A controversial concept I recently came across a social media post that unsettled me. The person who posted claimed that academic writers would benefit from training by popular fiction writers. The poster found the...
Taking on editing work for a student’s academic project – whether it’s an essay, dissertation or thesis – is a rewarding but complex task. As editors, our goal is to polish and refine the student’s writing while...
Self-reflection At the end of each year, I encourage myself to reflect on the year's personal and professional experiences. Self-reflection, as my form of self-care, is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate my...
Shortly after I started editing seriously, I told a friend what I was doing and he asked, ‘Don’t you find it lonely?’ I was surprised by the question, because that hadn’t occurred to me, and he was surprised by my...
I remember the first time I received cruel feedback from a client. I’d been freelancing for a few months. Although I could see the client was belittling me because they were confused by the tracked changes, their...
