I was at lunch with some old friends from university when one of them decided to explain to me that my job is utterly unimportant, that no one cares about mistakes in books, and that nobody notices them, anyway. © Sue Littleford 2024 Aside from being well towards the rude end of the thoughtless​​rude spectrum, my friend was also factually wrong. People do notice mistakes, people do care about them – just witness comments on online retail sites and reviews just about anywhere – and errors in writing can have serious consequences. My friend was also overlooking that they read only edited text wi ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2024 True story: I once had to chase a client for payment. The due date was missed, so I emailed. I was told the same day that the project manager had emailed their manager and accountant to find out what was going on and to chase payment. Six days later I emailed again. That email was ignored. I waited five more days and emailed a third time, adding ‘3rd reminder’ to the subject line. The manager hadn’t authorised my payment before going on a business trip to China, and his staff were having difficulty reaching him. Someone else in the company would now be responsible for pur ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2024 It’s safe to say that all proofreaders and copyeditors did something before they started out. Here are some of the things I learned that I still use every single day, though none of them in themselves are about editing. Brownies and Guides I was a Sixer and a Patrol Leader, so early on I was learning about teams, about working together for a common goal within my own team and in conjunction with others, yet not to be afraid to stick my neck out and do things off my own bat. School Deadlines! Thou shalt have thy homework in on time! Show your workings. Quality output pleas ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2024 Judging by the files I receive to edit, authors sometimes struggle a bit with the comments function in Word. This is the fourth and final part of my mini-series on working with tracked changes as an author. I’ve previously written about why I don’t recommend tracking each and every change, knowing which buttons to press as you try to navigate the changes that are tracked and how to work with a file when it comes back to you to accept or reject a gazillion tracked changes. This time, to round things off, I’m going to take a look at comments – those conversations going on a ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2024 This is the third article of four in a short series on working with tracked changes. You can also read about why I don’t believe every change should be tracked, and which buttons to press when you have changes tracked in your file. If you’re a complete novice, or a bit out of practice with tracked changes files, perhaps read up on which buttons do what, first. But now, let’s think about how you’re going to approach the job when your file comes back full of tracked changes and you need to decide what to accept and what to reject. So here’s what I recommend. Scenario 1: the ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2024 This is the second in a short series on tracked changes. You can also read about why I don’t believe every change should be tracked. Editors know that many clients aren’t very familiar with handling files that have the changes tracked, and that those clients can find it alarming when they don’t know which buttons to use to show, or not show, the tracking. If you, as an author, have your typescript come back full of tracked changes, are you comfortable with how to display things, or accept a whole lot in one go? There’s no reason why every client should be a Word wiz, so h ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2024 This is the first of a short series of articles on tracked changes – the next two (to be published over the next month) will look at which buttons to press in Word to work with tracked changes, and how an author is best advised to approach the file from their editor or other reviewers, full of tracked changes and comments. I recently took on a new publisher client, a university press, and I’ve been asked to track every change until we get used to each other (which is turning out to mean with every new project manager who sends me a book I have to go back to the start!). S ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2024 Copyeditors – all editorial professionals, really – come in many shapes and sizes, mentally and attitudinally. But the good, experienced copyeditors share certain qualities and characteristics that make them the ones you want to hire. (Yes, this applies, too, to other kinds of editors and to proofreaders.) I’m assuming technical competence, based on great foundational training, and an aptitude for the work. These eight qualities I’m looking at are the ones that make really good copyeditors stand apart from the crowd. #1   Humility Not in a Uriah Heep way, nor ye ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2023 When I’m feeling whimsical – and what better time than the run up to Christmas to feel whimsical? – I get together a bunch of quotes from a famous author and see what they had to say about my day-to-day life – running my editorial business. Turns out Benjamin Franklin and William Shakespeare knew a thing or two about it! © Sue Littleford 2023 So I was casting around for another rich source of quotes. Dickens, surely? Nope, not very quotable, at least not on pithy editorial-leaning matters. Aha! I’m currently rereading Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld series so, yes, Mark T ..read more

© Sue Littleford 2023 Most editors have heard of PerfectIt, Intelligent Editing’s Word add-on consistency checker; many of us wouldn’t be without it. From the same stable, headed by Intelligent Editing’s founder Daniel Heuman, now comes an AI-based tool for writers: Draftsmith. Draftsmith’s purpose is to help you move your own original first draft along through the revision stages of writing, until you have refined and polished text. But I can tell you that there are some nifty functions in Draftsmith that will help editors, too. I’ve been lucky to be given both a sneak preview at the annual C ..read more