You might be a copy editor if . . .
Our upcoming Beginning Copyediting for Fiction class will educate anyone wanting to fix the errors seen on a daily basis in the real world!
Over the past week or so, I’ve caught the following typos and grammatical awkwardness in major news media:
USA Today: “publically released”
USA Today: “could cause driver’s to crash”
USA Today: “exasperating the problem” (should be “exacerbating the problem”)
Yahoo Entertainment: “Affleck has three children with whom Lopez has become the stepmother to.”
People: “A college student is dead after falling to his death.”
CNN: “Crossed first paths”
ABC News: “preventing recruiters from meting with students”
If you, like me, have a tendency to spot errors like this, then you, too, are either a copy editor or could be one.
Tips for Editors & Writers
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World-Building Without Info-Dumping
World-building is often seen as the province of science fiction and fantasy writers who have to convey new-to-us settings and cultures, and occasionally by historical writers who have to convey the feel of an era that a reader may not know much about. But every story takes place somewhere. Even stories set in a contemporary…
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Avoiding Burnout as a Freelancer
“The road to success and the road to burnout are the same for too many people,” a friend mine, a leadership coach, recently said to me. This struck me as one of those truths that you have never articulated but feels so obvious once someone has said it to you. I’ve been thinking about burnout…
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Minimum Viable Tasks
If I want to give myself a break, normally I will take Friday afternoon off. But recently I took a Monday afternoon off and I loved it. I’m always very busy on Mondays but it occurred to me that I could reduce the stress of that day if I just focused on the main things…
