Category: Skills

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Communicating Financial Information: It’s Not What You Know, It’s How Well You Explain It

By Adrienne Julier

Adrienne_Dec_2015A few years ago, I went to a high school graduation, and the valedictorian—an extremely intelligent young woman with close to a perfect SAT score—got up to speak. Her speech was impassioned and obviously well planned; unfortunately, it was also so loaded with obscure words that the vast majority of the audience—including me—couldn’t understand what she was saying. As I glanced around the theater, I soon saw people looking at their programs or, even worse, their phones. Continue reading “Communicating Financial Information: It’s Not What You Know, It’s How Well You Explain It”

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Editing Science Manuscripts with a Humanities Background

by Geoff Hartgeoff-Australia-cropped

I’m often asked whether someone with a humanities background can build a career editing science manuscripts. The answer, as so often in life, is yes…and no. The yes part is easy: English is English in any discipline, and if you’re a skilled editor, you can edit the basic grammar and syntax of English in just about any field without fully understanding the subject matter. The no part is more complex, and a clue to that complexity emerges from answering the inverse of this question: Can an editor with a scientific background edit humanities papers? Continue reading “Editing Science Manuscripts with a Humanities Background”

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Copyeditors Can Make Web Copy Sing

by Erin Brenner

2015 Headshot brown cropped 600x548Professional copyeditors tend to think of the Web as devoid of good writing. Website owners will throw any old copy up on the site, careless of good grammar, never mind rhythm and style. While quality sites are out there (think the New York Times and The Atlantic), they still make mistakes and many more websites are in need of a skillful copyeditor to help raise standards. Continue reading “Copyeditors Can Make Web Copy Sing”

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Book Review: Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word

Geoff Hart

Lyon, J. 2015. Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word. The Editorium. 104 p. incl. index

Wildcard Cookbook cover with borderYears ago, Word-guru Jack Lyon released a freebie ebook, Advanced Find and Replace for Word, which explained everything you needed to know to master Microsoft Word’s find and replace features. It’s still available from his website (http://www.editorium.com/freebies.htm), so you might wonder about the need for a new book on the subject. However, there are three good reasons to consider Jack’s new book, Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word: the text has been thoroughly updated and debugged for versions up to Word 2013; Continue reading “Book Review: Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word”