Where research and editing intersect

In recent years, ACES has taken an interest in sponsoring and encouraging research about editing. We made a splash earlier this year with Fred Vultee’s research on editing and credibility.

Now, we are forming a panel of professors to continue these efforts. Their task will be to serve as our eyes and ears for research relevant to ACES members. They will also suggest ideas for research projects and share their own work in the ACES newsletter and at conferences.

Here are the members of the ACES Advisory Board for Research:

  • Doug Fisher, University of South Carolina
  • John Russial, University of Oregon
  • Leslie-Jean Thornton, Arizona State University

All three are active members of ACES, and they have strong professional backgrounds that complement their academic credentials. Thanks to all three for volunteering to help ACES highlight research that shows what copy editors do and why editing matters.

ACES seeks corporate communications intern

The American Copy Editors Society is seeking a corporate communications intern to help craft press releases, generate corporate communication and marketing documents and help research contact information for both the ACES executive committee and the Education Fund board.

The intern will work from home and will be paid $600, with the time frame and hours flexible, but equivalent to a semester’s work during the 2011-12 school year. The bulk of the work will be leading up to and during our national conference, which is April 12-14, 2012.

Applicants must be members in good standing of the American Copy Editors Society, however, students may join the society at the time of application. Applicants also should be currently enrolled in college, seeking a degree in the journalism/communications field. Graduates who received their degree in the past three months also are eligible.

This internship is separate from a website and newsletter content intern position announced in August.

The application deadline is Dec. 15. To download an application and for more information, click here.

For more information or to submit a resume and application, send an e-mail to tschmedding@copydesk.org.

A sneak peek at ACES 2012

The ACES board is jazzed about the 2012 national conference, which will be April 12-14 in New Orleans. One of the big items on the agenda for the board’s midterm meeting this weekend is planning for ACES 2012.

We’ll be meeting at the Sheraton Hotel across from the French Quarter, and there will be lots of opportunities to sharpen skills, share experiences and socialize with others who are passionate about editing.

ACES VP for conferences Lisa McLendon says some of the sessions already on the program are

Style Q&A
Representatives from AP Style and Chicago talk about how and why they make style decisions, and take questions from the audience. What changes might AP announce this year?

Even Porn Needs Style
Eric Althoff, freelance editor
A former editor at Hustler, using examples from the magazine’s in-house style guide, discusses the importance of having a style guide and how to create your own for your publication.

Avoiding Burnout
Becca Dyer, Arizona Republic; Rick Dyer, Independent Newspapers (Arizona)
Practical tips for all editors — freelancers, management and people in the trenches — on how to avoid burnout and maintain your passion for what you do.

Which Sentence Sounds Better And Why?
Michael Schneir, University of Southern California
A nitty-gritty look into what makes some sentences preferable to others: Working in pairs, session attendees will decide which of two sentences sounds better and why and compare notes with others before moving on to the next set of sentences.

Editing Military Coverage
Renee Petrina and colleagues, Defense Information School
Tips and best practices for copy editors when working with military stories, including explanation of how the military releases information and exploration of the nuances involved in translating military jargon and issues into general-purpose language – all without alienating the military community.

Maintaining newsroom standards in non-standard newsrooms
Suzanne Tarrant and colleagues, Demand Media
All copy editors at Demand Media must have credentials of print quality. Several editors who have found success there discuss how to survive and thrive in that environment, and how to maintain newsroom standards.

Fault lines
Dori Maynard, Maynard Institute; Doris Truong, Washington Post
A time-tested strategy for getting more diversity in news coverage.

Writing for SEO, writing for social media
Frank Russell, University of Missouri
Headlines and summaries need to be optimized differently for search and social media. This session will cover how to write for each one.

Transition follow-up
Maggie Walter and Frank Russell, University of Missouri
Last year they talked about the restructuring of their newsroom to focus on online. A year later, they‘ll discuss what’s changed and where the focus is.

Ethics of the Last Editor Standing
Rick Kenney, Florida Gulf Coast University
You look left, you look right, and there’s no one on the desk but you. The best ethical decisions, it is often said, are collaborative. What to do when collaboration isn’t an option? Don’t panic. Here’s help.

Inside Readers’ Heads
Alex Cruden, editing consultant
What real readers think about what they read — and it’s not always what you might think.

The Power of Proofreading
Sherrie Voss Matthews, UT-San Antonio and panel
Learn how to take one final look at spelling, design, color and content before sending copy into the world. This panel of experts offers tips on how to prevent design and typography bloopers from reaching your audience.

Surviving a Redesign
Sherrie Voss Matthews, UT-San Antonio and panel
Editors discuss the process of and complications surrounding redesigns, both in print and on the Web.

Copy Editors as Curators
Gerri Berendzen, Quincy Herald-Whig; Sue Bullard, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
News copy editors are playing a growing role in compiling, editing and linking to add value to print and online packages.

We All Make Mistakes
Panel
We all want to succeed, but what people often don’t talk about was how failures — and what we learn from them — contribute to success. A panel of editors will talk about the times they’ve failed — in day-to-day editing, in management and in career moves. They’ll talk about what went wrong and how they benefited from it, and why we all should welcome, rather than fear, failure.

Math
Neil Holdway, Daily Herald
What editors need to know about math.

What the study really said
Fred Vultee, Wayne State University
How to read and make sense of “study says” stories.

Legal language
Charles DelaFuente, The New York Times
What do all those legal terms mean?

Jimmy’s World
Bill Connolly, retired from The New York Times
A hands-on session examining how a copy editor could have averted disaster. Registration required. Attendance limited.

Freelance editors’ forum
Mark Allen, moderator
A session for freelance editors to share tips, concerns and solutions.

Small-staffs forum
Tim Yagle, moderator
A session for editors who are part of small staffs to share how to work efficiently, get training and not get stretched too thin.

How Do I Get There? Copy Editing Beyond the Newsroom
Doug Ward, University of Kansas, et al.
Resources one can use to find other types of copy editing jobs.

A Keen Eye for Graphics
Bill Cloud, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Graphics need just as close an edit as stories do. This session discusses what to watch for when you’re editing graphics.

We’ll post a preliminary schedule (broken out by days and times; subject to change) later this month, before the early-bird deadline.

ACES board midterm meeting

The American Copy Editors Society Executive Committee is meeting today and Saturday for its annual midterm meeting.

Among the items on the agenda are planning for the ACES 2012 national conference April 12-14 in New Orleans, planning regional conferences for next year, building ACES membership and expanding member benefits.

As always, all of us on the board are interested in hearing from members about what you want from ACES. You can email any of the board members or send an email to info@copydesk.org.

Who says no one cares?

I’m a big believer in edit first, post second.

Of course, as a copy editor, I ought to be. And if my profession didn’t convince me of the necessity of a second set of eyes on my copy, re-reading my personal email would. Many a time have I cringed when re-reading a long email I’ve already sent. It’s difficult to see your mistakes in the heat of composing.

I understand that there are times you need to get breaking news out right away, and big hands make mistakes on small smartphone keyboards. But in most cases, there’s time to have someone else read your copy before you post or at least look over your shoulder before doing the big breaking news tweet.

I’m not the only one cringing. ACES-sponsored research presented at the 2011 conference in Phoenix shows readers, especially those who follow the news closely, prefer professionally edited articles.

If you really want to know what news readers think about grammar and writing errors, read the comments under the stories. There are plenty of commenters who delight in pointing out the miscues of both reporters and fellow commenters.

Still think people just ignore grammar and spelling errors on the web? Consider this. Recently, I was reading an article on a website about upcoming text changes in the Catholic church’s liturgies. The first comment listed was this: “Please fix the misuse of ‘their/there’ in paragraphs 19 and 25.”

It’s nice to know some people still care.

Celebrating the comma, partying with parentheses

University of Nebraska-Lincoln students in one of ACES board member Sue Burzynski Bullard

Need to conquer the comma, get a handle on hyphen or decipher the dash?

Or are you thinking about all out extermination of the doubled exclamation point?

Than you might want to start your crusade at the National Punctuation Day website.

Saturday, Sept. 24, is the eighth annual National Punctuation Day. And while those of us who work with words might see the day as a opportunity for a bit of fun (and cookies), it’s also an opportunity to promote the proper use of marks that help clarify the meaning of written material.

Punctuation is important. As the Purdue Online Writing Lab says in its punctuation section: “When speaking, we can pause or change the tone of our voices to indicate emphasis. When writing, we use punctuation to indicate these places of emphases.”

Purdue’s OWL site is a great resource for clarification on punctuation issues. Other online resources are listed on the National Punctuation Day resources page.

So on Saturday, don’t just cringe at those unnecessary quotation marks (“Sale today on ham shank’s”), educate.

For students, ACES is awesome

It’s the start of a new school year and that means new beginnings for the student chapter of ACES at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Many of our members graduated last spring so the remaining officers have been recruiting new students interested in editing.

It’s gratifying to hear them talk about how valuable ACES has been to them as students. They are so pumped up about how cool it has been to meet professionals and network with ACES members at regional and national conferences.

As an example, they told new recruits this week about meeting David Brindley of National Geographic at the ACES national conference in Phoenix last spring. After the conference, David skyped with our chapter to talk about editing graphics. And last summer when a couple of our members were in Washington D.C., he graciously took them on a tour of National Geographic and out to dinner.

The professional editors who spend a few minutes chatting with students at ACES conferences or mentoring them via email and Skype are having a huge impact on the next generation of journalists. I hear them talking about Merrill Perlman’s suggestion that ACES is about content editing. I love hearing them tell new students about how they’ve met editors at newspapers, editors working for Groupon, editors working for financial institutions or government agencies. And you can just see the new recruits light up, thinking about future career possibilities.

So if you’re an academic or if you’re a professional editor living near a university, think about getting more students involved in ACES this year. For students, as you can see from this video, the ACES experience is awesome.

In which I ponder the night copy desk’s death

It was another tough day or week in early June in which we, the night copy desk, were getting some flak for errors getting in the newspaper or missing a story or some frustrating thing that slips through just a little more easily in these days of diminished staffing yet increased pressure to turn out a good product that readers will pay for. Then Steve Yelvington’s blog entry “Let’s just bury the nightside copy desk” comes out, and I’m like, SON OF A (Blagojevich word). “Forgive me, nightside copy editors, for I have come to dash your hopes and crush your spirit,” Steve began. Well, I was in a mood neither for my hopes to be dashed nor my spirit to be crushed; others were working on that pretty well already.

More than two months with plenty of precious sunlight have passed, and some discussion on the matter has been attempted, such as by our president Teresa Schmedding who posted her thoughts and asked for feedback on whether the night copy desk is dead. I was surprised to see the response both to Yelvington’s and Teresa’s blog posts were about as quiet as a newspaper newsroom after 7 p.m. So, as I am in a better state of mind (and Blagojevich’s profanity-laden tapes have helped land him prison time), let’s really ponder this.

Is the night copy desk dead? Well, no. But it’s evolving, and has been, rather quickly, for a few years now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Holy Dow! Where does ACES keep its reserves, scholarship money?

Stocks are up and down and way down, and U.S. Treasuries have been downgraded. Does ACES and Education Fund have money in either?

The short answer: ACES has money in neither, and the Education Fund has money in both. Also, ACES and the Ed Fund have money in junk bonds.

And am I worried this week about where this money is? Well, no more than I usually worry about where the money is as part of my job as treasurer.

When I became treasurer of ACES in 2005 (and for the Education Fund for that matter), I continued what previous Treasurer Carrie Camillo started and put ACES’ reserves and the Education Fund’s scholarship money in bank CDs and money market accounts that were paying as high as 6 percent annually at one point, but generally around 5 percent annually. I also put a lot of the scholarship money in mutual funds. More on the Education Fund later. Read the rest of this entry »

The painful decision to raise ACES rates

Let’s cut to the chase: ACES raised its membership and conference rates.

It’s going to cost you an additional $20 a year to be a full member and an additional $25 to attend the conference. So, worst-case (or best) scenario, you have to shell out an extra 45 bucks.

I can’t imagine any of you greeted the news with a standing ovation at your desk. As Daniel Hunt mentioned on FB and Neil Holdway’s article covers, no one on the board was cheering the decision.

I cannot remember a year since I joined the board where the issue of raising both hasn’t come up. There have always been solid arguments on both sides.
Read the rest of this entry »