Joslin Proofread

A sample (5MB warning) of one of my freelance proofreading projects can be found here.

6 Ways to Freelance Fulfillment

Knowing what elements of the job to leave undone is one challenge you’ll find on proofreading gigs or copyediting gigs, perhaps any freelance gig. On a freelance project, your supervisor will expect you to be on the ball at every turn, do good, consistent work, and bill the absolute minimum for it. Here’s a list of six ways to make sure you accomplish all of the above while not being afraid to take a break for lunch:

1. Arrive before the staffers in the morning. If you take advantage of the morning calm, you can review relevant work directives, get a jump on deadlines or that email inbox, and give the job in front of you due diligence.

2. Ask questions. Coworkers will appreciate a freelancer that shows this initiative, and you’ll learn how to make the job easier on everyone.

3. Bring your expertise to the table. You’re a freelancer. You’ve been hired for it. Your boss wants what you’ve advertised.

4. Don’t give too much, tempting as it might be. Find a balance somewhere above the minimum without sacrificing the application of your expertise. You can’t be consistent by bringing everything you’ve got to the table at every moment. A balance saves everyone from stress.

5. Take a break. You’re entitled by law, and a well-timed break for lunch in Chinatown can help you recharge while avoiding a charge to your client for overtime.

6. Track your time on each job accurately. With a clean record, you can easily justify your billed hours and see where you might need to improve; your supervisor can see where resources might be better managed; you both will see how great a job you’re doing.

Niche Readers

Eric Alterman’s article at The Nation seems hyperbolic to me. “The loss of daily newspapers is a significant threat to the future of our democracy,” he says. Really? Maybe it’s a threat to the loss of the democracy controlled by the folks that still read the newspaper.

How many border-town immigrants read their local paper? How many foreign nationals read their local daily? They can go online and fetch the news from their home country. Alterman points out that the youth aren’t too interested in reading the paper either. So, I just don’t get it. How is the loss of the daily a threat to the future of our democracy? Sounds like a threat to the future of Stuff White People Like.

He’s correct to point out the discrepancy between newspaper performance and gigantic executive salaries: “These figures, one can only conclude, are entirely unrelated to performance,” he says. Isn’t that how it works in all businesses, especially in this country? More centralized corporate control means more money for the central controllers. This is its own problem.

The loss of the daily paper is the future of our democracy. Those centrally controlled, corporate-owned media outlets will be replaced by point source information, not necessarily in print, defined by niche readerships. How many types of people own a cell phone? This point source flow of information gives a diverse citizenry relevant outlets, instead of a homogeneous mass of corporate controlled media.

Threat to the future of democracy? Like I said, I just don’t get it. As far as I can tell politics is covered in a section of the paper.

You tell me.

Red Line, Arrrggghhh

Red Line broken.

I liked working the last assignment in the suburbs. I drove. I parked for free.

At ten to seven this morning, I got on a train in Porter Square, later herded with the rest of the commuters to shuttles waiting at Harvard. Here I am now at work.

So much for getting the jump on those deadlines.
Is it funny that a proofreader commutes on the Red Line? And that the Red Line would turn against its master? Guess I should be sparing with those swooping lines, arrows, and carets.

T passengers, it's happened to you. On-site freelancers, adjust accordingly.

Central Proof

Adapting to a new proofreading gig is usually pretty tough. Now that I’m doing the work it would normally take two proofreaders to do, while trying to avoid billing overtime, adjusting is taking a little longer.

Two problems present themselves at the new gig: One, the house style has grown cobwebs. It hasn’t been updated since 2005. New writers don’t even know it exists. Two, the volume of work is more than I’ve ever done alone. I remember lots of promotions and other projects running at REI, but at least there I could benefit from the guidance of the staff proofreader. Plus they had a central proof room—less intimidating than a pile on the desk?

Now, it’s me. I’m it. And I’m torn between committing my self to the job completely, in hopes that it’ll make the project easier as it goes along, or balancing the minimum work necessary to survive, as the proofreader before me likely did.

I don’t get paid enough to work my ass off there. I’m a freelancer. Do I give up the steady work for offers coming in that are higher pay but more sporadic? A case of the Mondays?

No, no, I’ll continue on and contribute my best work. Tomorrow I’ll sit in on the writers’ afternoon meeting.

Any suggestions for items to bring to the floor?

Equal Variants

Latent Print presents Styleguide Wednesday, a post each Wednesday featuring an editorial convention from the world of styleguides. View previous Latent Print moments of stylebook study and reflection here. This week features spelling equal variants.

Your house dictionary should be the first resource to determine preferred spelling of equal variants. Chicago 7.1 tells us that the stylebook prefers the first variant given in the dictionary listing. And so prefers AP Stylebook, p. 72.

In The Copyeditor’s Handbook, Amy Einsohn allows more slack. She tells us that for equal variants either is acceptable. “For equal variants,” she says, “the copyeditor’s job is to note on the style sheet which variant the author has used and to enforce consistency throughout the manuscript,” p. 125. The equal variant spelling catalogue should appear thus, if that’s the author’s preference. She lists other equal variant spellings from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate on that same page.

British variants are to be Americanized per the stylebooks above. Don’t leave your dictionary at home. You might need it to keep up with these guys.

A Proofreader’s 7 Tips

Fellow blogger and freelancer Susan Johnston advises Mediabistro-membership freelancers to diversify by using writing’s related skills. The piece features freelancers’ comments on augmenting income by fact checking, adding artwork, moderating blogs and my comments on proofreading. Check out this excerpt from Mediabistro:

If you’re patient and detail-oriented, then proofreading could be a good side gig for you. Schraepfer Harvey is a writer and editor in Somerville, Mass., who earned a certificate in editing from the University of Washington Extension program. He’s carved out a niche proofing catalogues and other marketing materials for clients including REI, EF Tours, Joslin Diabetes Center, and Northeastern University.

Most of Harvey’s gigs are on-site and involve looking at page proofs, which are then passed on to the graphic designers. “If a writer decides to pick up a proofreading gig [it helps if the person] has a basic knowledge of the software,” he says. “You don’t know have to know all of the commands, but you should know what limitations or possibilities there are with the software. It’ll help you get along with designers if everyone [speaks] the same language” Usually this means having a familiarity with desktop publishing programs such as Quark or InDesign.

Often, Harvey points out, a gig that’s advertised as copyediting or proofreading will involve both skills. (The Chicago Manual of Style details the differences between proofreading and copyediting.) Either way, he says you have to “stay on track and keep an eye on the prize” so you don’t get too wrapped up in modifiers or syntax and the client gets their piece printed on time.

I encourage using writing’s related skills to boost income. However, it does disservice to professionals in the field if you’ve not cultivated the skill set first. Here’s seven tips:

1. Take a professional editing or proofreading class
2. Be prepared to work on-site
3. Know the appropriate styleguide and use it
4. Designers are your friends
5. Don’t ever re-write material
6. Don’t do more than what you’re paid for
7. Don’t fight over punctuation marks. Make deadline your focus instead

Eye on the prize, did I really? Oh my.

Your thoughts, in comments.

News in Neglect

In a New York Times blog post here, National Book Award winner Timothy Egan stops shy of asking subsidy to buoy the newspaper industry. Instead he appeals to Americans’ sentimentality. “My lament this Fourth of July is to ask readers to see newspapers as not just another casualty in the churn of business,” he says. No? Should we see newspapers as the industry that gave superhero aliases a day job? Though an emotional plea, Egan doesn’t ask us to save the newspaper industry. He asks something more important: to inform ourselves wisely.

In the piece he warns of specious centralized news gathering. Centralized wire services, like AP or Reuters, attract many blogs, but are stiff and threaten local reporting, Egan says. “Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists, and a search engine is no replacement for a curious reporter,” he says. Furthermore, bloggers won’t work for free for indefinitely.

Blogs might depend on news wires, and in turn readers link to local newspaper Web sites. Despite greater electronic distribution reaching larger audiences, even affluent cities can’t keep a profitable newspaper, Egan writes. Though everyone wants the news, no one wants to pay for it.

Newspaper casualties signal that kind of disconnect. The loss of newspapers follows our economic system’s tendency to allow bridges, levees, schools, and other infrastructure to verge on collapse while favoring the latest trends in riches. Without wholesale re-evaluation and action regarding where we invest our interests, we are eventually, all of us, casualties in the churn of business.

Your thoughts, in comments.

Accuracy Paramount

Latent Print presents Styleguide Wednesday, a post each Wednesday featuring an editorial convention from the world of styleguides. View previous Latent Print moments of stylebook study and reflection here. This week features editorial interpolation.

Brackets are the preferred punctuation for editorial interpolation. Convention allows bracketed material for clarification, with occasional silent corrections, or syntactical pronouns.

The Gregg allows interpolation for clarification, ¶282; so does Chicago, 6.104, 11.68; and Einsohn, p. 210. AP states a strict standard: “Never alter quotations even to correct minor grammatical errors or word usage,” p. 207. Though later, p. 333, the stylebook allows for interpolation, in parentheses, when an explanatory editor’s note follows the story.

Clarification of quotes should be done before typesetting, but copyeditors should beware bracketed material. An interpolation misinterpreted can be a publishing embarrassment. Query the editor if interpolation seems inappropriate.

If an author’s diligence to full, clear quotes fails, a fair paraphrase is their course to safety. They should expect the editor to query. If the editor must add bracketed material, clarification should be the obvious motive.

Ever had words put in your mouth?

Talk Well, People

I’ve yet to score a gig via independent marketing channels. Without agency help, I’d have fewer stellar companies on my roster. Last week I direct marketed for a blog gig, a proofreading gig, and an associate editor gig. By Thursday, I’d decided to check in with the ol’ agency folks. Ta-da, interview for a long-term proofreading gig Monday. Today, I accepted.

I’m appreciative for the work that the agency does. As a Boston transplant, their staffing cred plus my resume has made a minor splash. Now I’m contracting long-term gigs. Shouldn’t my agent be taking me out to lunch? Cha-ching. Share the lunch love.

In Tatum Greenblatt’s recent profile by me in Earshot, the trumpeter shares marketing technique: “The most important thing you can do is to sound good and be responsible and have people talk well about you to other people, and then you get the gigs.”

My resume is on the top of the pile out there. I’ve demonstrated that past successes are no fluke. Are people talking?

Two contacts did come in Monday from Mediabistro. It does pay to position on the Web. One was an agency I’d met with in the past—woops, update that database. The other was a copywriter here looking to build a pool of freelancers. I’ll meet with her on Thursday before their office closes early for the holiday. If I’m fit for the pool, it’ll be a great contact to have.

Profile: Tatum Greenblatt

Here's my profile of trumpeter Tatum Greenblatt in this month's Earshot Jazz.