When I was a senior in high school back in the early 1990s, my family did not have a personal computer. Many families did not. I attended a rather wealthy school and some of the students did have computers in their homes. These students wrote their assigned papers on word processing platforms that seem primitive today: WordPerfect and WordStar, to name two.

So what did I do?

I wrote my papers on a Smith Corona electronic typewriter with which my parents gifted me the summer before my senior year. And, more than 30 years later, I am highly grateful to them for doing so.

I loved my typewriter. It hammered the characters on the paper in what was then called Pica type (similar to what Courier New is on MS Word today). I could set it to either single space or double space the lines. The ribbon cartridge was easy enough to replace that my all-thumbs self could do it. And—this was the best part—I could correct errors on a line by pressing a key which activated a correction feature (best described as a hammer striking a character though a whiteout ribbon), so that as long as I kept my eyes on what was forming on the paper, I could use that feature to erase my mistakes.

I remember typing not only papers for my high school English and psychology classes with the typewriter, but also my college applications and, years later, my graduate school applications. Oh, how I hated having to perfectly line up the paper so that my characters did not go uphill or downhill on the application lines. However, I managed to do it right.

I even typed a few of my job applications. Of course, by the time I was in the “real world,” I filled out applications online most of the time, but there were some times when an application was a hard copy and would read, “PLEASE PRINT OR TYPE.” Handwrite a job application? Certainly not I!

The last time I used the typewriter was in 2017, when I filled out a job application which was a hard copy, and I did not even think twice about typing it. I was one of six applicants who got an interview, out of more than 20. I later learned that many of the applicants had handwritten their applications.

I still have the typewriter and it sits on a shelf in my office. I refuse to part with it until it needs a new ribbon cartridge; those are no longer made or sold.

Do you have an “old,” treasured piece of equipment that you used in your writing or editing?

As I mentioned in last week’s post, graduate school is often extremely stressful for a master’s or PhD candidate. It was for me when I was working on my master’s degree in biochemistry. The experiments, while highly interesting, were often grueling. I recall one in which I measured the growth of baker’s yeast over a twelve-hour period, which involved taking measurements every hour or so for twelve hours. Yes, that meant I slept at my desk in the lab between measurements and had an alarm next to me.

But I digress. For many graduate students, the most difficult part of the road is the writing of their thesis or dissertation. For some students, English is a foreign language and they have some difficulty with it. For others, writing in general has always been a struggle.

This is why scientific theses and dissertations are among the things that I edit. If you clicked on the “About” tab on my website, you know that writing my thesis was my favorite part of my master’s project. And I loved editing my own writing when I was working on it. It goes without saying that I love editing the writing of others as well.

My first client whom I did not know personally was a master’s candidate at a well-known research university. Her project was fascinating, but her English needed some help, as it was not her first language. I edited her thesis and got high accolades from both the student and her faculty adviser. The student successfully defended her thesis and earned her master’s degree.

The most important thing to do right after a student contacts you is ask for their adviser’s name and email address, and then get a written document saying that the student has the adviser’s permission to have the thesis or dissertation edited. If a student does not have such permission and you are a party to editing their paper, everyone involved will be in trouble, including you.

Graduate students in the sciences are the next generation of researchers and professors, and it is good to look at them as such. If you are aiding the next generation, it rather makes you feel good.

I don’t often post about current events here, but the August 28 shooting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill really struck me.

Having heard about it only on TV and the internet, I cannot even say that I am very educated about it. I know that second-year graduate student Tailei Qi shot his faculty adviser, Zijie Yan, and that the hand gun Qi used has yet to be found. I also know that Yan, who was married with at least one child, did not survive, and that Qi has appeared in court and is in jail.

Sadly, I also know that students and faculty had to shelter in place for hours that dreadful Monday. I read the many texts that were on the front page of The Daily Tar Heel which bared their terror and fear.

I believe Qi should receive the maximum sentence allowable.

I was a graduate student in the hard sciences back in the 1990s and I know how difficult such a life is. Graduate school is very stressful and can be cutthroat for many students. It can also often be very discouraging. But these are not excuses for getting a gun from who-knows-where and committing a horrific crime.

Could Qi have handled the situation—whatever it exactly was—differently? Of course.

If he was struggling in his program (and I’m not saying he was), he could have gone to the chair of his department and discussed what was going on, and hopefully the department chair would help him make arrangements that would create a more favorable situation for him.

If the chair was not willing to do this, Qi could have just done the best he could. Sometimes that is what one has to do. When I was in graduate school, I did the best I could and let the chips fall where they did. This is why I ended up scoring high enough on my comprehensive exams (given at the end of the first year in the program I was in) to continue as a master’s candidate, but not a doctoral candidate. In the end, a master’s degree was better for me personally.

Of course, guns could be made less accessible and controlled more, but I will not get into my feelings about that.

Wow! Amazing!

How else can I describe EFACON 2023 (also known as the 2023 Editorial Freelancers Association Conference in Alexandria, Virginia)?

I met so many cool people, many of whom I felt I already “knew” from the EFA Discussion List, but whose voices I had never heard before and whose faces I had never seen. The icebreaker games and the welcome reception the first night kicked off my getting to know people, and I clicked with quite a few of them (this is a big deal for me, given that I am an introvert). I also got to interact with fellow freelance editors at meals and before and after the keynote speeches and sessions. Many of these editors had substantial credentials and served as inspiration to me.

I volunteered at one of the sessions by assisting the speaker with my assigned room’s equipment. The training for this was very quick, and I was extremely thankful that the speaker in the room to which I was assigned was very tech-savvy and already knew how to connect her laptop to the PowerPoint projector. There was an issue with the “tricky” microphone, however, and I had to summon an employee from the event planning company to deal with this, but resolving the problem did not take long and did not delay the start of the session. God is good.

As for the other sessions I attended, they taught me an incredible amount of information. I learned about tools which detect plagiarism, the advantages and pitfalls of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic editing, different newsletters about academic editing to which I can (and will) subscribe, how volunteering can help me network, and lots of advice on how to run a business. I gave out my business card many times and received several cards in return; I have already written a “hello, it was great meeting you” email to each of the editors whose card I collected.

Would you believe that I am already getting busier? What a great sign!

A calendar is a tool that is essential for everybody. This is why I was taught how to use one in first grade.

Once I mastered the use of a standard month-to-month calendar, I fell in love with the concept. I loved knowing which day of week, month, and day it was. It seemed as if every day had its own name and personality. The days were like little people to me.

As I grew up, I learned to use calendars to plan ahead. The little squares (or big squares) could tell me when that important paper was due and how much time I had to work on it. I could break down the entire task into pieces and assign each piece to a square (i.e., day). Since I am a visual learner, using a calendar to do this made things much easier.

Now that I am an editor, I prefer using a weekly planner. You probably already know this, but a weekly planner is a calendar that shows each week on two pages. I like such planners because each day’s space gives me plenty of room to write—much more than a little square on a wall calendar. The more appointments and tasks I can write in a single day, the better.

I take (or try to remember to take) my planner to all my doctor’s appointments so that I can make a note of when the next one will be. I remember once being at the reception desk of one doctor’s office and jokingly referring to my planner as my “smartphone” (as in “Let me get out my smartphone.”) This was 2015, and I did not yet have an actual smartphone; I only had a basic flip phone. Would you believe that even though I own a smartphone and could use its calendar to enter appointments, I still use my paper planner? Old habits die hard. Besides, using the tiny alphanumeric “buttons” on a smartphone screen is difficult for a cerebral palsy patient—but I will keep my rants about systemic ableism to myself for now.

You can bet that my planner will be with me every moment of EFACON 2023, which begins this Thursday afternoon and runs until Saturday evening. Speaking of which, since I will be journeying home next Sunday, I will not be blogging next weekend. I hope that all of you, dear readers, enjoy the late summer, and I will be back here on August 27^th.

There are times, as editors, when we must tell our authors things about their writing that are not necessarily “nice.” By this, I mean we have to tell them what needs improvement, and then offer suggestions. However, when we point out what is lacking in an author’s writing, we must be diplomatic. That is part of being a good editor.

The Comments feature in MS Word can be an editor’s best friend…or their worst enemy. Here are a few helpful hints for commenting in Word.

• Use the word “please” liberally. For example, “Please delete the hyphen in ‘nonbinary’ because it is a closed compound” sounds gentler than “Delete the hyphen in ‘nonbinary’” or “’Nonbinary’ is a closed compound.” (Don’t you hate it when you are at the table and your annoying brother says, “Pass the salt,” and you just want to say, “What’s the magic word?” That’s how an author sometimes feels.)

• Use more dos than don’ts. Don’ts are negative and nobody wants to hear them, especially the author of the document you are editing. If you must tell an author to refrain from doing something, use the word “avoid” (as in “Please DO avoid…”). Which of these would you rather hear: “Please avoid the use of slang,” or “Please don’t use slang”? If I were an author, I would much rather hear the former because it sounds positive rather than negative (DO avoid slang rather than DON’T use slang).

• When correcting an error that is contrary to the style guide being used, cite the style guide and the section having to do with that error. For example, “Chemical compounds are open in both noun and adjective form (The Chicago Manual of Style 17^th ed., 7.89).” This will, of course, tell the author you know what you are doing as an editor.

The basic thing to keep in mind is, “If I were writing this, would I like it if an editor said that to me in those words?”

If you are an editor, what tips do you have regarding comments?

Let me preface this post by saying that I’m not the only reader who does the following.

When I read fiction, I like to “cast” the book in my mind. That is, I like to assign the character roles, sometimes to people I know who seem to fit the physical descriptions of the characters, and sometimes to professional actors.

For me, this makes reading fiction even more fun than it is to begin with.

Take the Harry Potter series, for example. The real-life eleven-year-old daughter of one of my best friends has long, thick, fiery red hair and a cute face. When I was reading the adventures of Harry and his friends, I assigned my friend’s daughter the role of—you guessed it—Ginny Weasley.

Or take Michael Crichton’s Sphere, which I read many years ago without having seen the movie adaptation. The role of Beth was given by me to one of my biology professors from college. The two just seemed to have the same personality, so why couldn’t they have the same looks? Certainly Beth did not look like Sharon Stone (who played that role on the big screen) in my imagination.

I once read a fiction piece for an online class. I don’t know if the piece was ever published, but it was definitely an interesting story about two stepsisters struggling to make it. The younger stepsister was definitely Kellie Martin in my mind.

What I despise is when a novel is made into a movie and the book cover is replaced with a new one featuring the actors. This takes away the fun of casting the book myself. Crichton’s Disclosure was made into a film which featured Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, and the new book cover featured recognizable images of those actors. I never saw the movie, but I read the novel after it had been released and the cover replaced. Instead of my imagination cooking up appearances for the two lead characters, I pictured Douglas and Moore doing the things that the characters were doing. No fun.

How about you? When you read fiction, do you “cast” the book in your imagination?

If there is one thing editors dislike entirely, it is being distracted while they are trying to work. For editors who work at home like me, distractions can abound more so than at an office. A few weeks ago, I blogged about the vent on the wall right above my desk that rattles and makes white noise. I wish it were the only distraction at home that I must fight.

I never do laundry during the workday. The washer, a modern front-loader, is a blessing to my husband and me for getting our clothes, sheets, and towels clean, but it sits in a utility closet which is right across from the small bedroom that we have turned into our office (i.e., where I work). I can hear it well whether it is filling up with water (loud) or draining (also loud). And the thing can be near deafening during the final spin, depending on how the laundry inside has fallen. Thankfully, it is quiet when it is tumbling. But the sounds tend to make me anxious, no matter how normal they are for the machine.  When I am editing, I do not need extra anxiety.

I also never run the dishwasher during the workday. The dishwasher is another blessing to my husband and me, and unlike the clothes washer, it runs quietly—no louder than our refrigerator. So why does it distract me? Because even while I am editing, the very back of my mind hears the soft cadence of its water swishing and the sucking sounds it makes while it is draining. If any of these noises suddenly start to sound abnormal, I panic, for it must mean that something is wrong with the dishwasher. And then I need to stop my Toggl timer before running out to the kitchen—and Heaven help me if I forget to stop the timer. (The dishwasher—though it is a blessing—was installed incorrectly in 2018 and we did not learn of this until 2021. If I step too hard on the floor near it, it sometimes stops in midcycle.)

If you work at home, what are some of your biggest distractions?

For three days, my husband and I could not breathe, eat, or drink.

That is an exaggeration. What happened was that we did not have internet (lowercase “i” according to The Chicago Manual of Style) service for three days.

Years ago, when I had a Facebook account, I read the following meme in my feed: Our generation is better prepared for a zombie apocalypse than an hour without electricity. This meme is terribly true and would have been even truer had its ending read …an hour without electricity or internet service.

No internet means no email. Email is my favorite method of communication. Yes, I also text and make the occasional telephone call, but since I love to write, I prefer to email. Often, my emails to my friends are extremely long, and I wonder if any of them are thinking, “TL;DR.” (“Too long; didn’t read” for those unfamiliar with social media acronyms.) But I love to write emails, for it is that mode of contact that lets me express myself the most eloquently.

No internet also means no YouTube. I know that YouTube is the video sharing platform of our grandparents and that I “should” be using TikTok, but YouTube contains many wonderful music mixes which I love to put on when I do household chores on the weekends. Not to mention that YouTube also has many of my beloved commercials from the past, like the 2003 Miller Beer ad where the people are falling like dominoes.

And, of course, no internet means no getting information. I needed a certain phone number last Friday that I could only obtain from the company’s website. Needless to say that I couldn’t get the phone number. Sigh.

So who was the culprit who stole our internet service?

At first the phone agent at our cable company thought it was the modem that had died, but we reached out to a tech-savvy friend of ours who came over, ran a diagnostic, and said it was the router that was dead. The last three days included two trips to the electronics store, three long calls with our cable company, and two calls to product manufacturers.

But…lo and behold, we have internet service again. Hooray!

What is the longest you have been without internet service? What did you do to get by during that time?

Let’s hear it for white noise!

I am being sarcastic.

If you are not familiar with the term “white noise,” here is the “b” definition from the free online version of Merriam-Webster: “a constant background noise, especially one that drowns out other sounds.”

I often have white noise in my office—and not by choice. It is in the form of a heat/air conditioning vent which is in the wall some four feet directly above my work desk. Unlike the other vents in my condo, which blow air quietly, this one is so loud that it can be heard from my living room.

This vent also rattles as it blows air. It has done so since before my husband and I moved here. It is doing so at the very moment that I type these words. I am very glad that we made this room an office and not a guest bedroom.

Since I have to edit and do other work right below this noisy thing, you might be asking how I deal with it. Well, I have a few methods.

First, when the heat or AC starts and the vent starts blowing and rattling, I quickly remind myself that white noise is not the worst sound in the world. I would much rather hear it than, for example, a baby crying, a dog barking, a blender whirring, or (gulp) my smoke alarm screaming. Right after I give myself this reminder, I can quickly focus on work again.

Second, I emphasize the positive. The white noise drowns out other, more unnerving sounds that I often hear while I am home, such as the grounds crew using their leaf blowers or the three young children shrieking in the one unit near ours. (The latter should be the subject of another whole post.)

When I am home alone at night, I hear the white noise even when I am not working, and this is when I find it creepy. This brings me to the third method of dealing with the noise. I imagine that it is the ocean. It does somewhat sound like the waves. I love the ocean and the beach, so this is very therapeutic.

Some people love white noise and cannot work or sleep without it. How about you? Do you love or hate white noise?